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Difficulty: EasySelecting Concluding Sentences and Transitions

In 1938, Ruth Wakefield, co-owner of the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts, made a culinary discovery that would change American dessert history. While preparing a batch of chocolate desserts, she chopped up a bar of semi-sweet chocolate and added the pieces to her cookie dough, expecting them to melt and create chocolate cookies. Instead, the chocolate bits retained their shape, resulting in the very first chocolate chip cookies.

The writer wants to add a concluding sentence to the paragraph that wraps up the main point of the passage and emphasizes the lasting impact of Wakefield's accidental invention. Which of the following sentences best accomplishes this goal?

  1. A
    Consequently, Wakefield decided to sell the Toll House Inn in 1966, she retired shortly after to write cookbooks.
  2. B
    Because they were so delicious, she also served other desserts like apple pie and blueberry cobbler at the Toll House Inn.
  3. Today, the chocolate chip cookie remains one of the most popular treats in the world, tracing its origins back to Wakefield's kitchen experiment.Answer
  4. D
    After the cookies became a massive success, Wakefield shares the recipe with Nestlé in exchange for a lifetime supply of chocolate.

Answer

Today, the chocolate chip cookie remains one of the most popular treats in the world, tracing its origins back to Wakefield's kitchen experiment.
The correct answer successfully concludes the paragraph by linking the historical description of Ruth Wakefield's accidental invention back to the enduring popularity of the chocolate chip cookie today. This fulfills both requirements of the prompt: summarizing the passage and highlighting its lasting impact, while maintaining grammatical correctness.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the writing goal specified in the question stem.
The goal is to select a concluding sentence that summarizes the main point of the passage (the accidental invention of the chocolate chip cookie) and highlights its lasting impact.
Understanding the exact criteria of the prompt is necessary to evaluate the suitability of each option.
2
Evaluate each option for relevance to the passage's main focus and historical/lasting legacy.
The option mentioning the cookie's continued global popularity directly connects the accidental invention to its modern-day legacy. Other options introduce unrelated menu items, biographical details that do not conclude the main idea, or contain grammatical errors.
A strong conclusion must reinforce the paragraph's central theme without introducing new, unsupported topics.
3
Identify and eliminate options containing grammatical errors.
The sentence about selling the Toll House Inn contains a comma splice, and the sentence about sharing the recipe contains an incorrect tense shift.
ACT English questions require grammatically correct sentences, so options with structural errors can be eliminated.

Key Concept

Selecting Concluding Sentences and Transitions
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Topics

Selecting Concluding Sentences and Transitions

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