<p>Hey Guys,</p>
<p>As I mentioned in another thread, I’m currently a junior at Princeton (2370 SAT, 35 ACT, 234 PSAT) who ran his own test prep company in miniature this past summer and is thinking about taking this company full-time when I graduate. I posted another thread with my ideas on how test prep classes can be done well (since they can be done well) and asked for advice, but didn’t list any of my strategies, which are a compilation of the ones I used myself, the ones I learned as an ACT instructor, and ones I’ve picked up randomly.</p>
<p>Going over the board, I noticed that there’s currently a relative lack of ACT guides on this forum like Xiggi’s and Silverturtle’s guides on the SAT forum. One exception was FutureENTSurgeon’s ACT guide, which I really liked for some things (English), but didn’t find as useful on other things (Science).</p>
<p>So I thought I’d post my current method of teaching the ACT, which I think can be equally applied to learning the test independently. This way, I thought I could kill two birds with one stone: get some valuable feedback and maybe help a few people on the way.</p>
<p>Note: It should be said that there are exceptions to every rule, and that no method is foolproof. My percentages are also approximate, and feel free to correct me. In the interest of space, this guide also doesn’t attempt to go into every grammatical rule or every mathematical concept that is covered on the ACT, although I do cover those as part of my courses and tutoring, but confines itself to broad strategies.</p>
<p>Here it goes:</p>
<p>ENGLISH:</p>
<ol>
<li>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.</li>
</ol>
<p>a. The literal shortest answer (fewest words) is right about 70% of the time. So it’s not foolproof and not appropriate as a cure-all for someone who’s shooting for a high score, but if you don’t know the answer or are stuck between two, it’s a great shorthand (since 70% is a lot better than the statistical 25% you’d get from randomly guessing or 50% you’d get from guessing between two).</p>
<p>b. “OMIT” is right about 50% of the time (since nothing is always shorter than something).</p>
<p>c. Don’t add punctuation. Either leave it alone, change it (from a comma to a semi-colon, for instance), or take it out. Rarely do ACT questions have the problem of being too simple.</p>
<p>d. If you can’t understand what an answer choice is saying, it’s probably wrong. A lot of people see an answer choice with a lot of words and punctuation and think “Wow, that looks so complicated and smart. I can’t even read it. It must be right.” Give yourself more credit. You’ve read and understood a lot of edited, correct English getting up to this point in your life. If you can’t understand it or have to read the answer choice three times to understand it, it’s probably wrong.</p>
<p>e. If an answer choice says the same thing twice or mentions something you think is completely unnecessary and off-topic, it’s probably wrong for reasons of redundancy and irrelevancy, respectively. This will also fall under the “shortest and simplest” rule since the shortest and simplest answer will get rid of unnecessary things like this.</p>
<ol>
<li>If an answer choice is in the passive voice, it’s wrong.</li>
</ol>
<p>a. The grammatical definition of the passive voice is a sentence where the object (recipient of the verb; the one being taught, spoken to, written on, etc.) comes before the subject (the actor of the verb; the one teaching, speaking, writing, etc.). A sentence in the active voice, the correct way, will have the subject come before the object.</p>
<p>Passive Example (BAD): The dog was walked by me.
