Just starting with the ACT English section and looking for some tips, tricks, and solid overall strategies? Familiar with the ACT English section in general but looking to focus your work? Just starting with the test as a whole and looking for a place to dig in to raise your ACT score? Then this is the blog post for you.
My work with students always begins with the ACT English section because it’s the easiest and most predictable place for students to improve their score. Why? Because there aren’t that many basic rules in the English language, and there are even fewer tested on the ACT. Get these rules down cold and your score will go up significantly.
Moreover, the ACT English section on the ACT is almost identical to the Writing & Language section on the SAT, so for students looking to take both tests or deciding between the two, these hacks will apply to both.
Also, they aren’t all that hard. Many of the “rules” that underpin these hacks are things you probably already know intuitively, especially if you’ve been speaking English for the better part of your life. Mastering the ACT English section means translating that intuitive knowledge that you already have into knowledge that you can articulate with confidence, as if you were teaching it to a younger sibling.
So let’s get to some hacks, shall we?
HACK #1—SHORTER IS BETTER
What makes good writing? Students sometimes suffer from the misconception that good writing means big shiny words, long sentences, and poetic ideas. While there’s a place for all of that (or at least some of it), good writing on the ACT is all about expressing your thoughts with clarity and brevity.
That is, in as few words as possible.
The ACT strongly prefers short, clear sentences. In fact, the ACT hates anything unnecessary (words, commas, etc), so here’s your rule of thumb: When in doubt, take it out.
Here’s an example of a typical “shorter is better” problem. Give it a try.
As I looked at all the unfamiliar maps and graphs, I felt very confused.
A. NO CHANGE
B. confused and uncertain.
C. confused without clear understanding.
D. confused like my mind couldn’t make sense of anything
The answer here is A. Why? Because if you say “confused,” then you don’t need to say “uncertain” or “without clear understanding” or “couldn’t make sense of anything,” since all those things basically mean the same thing as “confused.” Dig?
Superhack 1.2
Oftentimes on this test you’ll see a question with four answer choices that are all grammatically correct. On these questions, there will be three longish answer choices and one very short one. Nine times out of ten the short one will be the right answer. Why? Because ACT = shorter is better.
HACK #2—SEMICOLONS ARE PERIODS
Maybe you’ve heard someone explain that the difference between semicolons (;) and periods (.) is that periods separate sentences and semicolons join two more closely related sentences. Whoever told you that is not wrong.
But on the ACT, semicolons and periods are THE SAME.
They both separate two independent clauses (i.e. clauses that can stand alone as sentences). Why ever use a semicolon, you might ask? That’s actually a good question. The author Kurt Vonnegut (he rules) once said that the only reason to use a semicolon is to show that you went to college.
The truth is that some authors like to use them and some authors don’t. It’s a choice you get to make about your own writing style. But on the ACT, they are the same. They will never make you choose between two answer choices that are identical except for the period or the semicolon. If they do, then BOTH answer choices are wrong.
For instance, if you saw a problem with these answer choices …
A. NO CHANGE
B. perfectly. The best
C. perfectly; the best
D. perfectly, the best
…you would know without even seeing the sentence in question that answer choices B and C were wrong. And then you’d just need to decide between the other two options!
Which leads me nicely into my third hack.
HACK #3—EQUALLY RIGHT, EQUALLY WRONG
I think we can agree that multiple choice tests don’t have many redeeming qualities, but one upside about these tests is that on every question there is only one right answer. EVER. That means that if you see two answer choices that seem equally right, then those two answer choices are equally wrong.
Maybe that’s a question that makes you choose between a semicolon and a period on otherwise identical answer choices, or maybe that’s a question that makes you decide between the word “furthermore” and the word “moreover” (which mean the same thing).
Whatever form it takes, if two answer choices seem equally right, then they are equally wrong, and you can eliminate two wrong answers in a single swoop.
HACK #4—KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN INDEPENDENT AND DEPENDENT CLAUSES
There are two basic kinds of clauses, independent clauses and dependent clauses. Knowing the difference between them (and how we combine them) is the number one rule tested on the ACT English Section.
Learn to identify these clauses and you will be seeing through the matrix of this test. You’ll be like Neo fighting in four dimensions while everybody else is fighting in three! You’ll jump in the air and the camera will spin around while you just … hang out there … waiting! Ok, I’ll stop. (Do today’s high school kids even know that movie? Whatever. The point is this is what you need to get these things down).
Here are the basics:
Independent clauses have a subject and a verb and can stand alone as a sentence.
Maria went to the market to buy groceries.
That’s an independent clause. It’s got a subject (Maria), a verb (went), and can stand alone as a complete idea.
