ACT English Prep: Big-Picture Strategies for Defeating the ACT English Section
The English section of the ACT requires knowledge of two areas: English grammar and rhetorical skills. The ability to tackle these different questions requires two very different skillsets, and success on the the ACT English portion relies on you possessing both of these. Here are some things to keep in mind to help you defeat the English section of the ACT.
ACT English: 75 questions in 45 minutes
The absolute best thing you can do to help yourself prepare for the ACT English section is to PRACTICE it. Practice the concepts and practice the approaches that are proven to work. Here are some things to keep in mind during your practice:
Content Tips
Brush up on English grammar rules
Unlike the reading and science sections, for which there really aren’t facts and equations that you can memorize to help you on test day, over half of the English section is grammar, which you can definitely drill and memorize. Grammar rules will never change, so the more you practice comma usage, subject/verb agreement, and the other grammatical concepts that show up on the ACT, the more familiar you will become with those concepts and how they’re used on the ACT. As you become more familiar with these concepts, you will also get faster at tackling them.
Get familiar with rhetorical skills questions
Practice and make sure to get a hang of the language the ACT uses on the rhetorical skills questions, the types of rhetorical skills questions that show up on the ACT, and the types of answer options they will give you. Since these questions ask about the story and its point, it may seem like there is a lot of gray area, and a clear correct answer may not jump out at you. Break down rhetorical skills questions and use proven methods for attacking the different types of ACT English rhetorical skills questions. Be ready to know what the different types of rhetorical skills questions look like and how to work through them come test day.
Read the whole story
You’re probably familiar with the format of the ACT English section. You know that there are different parts of the stories that will be underlined, telling you what portion of the story correlates with what question. Sometimes there will be fairly big gaps between questions, and it can be tempting to just jump from one line to the next and skip reading all the text that shows up in between. DO NOT do this! Force yourself to actually read the entire story in order, taking some time to read the text that shows up in between sections. You SHOULD NOT read the whole story before attempting any questions, but pause between questions to read any text that does not have questions associated to it. You know that there are going to be rhetorical skills questions coming up; the rhetorical skills questions at the end of the story will be the broadest, requiring you to have a solid understanding of the story. It’s hard to have a well-rounded understanding of the story when you haven’t read the whole thing. Therefore, make sure you’re reading and paying attention to what the story is about and not just hopping from line to line and looking at commas and punctuation.
Read the whole sentence for grammar questions
Grammar has to match throughout an entire sentence. For this reason, you need to make sure to read the entire sentence before choosing an answer to a grammar question. Two major grammatical areas tested will require you to be able to recognize independent and dependent clause and know how to combine them and know when you should or shouldn’t use a comma. For both of these question types, reading the entire sentence is critical. Oftentimes the sentence will be 3 or 4 lines long, which makes this seem tedious, but force yourself to read and understand the entire sentence before jumping to a conclusion. A really easy mistake to make is to not read the entire sentence - the ACT likes to put answer options that halfway make sense, but if you keep reading, you might find that the sentence either sounds weird or is just plain wrong.
Focus only on the underlined portion for rhetorical skills questions with specific criteria
There are some rhetorical skills questions that will ask you to choose the best answer option that completes some specific criteria. For most rhetorical skills questions you’ll want to consider the broad context of the story, but for this type of question you want to do the opposite: only focus on the underlined portion and your other answer options. The reason for this is that the ACT is asking you to pick which ANSWER does something specific. Therefore, the answer options themselves should be all that you need to study in order to determine which answer option best completes the question criteria. In fact, oftentimes considering the broader context will make these types of questions more difficult. We walk through how to recognize these questions and work through them in our post here: ACT English Rhetorical Skills Questions.
Consider Main Idea Yes/No questions in two parts - go with your gut
Another type of rhetorical skills question that you’ll see show up frequently throughout the ACT asks you to determine the main idea of the story. This question will generally show up at the very end of a story. The question will lay out some specific main idea, and you’ll be tasked with determining if that main idea is accurate for the story you’ve just read. You’ll be faced with a two-part question: the first part will ask you YES or NO, and the second part will require you to pick an answer explanation that best fits. Since you’ve just read the story, hopefully you will have a good idea of the main point of it. Because of this, you want to trust your gut when it comes to main idea questions. It’s likely that you’ll be able to easily answer the YES/NO portion of the question without even reading the answer options. If you read the question and think the answer is a definite YES, go on to read ONLY the two YES answer options. DO NOT read the two options for the perspective you disagree with. There’s no point. All that will happen is you will waste a little bit of time, and you’ll chance the possibility of the ACT writers swaying your opinion when they formulate an explanation in a way that sounds nice — even if you KNOW the answer should be YES instead of NO.
Remember KIS (Keep it Simple)
The “Keep it Simple” principle stems from the fact that the ACT prefers language that is concise and straightforward. They will avoid being redundant and prefer to make phrases shorter whenever possible. This type of question may hop out at you for two reasons. First, you may see three answer options that are really long, followed by one answer option that is maybe only one or two words. If you see this pattern, lean heavily toward the shorter answer option. DO NOT just automatically select the shorter option, but give it some more attention and really analyze whether you think it would work well in the given context. As long as the meaning of the phrase remains intact, important information is not being left out, and the phrase makes sense grammatically, you’re going to want to select the short answer option. The second way you might detect questions asking you to make a phrase more concise may be if you notice things being repeated. This goes back to why it’s important to make sure to read and understand the whole story as you go. The ACT does not want to repeat information unnecessarily. In order to know if information is being repeated, you’ll need to know what has already been discussed. If you’ve been paying attention, you should be able to tell pretty easily when something seems like it’s been said too many times. If you haven’t been paying attention, it can be hard to recognize what the question is requiring you to do, as no grammatical errors will jump out at you.
