YantiPants’ Comprehensive Guide to ACT Success

YantiPants
Mon, 19 May 2014 07:02:12 +0000

IN DEPTH SECTION REVIEW

ENGLISH

English has no order to difficulty. The shortest, simplest answer is usually the right one. This is because the ACT makers like to throw in a lot of extra junk to confuse you. Usually, you don’t add punctuation either. Either you leave it alone, change it (from a comma to a semi-colon, for instance), or take it out.

It is also pretty critical to know active vs. passive voice. If an answer is in the passive voice, it’s almost always wrong. Passive voice is basically when the object comes before the subject. So for instance, “I made this guide” would be active and “this guide was made by me” would be passive. Generally passive voice includes the word “by” in it, so this is a huge indicator something is wrong.

Other than these fairly general rules for the section, most of the other things can be learned solely by ear. If your read things out loud, you should be able to sound almost everything out. Some things, however, aren’t so easy are important if you are trying to get a score about a 26. These, in particular, are the 9 most important and obscure English rules I tried to remember when prepping:

1) Each is one body <---- pneumonic for remembering pronoun singular agreement

Sentences that have “each” or words that end in “-one” or “-body” should be treated as singular.
Example 1. Each of the boys IS going to the dance.
Example 2. Everyone get out HIS OR HER notebook.
Example 3. Everybody needs to bring HIS OR HER textbook to school.

2) In phrases that have “Either…or” or “Neither…nor” the verb has to agree with the second subject.

Example 1. Neither the sailors nor the boy WANTS to go swimming with sharks.

3) Reflexive pronouns such as “myself”, "himself, and “herself” refer back to previously mentioned subjects and cannot be used if you don’t have a subject such as “I” mentioned previously in the sentence.

4) “Fewer” modifies plural words while “less” modifies singular words.

5) “Who” is used for subject and “whom” is used for object.

6) Always use “who” when talking to humans and never “that” or “which”

7) Amount pronouns (none, fraction, percent, etc…) + of
DON’T determine subject/verb agreement, the noun following it does.

8) When 2 nouns posses the same item or idea, the second noun is given the punctuation.

If you need any more coverage of English, check out Sparknotes or Barron’s ACT 36 English Section.

MATH

No guide or amount of advice I put here is a substitute for simply doing a massive amount of problem to practice areas in which you struggle. Time is always a problem, so try to move so quickly. The test goes from easy to hard, so work in order and try to get through the easy questions as fast as you can. However, don’t shortchange the easy questions with time or effort-- the points gained here could be crucial. Because people are worried about time, they tend to rush through the easy questions at the beginning, making simple mistakes that could have been avoided, in order to get to the harder ones at the end. Don’t make this mistake and miss out on easy points due to carelessness. One way to minimize this is to show your work.

If you need any more coverage of English, check out Gary Gruber’s ACT and look at the Math section.

READING:

People have different methods-- some like to read the questions then the passage, some do it the other way around. Some skim then read it through in depth, some just read it once. Experiment until you find a method that both maximizes the score you get and minimizes the amount of time you spend. A big tip here is that correct answers tend to be moderate in both tone and belief. So if an answer choice could be viewed as offensive or extreme, it’s probably not right. Buzzwords to watch out for include “always,” “never,” “perfectly,” and other absolutes like them. An answer choice containing those words probably isn’t right.

SCIENCE:

Science has nothing to do with science and everything to do with reading comprehension and reading charts, tables and graphs. Getting away with basic science skills is fine here, and what you really need to make sure of here is to not make silly errors and work within the time. You generally won’t get a chance to read everything through completely with the huge time crunch there is, so make sure that the questions you answer you do so thoroughly and put your best foot forward.

ESSAY:
The essay is scored out of 12 with two readers scoring it out of 6, and it is not as important since it doesn’t factor into your composite score. Time is a HUGE factor: practice writing an essay in 30 min. Use educated examples in your essay, history or literature is a good idea. Write as much as possible, as there is a bias in grading towards longer essays, and most schools require that you take the +writing option so there is no reason not to.

FURTHER READING:

Was this guide useful? Hopefully so. I’ve spent tons of times combing through ACT material, print, verbal, and online, and I tried to put together everything I could in this guide in order to ensure everyone the best possible success. However the best way for advice to sink in is to hear it again and again and learn to apply it, so for this reason I have included the following links and resources that I strongly recommend you look into in order to make sure you are scoring at a high level (33+):


The following guides contain much of the same information as was provided here but stated a little differently and probably a little less comprehensive. If anything, they still serve as pretty good reads.


http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/act-preparation/1071765-jeandevaches-guide-act.html

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/act-preparation/1325529-act-tips-succeed.html


Read the Barron’s ACT 36 book. It focuses on people aiming for high scores and offers helpful advice, instead of making you wade through pages and pages of useless stuff and having one or two helpful facts like most prep books. I found the English sections especially helpful and if you don’t have time, read just those parts.
Read the math sections of the Gruber’s ACT book and do practice problems from there. It has a pretty solid math section and covers the important things you need to know.
Take practice test(s) from The Real Act (red book). It contains official ACT’s released and is the best bet to predict your scores and practice from. It is a good idea to intermingle tests in between going through other material, especially through sections in Grubers or in Barron’s ACT 36. Try taking tests after each step and seeing how you improve. Try your best to take the full test in one sitting without many breaks, even if you have to build up to this goal. If you don’t, the scores you get will probably not be accurate. Take as many practice tests as you can, its the single best way to improve your score. But always REVIEW your results.


CONCLUSION

Test taking can be natural talent to an extent, but for the most part it all comes down to preparation and applying what you have learned in class, If you can put together some of the rules you learned here with practice problems from Barron’s 36 and The Real ACT, you are easily on your way to getting that coveted 35 or 36 score.

I assure you that your hard work will pay off and you will be satisfied. Money back guarantee