Because she needed seven pounds of kale
…is a DEPENDENT clause. It has a subject (she) and a verb (needed), but it cannot stand alone as a sentence (because of the subordinating conjunction “because”).
If you see dependent clauses masquerading as full sentences on this test, those answer choices are wrong.
See if you can find the wrong answer choices in this problem based on which choices have dependent clauses masquerading as independents.
A superstar actor and singer thriving in both communities, Jamie Foxx has been in the public eye since the 90s.
F. NO CHANGE
G. communities. Jamie Foxx
H. communities; Jamie Foxx
J. communities and Jamie Foxx
Look at answer choice G. There’s a period after “communities” here, meaning that that first clause should be a complete sentence. But it’s not! Answer choice G is wrong for that reason. Same goes for H, since semicolons function like periods. (BTW: The answer here is F.)
HACK #5—THERE ARE FOUR WAYS TO COMBINE INDEPENDENT CLAUSES
One more thing about independent clauses. You can combine them in four possible ways.
The first is a period. (Yeah, it’s not exactly combining them, but you get it). Take these two independent clauses for instance:.
Maria went to the market to buy kale
— — —
Ahmed stayed home to play video games
You can put them together with a period like this:
Maria went to the market to buy kale. Ahmed stayed home to play video games.
You can also put them together with a semicolon like this:
Maria went to the market to buy kale; Ahmed stayed home to play video games.
A third way to combine these independent clauses is to use a comma plus a coordinating conjunction, which are more popularly known as the FANBOYS. The fanboys are …
For
And
Nor
But
Or
Yet
So
And to combine two independent clauses, the FANBOYS need to be paired with a comma. So you’re option would look something like this:
Maria went to the market to buy kale, but Ahmed stayed home to play video games.
A fourth way is to make one of the independent clauses a dependent clause or phrase. Probably the most common way of doing so is by adding a subordinator, like “while” or “if” or “until” or … lots of others. For example:
While Maria went to the market to buy kale, Ahmed stayed home to play video games.
Disclaimer:
It’s true that in some cases you can use a colon (:) to combine two independent clauses, and surely it wouldn’t hurt to spend a little time learning how we use colons, but if you just focus on the BIG FOUR ways of combining independent clauses laid out above, you’ll be killing it on these questions. And there are a lot of them.
Give this one a try.
In fact, Diwali is an official holiday in many countries, India and Nepal are among them.
A. NO CHANGE
B. countries; India
C. countries India
D. countries, but India
You have two independent clauses in the original, and the only option given that can correctly connect them is the semicolon, answer choice B. (You could use a different coordinating conjunction, but “but” doesn’t make logical sense here, since there’s no contrast.)
HACK #6—KNOW HOW TO USE “PARENTHETICAL PHRASES”
A parenthetical phrase is a fancy name for something you definitely already know about—which is good, because they come up a bunch on this test. This sentence, for example, contains one. Your ear for English—whether you grew up speaking it or have learned it over the past few years—is probably familiar with the way we sometimes set aside “inessential information” in the middle of a sentence. I strongly predict (caveat: I was pretty wrong when I predicted Taylor Swift would be a one-hit wonder, but here I’m pretty confident) that you probably already have a sense of what kind of phrases or clauses I’m talking about.
Here, in bold, are the parenthetical phrases from the last three sentences:
This sentence, for example, contains one. Your ear for English—a language you’ve probably been speaking for years now—is familiar with the way we sometimes set aside “inessential information” in the middle of a sentence. I strongly predict (caveat: I was pretty wrong when I predicted Taylor Swift would be a one-hit wonder, but here I’m pretty confident) that you probably already have a sense of what kind of phrases or clauses I’m talking about.
It’s important to get familiar with these types of phrases and clauses for a few reasons.
You see them A LOT on this test.
As you can see in the above examples, they can be created with different pairs of punctuation (two commas, two dashes, a set of parentheses). But the other thing to realize is you can’t mix and match (comma + dash, etc.). If you see that mixing/matching on an ACT question, then you know it’s wrong.
Remember the EQUALLY RIGHT, EQUALLY WRONG rule. If you have two answer choices that are identical except that they bracket off the parenthetical phrase with commas instead of dashes (or parentheses instead of commas), then you know both of those answer choices are wrong.
The Los Angeles Dodgers, a team that includes Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw are leading the division.
A. NO CHANGE
B. Kershaw, are leading
C. Kershaw; they lead
D. Kershaw leads
The answer here is B, because it correctly structures the sentence the way it needs to be structured: as an independent clause with a parenthetical phrase (“a team that includes Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw”) in the middle.
HACK #7—LOOK FOR RELEVANCE ON “KEEP OR DELETE” PROBLEMS
A statement in a paragraph can be completely true but not actually relevant to the main idea of a paragraph. A Neapolitan pizza gets its name from the Italian city of Naples.
