How to Crack the ACT English Test

Chapter 5An Introduction to the ACT English Test

The English test does not test how well you write

It tests how well you know and can apply the rules of standard written English

The ACT is a standardized test so it always tests the same basic concepts

If you don’t know what the question is testing, you can look at the clues

In this chapter you will learn to find these clues and use them along with along with test strategies to get a higher English score

What the English Test testsThe English test measures how well you

understand “the conventions of standard written English”

There are 5 passages to readPortions of each passage will be underlinedYou must decide

Are the portions written correctlyOr whether one og the other answer choices

are better

Some questions are designed to measure your knowledge of

Punctuation Grammar Sentence structure

Other questions are designed to see if you know

How to revise and strengthen a passage How to change particular words for style or clarity How to explain or support a point of view more

clearly or effectively

There are a total of 75 questions to answer in 45 minutes

You do not have to be a strong writer to do well on this test

You do need to know what types of errors come up again and again and how to fix them

What do the Passages look likeHandoutMost of the questions refer to individual

words or phrases in the passage; these words are underlined and numbered

A few of the questions (such as question 5) ask you about the organization of a paragraph. You can tell what paragraph hey ask about by looking for the question number in the a box at the end of a paragraph

You will also see a few questions that ask you about the passage as a whole (number 6)

By the way, the answers are:1. C2. G3. A4. G5. B6. F

TriageIn the English test, the ACT writer have

concocted there own brand of triage for you

Specific questions on punctuation, grammar and sentence structure tend to come early in the passage

Usually there will be one or two questions about style or rhetoric at the end of the passage – these deal with the passage as a whole

First Pass, Second PassOn the first pass, answer all the question that

you know you can answer quickly and confidently

On the second pass, answer the questions that require more thought or that you skipped the first time through

Use POE to help you get rid of wrong answers

Looking for CluesOne of the ways to look for errors is to search

the answer choices for cluesThe underlined portions are very short – so

it’s easy to see how each choice is different from the others

These differences offer a strong indication of what is on the minds of the ACT writers

Look at the following example27. A. NO CHANGE

B. One goesC. you goD. He goes

Clearly this question is about pronounsEven if you didn’t spot anything wrong with the

underlined passage as you read itThe answer choices are telling you to check

and see if the pronoun agrees with the noun in the passage

What if there is more than one thing wrong?There is often more than one error in the

underlined portion of a sentenceFirst find one errorEliminate the answer choices that contain the

same errorThen compare the remaining answer choicesRegardless of the number of errors you

find in the question, keep your focus on the differences in the answer choices

NO CHANGEMany of the questions in this test have NO

CHANGE as the first of the answer choices

DO NOT assume that there is always something wrong with the passage

NO CHANGE turns out to be the correct answer a little less than a quarter of the time it is offered

SO DON’T BE AFRAID TO USE IT!

OMIT the underlined portionA few of the questions in this test will have

“OMIT the underlined portion” as the last of the four answer choices

When this choice is offered, it has a high probability of being correct – better than 50% of the time on recent test

But, don’t just choose it every time you see it

It is worth noting that when you see the word OMIT, you should examine it very carefully

Before We Begin, Some TerminologyThe ACT is not going to test you on parts of

speech or diagram a sentence, but it will be helpful to know some basic definitions.

Tom broke the vase

This sentence is made up of two nouns a verb and an article

Tom broke the vaseA noun is a word used to name a person, a

place, a thing, or an ideaA verb is a word that expresses actionAn article is a word that modifies or limits a

noun

Tom accidentally broke the big vase of flowersWe’ve added an adverb, an adjective, and a

prepositional phrase to the original sentence

An adverb is a word that modifies a verb, an adjective, or another adverb

An adjective is a word that modifies a nounA preposition is a word that notes the

relation of a noun to an action or a thing

Tom accidentally broke the big vase of flowers.A phrase is a group of words that acts as a

single part of speech. A phrase is missing either a subject, a verb or both.