If you’re like many of the students who come to me for private tutoring to drastically raise their ACT scores, chances are that your high school teachers have primarily taught you grammar through a case-by-case, trial-and-error method.
What I mean by that is: you write essays for English class and your instructor marks them up in red ink (or by using the Track Changes feature of your word processor). The teacher assumes that these corrections will lead you to naturally deduce the larger concepts that hold it all together. However, this system means you may not actually know the actual rules of grammar per se… like, the black-and-white, Option-A-is-“correct”-while-Option-B-is-“incorrect” RULES. Am I right?
For the past dozen years, almost ALL of my test prep students have told me that they hear my voice and “my” grammar rules in their heads while writing essays and papers. They also often say that what they’ve learned from me for the English section of the ACT has significantly improved their writing in ALL of their subjects at school (not to mention, writing their college application essays).
So, what are these mysterious “rules” of which I speak? The ones that will magically and swiftly carry you to a perfect 36 in the ACT English section? Lucky for you, I’m breaking down all the content that you’ll need to learn to master this section in today’s post. But first, you need to understand the framework of the section:
The ACT English section tests your ability to swiftly and accurately edit passages in grammatically correct—and rhetorically sound—ways. The section consists of 75 multiple choice questions that must be completed in 45 minutes for a regular-time test taker. The section is broken down into five passages, each with 15 questions. No passage is harder than another, and the difficulty level of the questions is random. You might have a hard question followed by an easy question. YOUR job is to accurately answer all 75 questions at a speed of 36 seconds per question. (Multiply that by 1.5 if you get extended time.)
Most questions in the ACT English section are “underlined” questions, meaning that part of the passage is underlined, and the answer choices provide different options that could take the place of the underlined words. However, some questions are “boxed” (no words are underlined, but the part of the passage that’s being asked about is marked with a boxed question number), and some questions refer to the passage as a whole. In addition, certain questions will use the words “NOT” or “EXCEPT” and ask you to find the answer choice that DOESN’T work. In short, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with these different question types—and always be aware of which one you’re working with come test day—to ensure you don’t make careless errors and get docked points!
If you have trouble completing all 75 questions within the 45 minutes you’re allotted (for regular-time test takers), you’ll need a guessing strategy. Luckily, I told you my best ACT guessing strategies in this post.