Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Acing The Act
Acing The Act
ENGLISH SECTION
By Miss Priya
Important Facts
75 questions
45 minutes (about 2 minutes per
question)
Tested on punctuation, grammar &
usage, sentence construction, writing
strategies, organization & style
General ACT English Tips
• . OMIT is correct half the time it appears. If the underlined portion isn’t
necessary to make the sentence Complete, Consistent, or Clear, get rid of it.
Their = Possession.
They’re = They are
Substitute “They are” in the
sentence and see if it makes sense.
Punctuation – Sample
Problem
On the day of the test, his over-protective mother
packed him an ACT survival kit. Ten sharpened
pencils, a pencil sharpener, a calculator, a pack
of batteries, three different-weight sweaters, four
pieces of fruit, a liter of spring water and a box
of tissues.
A. NO CHANGE
B. kit, ten
D.
C. kit; ten
D. kit: ten
OMIT the Material When…
• It is unnecessary
• It is repetitious, or
• It is wordy
F. NO CHANGE I.
G. Clearly, this must have occurred
subsequent to his discovering Pike’s Peak.
H. This was after he found Pike’s Peak.
I. OMIT the underlined portion.
[1] The immigration laws led, ultimately, to a quota system based
on the number of individuals of each national origin reported in the
1890 census. [2] The United States, which was founded mainly by
people who had emigrated from northern Europe, had an essentially
open-door immigration policy for the first 100 years of existence.
[3] But starting in the 1880s and continuing through the 1920s,
Congress passed a series of restrictive immigration laws. [4] The
door to freedom hadn’t been slammed shut, exactly, but was now
SEQUENCING
open only to the “right” sort of people.
Which of the following sequences of sentences
will make this paragraph most logical?
A. 4,3,1,2 B. 2,3,1,4
C. 1,3,2,4 D. 2,3,4,1
The first reason why the Denville school district should
not be combined with the Jackson school district is the
fact that the schools have been sports rivals for too
long. Trying to unite the schools after so many years of
competition would inevitably lead to friction. [2]
2. Is the author’s introductory paragraph effective?
B.
A. Yes, because it gets immediately to the problem
B. No, because an introduction should outline the whole
subject.
C. No, because it doesn’t say how many other reasons there
will be.
D. Yes, because sports is the number one interest of most
students.
Important Points
• 1/3 of English items concern
redundancy, verbosity, and relevance.
• NEVER let the passage repeat itself.
• Stay true to the author’s tone.
• Don’t try to “correct” EVERY sentence.
• Trust your ear.
CAUTION!
• Don’t Add a New Mistake
Problem: Dangling
Modifier
Possible correction:
Stockholders were dismayed…,and the
price…
A fabled center of monastic life during the
Middle Ages, each summer thousands of
visitors travel to the island of Iona near the
coast of Ireland.
Problem: Misplaced Modifier
Suggestion:
Move “A fabled center of monastic life
during the Middle Ages” after the
phrase “the island of Iona”.
Although the hospital administrators interviewed
many staff members about the repeated cases of
staph infections they had no explanation for the
puzzling pattern of outbreaks.
WHO had no explanation?
The administrators? The staff?
Possible Correction: Although the hospital
administrators interviewed many staff members
about the repeated cases of staph infections the
staff had no explanation for the puzzling pattern
of outbreaks.
Each member of the tour group should
have their tickets by the end of the week.
Problem: Parallelism
Representatives to the student senate were
asked to pursue often contradictory goals:
boosting student acceptance of more
homework, developing explanations for
adding two hours to the length of each
school day, and the reduction of rampant
poor morale.