See what happened there? We’re talking about the ACT English Test and all of a sudden a Neapolitan pizza shows up! That’s great if you’re thinking about what to have for dinner, but it’s a problem if you encounter it on the ACT.
On the ACT you will often find this rule tested in the “Keep or Delete” questions, where you are asked whether to keep a sentence or to remove it from the paragraph.
In this case, ask yourself what the main idea of the paragraph is. (That often means reading on a little further so it’s clear to you). Once you can articulate the main idea of the paragraph, ask yourself “is the sentence in question relevant to that main idea?” If it’s not, then lose it.
Try reading this paragraph and see whether you would keep the sentence in bold.
The crowd moved like a tidal wave, pushing relentlessly forward like a single entity. Who would have thought that the release of a mere video game could cause such a crush of humanity outside a Best Buy at six in the morning? Most Best Buy stores are open from 10am until 9 or 10pm. You could see fevered anticipation in the eyes of those first few customers, many of whom had camped out in the parking lot the night before, as they exited cradling the thin, rectangular video game box like a newborn child.
Uhh … nope. Cut it.
Sure, maybe the sentence in question loosely relates to the paragraph because it’s about Best Buy, which is where this mayhem is occurring, but the main idea of this paragraph is people are going crazy for a video game. The information in bold isn’t related. And the fact that it sounds like it’s written in a different tone is also a giveaway that it doesn’t belong.
HACK #8—LOOK FOR REDUNDANCY ON “KEEP OR DELETE” PROBLEMS
Here’s part two. On “Keep or Delete” questions you should also be looking for redundancy. Redundancy means saying something that’s already been said. For instance, these sentences contain redundancy:
My global tour took me all around the world.
— — —
Every day, I do my daily walk around the lake.
If you say “global,” you don’t need to say “around the world.” And if you say “Every day,” you don’t need to say “daily.” In the words of the Talking Heads frontman David Byrne, “say something once, why say it again?!”
Check out the below example and see if you think you should keep or delete the phrase in bold.
In this day and age, the County Fair can seem somewhat of an antiquity. It can also seem out of date and old-fashioned. A throwback to earlier days when more Americans lived on farms than in cities, the fair was a way to bring far-flung neighbors together to celebrate the bounty of the land and spirit of community. But the modern County Fair is becoming something of a beautiful hybrid, keeping all of our nostalgic favorites (funnel cakes, deep-fried everything, questionably safe rides), and updating those features that seem dated.
Did you say you should delete it?
That would be good, because that’s what you should do.
Why? Because an “antiquity” is something that is out of date and old-fashioned, so you don’t need to say it again (twice).
To summarize, on “Keep or Delete” questions, ask yourself two things: 1) Is it relevant? 2) Is it redundant? Then base your answer on what you decide.
HACK #9—GIVE THEM WHAT THEY WANT
There are a number of questions on the ACT that start with the phrase “given that all of the answer choices are true...” On these questions they’ll ask you to find the answer choice that does something the most.
For instance, they’ll say “given that all the answer choices are true, which one most provides the most visual description of the team’s uniforms.” And they’ll give answer choices like these:
A. uniforms.
B. uniforms that never seemed to get fully clean in the wash.
C. uniforms with the green piping and the yellow letters.
D. uniforms that had been introduced in the 1970’s.
The answer to these questions always lies within the question. In the above example, the key words are VISUAL DESCRIPTION and UNIFORMS. In this situation, give them what they want. They want visual descriptions of the uniforms, so find the answer choice that is the MOST VISUAL. That would be choice C.
In summary, answer these questions based on what you determine to be the most important words in the question and you’ll get them every time.
FINAL THOUGHTS
So there you go—nine hacks that can crack this section wide open.
Remember, this test isn’t that hard. It often just feels that way at first.
What makes it feel manageable is knowing what’s on the test. If you keep a laser focus on the concepts that the ACT likes to test—like the ones listed above—and then practice mastering them, your score will go up in no time.
Special thanks to Ryan Harrison for writing this blog post
Ryan is a writer, performer, and teacher from Los Angeles, California. He received his degree in Theater from Northwestern University and has been tutoring since 2009, with a focus on the SAT, ACT, and college essay coaching. His writing has been featured on NBC’s Bring The Funny, TruTV’s Late Night Snack with Rachel Dratch, Live From Here with Chris Thile, and in McSweeny’s. He’s also the co-founder and head writer for the comedy ensemble Lost Moon Radio, which has created and staged upwards of thirty original shows at such venues as The Broad Stage, Dynasty Typewriter, and South Coast Repertory Theater. If you know the whereabouts of this man, please contact your local authorities.
