Before you read any further, know this: Reaching your target ACT score is not as difficult as you might think! If you use these strategies in your study sessions, you will see progress.

Structure 

Let’s talk about how the English section is structured. It is comprised of 75 questions with a 45 minute time limit. The ACT classifies these questions as either “Usage and Mechanics” or “Rhetorical Skills.” The first of these refers to what you do when editing an essay for grammatical errors, while the latter consists of what you do when editing an essay’s content and style.

To score well on a time crunch, you need to be at a point where you know grammar rules like the back of your hand. Choosing answers based on what sounds correct is not going to cut it. 

This brings us to our next point…

The Test is Going to Try to Trip You Up

Because the ACT is designed to test students from all across the nation, it will never cover highly complicated grammatical concepts; however, it will twist some simple ones to confuse you. 

Let’s look at a real ACT question:

Dickinson’s last twenty years of letters—many over 1,500 words in length—reveals the breadth and depth of

1. NO CHANGE

2. reveal

3. will of revealed

4. would of revealed

Here, the ACT creators are separating the subject from the verb by throwing in some non-essential information within the dashes. This is testing your knowledge of subject-verb agreement, and, to a certain extent, your knowledge of punctuation.

If you went by what sounded the best, you’d probably pick A because “length reveals” sounds right; however, knowing that the plural subject, letters, needs to match with a plural verb, the answer can can only be B, reveal. 

We’ll delve more into subject-verb agreement questions in a future blog post, but for now, start preparing for these tricks by filling in your grammar knowledge gaps.

Know Your Weaknesses!

The only way to improve is practice. Strategic practice, that is. 

It will do you no good to take all the practice tests in the world and never stop to analyze your results. Here’s how we recommend finding and correcting these weak spots. 

1. Take practice ACT tests. This is a hundred times more effective than just reading through your English class’s grammar book and studying the concepts.

2. Mark the questions you feel unsure about while taking the practice test. Pay attention to these questions in particular when scoring. Did you get it right? You still need to practice this concept as you might have just happened to make a lucky guess. Did you get it wrong? Even more reason to keep practicing!

3. Record your incorrect answers in a notebook. Read through the data, and write a separate list of the grammar skills that you missed. Let’s say you missed questions 1, 5, and 18. If all three of these questions tested you on commas, you need to add “commas” to your list of must-study concepts.

4. Practice the concept that is the most difficult. Dedicate your study time for the day to, say, commas. And commas alone! Don’t dilute the effectiveness of your comma-specific studying by practicing one of your strengths, like capitalization or conjunctions. After improving, move on to your next biggest weakness.

Studying what is easy for you is not going to bump your score up a few points.

Studying what’s difficult for you will.

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