Pace & Timing Tips
Although it contains significantly more questions than the other sections of the exam, the English portion is generally easier for most students to complete in the provided timeframe. The main reason for this is that many of the questions will be fast to work through if you know the content they’re examining you on. 40 of the 75 questions are all going to be about grammar. If you’re familiar with comma rules, when to use an apostrophe, how to connect clauses, and so on, you’re going to be able to work through those questions fairly quickly. For this reason, there are fewer strategy tweaks and tips for the English section than for the other portions of the test, which have more intense time constraints and force students to generally work much faster than they find natural. The biggest thing you can do to help your ACT English pace is to practice the questions and gain familiarity with the format, question types, and concepts that you’ll be tested on.
However, there are some things you can keep in mind to help make sure you’re getting through as much of the test as possible and not wasting any time on test day:
More practice!
The more that you practice the English section, the faster you will get at working through the questions. Many students can get to the point where they actually have a handful of time left over at the end of the English section, which they can then use to go back and review some of their answers. Sheer knowledge and understanding of grammar will be a huge asset in helping you move through the ACT English portion at an appropriate pace.
Pay attention to your timing
Whether you prefer to use a personal watch or the classroom clock, make sure you’re paying attention to your time. The English section is composed of 5 stories of 15 questions each. That means you have 9 minutes to work through each story if you want to have time to attempt every single question. As with all sections, make sure you never spend too much time on any one question. Recognize when you don’t know the answer to a question, make a guess quickly, and move on. The goal is to attempt as many questions as possible in the 45 minutes. If you struggle to pay attention to the clock in the classroom, it might be a good idea to look into finding a permitted watch to bring with you and set on your desk. You should actually practice and prep using the watch and make it a habit of checking your pace so that this will carry over on test day.
Look for patterns
There will be times when analyzing your answer options can be just as helpful as easily knowing the correct answers. One of these areas has to do with punctuation for combining clauses. This is a major area that the ACT examines students on. Students need to be ready to identify dependent and independent clauses and correct the punctuation for how the different types are combined.
Here is a little grammar lesson for you: there are only 4 ways that you can combine two independent clauses (full thoughts):
A period and a capital letter:
I am hungry. I went to the store.
A comma and a FANBOYS conjunction (For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, So):
I am hungry, so I went to the store.
A semicolon ;
I am hungry; I went to the store.
A colon :
I am hungry: I went to the store.
The ACT is not allowed to give you more than one answer option that could be argued as correct. That just wouldn’t make sense. BUT there will be times when one question contains 2 or more of the answer options noted above. What do I mean? I mean that sometimes there will be a question where you have an answer option that has you use a period and a capital letter, and then the next answer option may have you use a semicolon. Well, guess what? Those are THE EXACT SAME THING! As long as no words or meaning is being changed in either answer option, you can ELIMINATE both of these answer options, because they are grammatically the same. Now you’re giving yourself a much easier 50% chance of making an educated guess if you need to. Go on to consider the other answer options knowing that you’ve eliminated two answer options that you know can’t be correct.
Answer rhetorical skills questions last
Rhetorical skills questions are those that ask you about the meaning of the story rather than the way it’s composed and its sentence structure. Since these questions are all about the story, it can be helpful to wait and answer them once you’ve read the entire story and a have a strong grasp of the main idea and where the narrative goes. Many students will have no trouble answering rhetorical skills questions where they show up, but if you find that you struggle more on these types of questions, waiting to answer them last could help to give you more story context to work off of.
Skip anything difficult or confusing
This is a Golden Rule for the ACT as a whole: Use your time wisely. You NEVER want to spend too much time on any single question in any of the sections. I know it can be really infuriating to be faced with a question that you know you remember learning in school, but you just can’t seem to remember the right equation or the right rule. You sit there and rack your brain, determined that you’re going to remember and get the question right. This is like a death sentence: before you know if, you’ve spent 6 minutes on one problem, and you still haven’t remembered what you’re trying to remember… That’s 6 precious minutes that could have been spent tackling 4 or 5 or 6 (or more!) other problems. Remember that every single question is worth the same amount of points: pick and choose your battles wisely so that you can work through as many questions as possible. NEVER hesitate to skip something that you think is going to be difficult or that you think will take you a long time to complete. The best case scenario will be that you have time left over at the end of the test to return to the questions you skipped and attempt them at that time. If not, you’ve been smart to use your time on questions that you found to be easier and more straightforward than those that would have slowed you down more.
Fill in your bubble sheet in chunks
Generally, we don’t recommend that students fill in an answer bubble after every single question. There are a couple good reasons for this. First, the task of filling in a bubble on your Scantron sheet is a very different brain activity than working through the questions in the English portion of the ACT. That means these are two very different tasks that your brain has to switch back and forth between, so the fewer times that you can make your brain do this, the more focused you’ll be able to be on the questions and you may find that you get into a groove of working through one question after another more quickly without having to pause and fill in bubbles. Similarly, you may find that you can actually work through questions faster, so this small change in strategy could actually help to increase your pace as well. Some students prefer to fill in answer bubbles after they’ve completed a page of questions; others prefer to wait until they’ve answered all 15 questions that go with a particular story. Test out these approaches prior to test day to see what may be a good plan for you.
There you have it: ACT English strategies to help you reach your goal score.
The ACT English section can be pretty intimidating; many students find English grammar confusing, as they haven’t learned about it recently. Additionally, the rhetorical skills questions can seem vague and it may seem that no one answer is better than another. However, with practice, increased familiarity, and repetition, this is a section that anyone can do well on.
Good luck, and happy studying!
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