Active Example (GOOD): I walked the dog.</p>
<p>b. While you will occasionally have to know part A for trickier “passive voice” questions, usually you can get away with a simple trick. Almost all passive voice answer choices have the word “by” somewhere in there. There are occasional legitimate uses for this word on the ACT, but they’re few and far between. So if it has the word “by” in it, just mark it wrong.</p>
<p>c. Be careful: due to its sometimes legitimate contexts, “by” isn’t a word that naturally jumps out to us as wrong like “ain’t” or “I is”, and a lot of times we’ll skim over it. Even after I teach my students this, they still miss occasional passive voice questions. Not usually because the method was wrong, but because they didn’t see the word “by” since they were reading too fast/not being careful.</p>
<p>d. It’s also worth noting that this will generally tie in with Rule #1, since the active voice is usually shorter and simpler than the passive voice.</p>
<ol>
<li>Read answer choices “aloud” in your head and take advantage of your “inner ear.”</li>
</ol>
<p>a. A lot of times, you won’t be able to pinpoint the exact reason why an answer choice is right or wrong grammatically (“Gee whiz, that’s clearly a split infinitive” or “By golly, that’s clearly a case of a superlative vs. comparative modifier.”), but you’ll be able to tell that it “just sounds wrong.” This is from years of reading correct English in books and magazines as well as hearing correct English on television. The inner ear won’t usually kick in if you simply “read” it, so take the extra 2 seconds per answer choice and read it “aloud” in your head.</p>
<p>b. Note: your inner ear isn’t foolproof. This is due to our hearing the grammatically incorrect way in everyday speech. Common examples of this include the use of “whom” (which has a place grammatically even if people would look at you weird if you said this out loud) and the use of “his or her” rather than “their” (people almost always say “their” since it’s shorter and easier to say, even though it’s not always right).</p>
<p>MATH:</p>
<p>Unlike the other three sections, where you can improve by following a specific method or using broad strategies, there aren’t any shortcuts with the Math. You improve in the Math mainly by doing practice problems, seeing why you got them wrong, figuring how to do it correctly and reworking the problems (this is crucial: take the time to rework the problem, rather than just thinking “I got it” and moving on), and then doing more problems. NO GUIDE IS A SUBSTITUTE FOR DOING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF OFFICIAL ACT MATH PROBLEMS AND GOING OVER THE ONES YOU MISS APPROPRIATELY.</p>
<p>That being said, there are a couple of things that everyone can benefit from but not everyone uses.</p>
<ol>
<li>Do easy questions first, and don’t shortchange them with time or effort.</li>
</ol>
<p>a. All questions on the ACT are worth the same amount. But the ACT Math (the only section on the ACT to do this) also generally goes from easy questions to hard questions, with the first 20-ish being “gimme questions” (if you know the concept being tested, you’ll easily get the question right), 21-ish to 45 or 50-ish being “medium difficulty questions” (they’ll throw an extra complication into the problem, or try to trick you, but nothing too hard), and the last 10 or 15 being “hard questions” (the most difficult questions: many people won’t even get to these or will have to guess on most of them; for you high scorers out there, these will be what make or break you).</p>
<p>b. 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.</p>
<ol>
<li>To parrot your annoying math teacher, show your work! Write down the steps as you work them, draw out the graph, shape, etc. Use your calculator. You don’t get cool points for doing everything in your head and you don’t have anyone to impress. The best test-takers know they are fallable and plan accordingly.</li>
</ol>
<p>a. The main advantage of this is it minimizes silly mistakes like forgetting negative signs, misplacing decimal points, adding 4 and 8 to get 48, etc. It’s a statistical fact that the majority of questions people miss aren’t because they didn’t know the material, but because they either misunderstood the question or made a silly mistake. For high scorers, it’s an even higher fraction since they tend to know pretty much all of the concepts being tested.</p>
<p>b. It also helps conceptually. When you can see a line or shape in front of you rather than being distracted with trying to visualize it, it’s easier to focus on what you need to do. When you have an equation written down in front of you, you may not know how to solve the problem, but you may know what step to take first, which will often lead you to the next step and the next step until you’ve solved the problem. If you try to do it in your head, you’ll often just be stuck.</p>
<ol>
<li>This is a secondary tip borrowed from Princeton Review’s “Joe Blogg” style of test-taking. If you don’t know the answer to a question and the question is in the medium/hard section of 21-60, don’t guess an answer choice whose number appears in the question. This method clearly isn’t foolproof, but I’d say it works the majority of the time and is certainly statistically better than the 20% you’d get from guessing (since there are 5 answer choices in the Math section and 4 everywhere else).</li>
</ol>
<p>a. This method works in practice even while unsound in theory since ACT makers usually choose to put those choices in there just on the off-chance you’ll see a familiar number and jump on it. They also tend to engineer the problems with this in mind so that someone with this faulty way of thinking/guessing won’t get the right answer by sheer accident.</p>
<p>b. I’d also stay away from simply averaging the numbers found in the question and guessing that choice, for the same reasons as above.</p>
<p>READING:</p>
<p>In my opinion, Reading is the hardest section to improve in, since it relies heavily on soft skills like reading speed. It also tends to have the most genuinely ambiguous questions (even though the test-makers claim there is a clear answer to every question) and the most unforgiving curve. It was my own lowest sub-score on my final offical ACT (33 on the Reading), even though it didn’t start out the lowest (that honor goes to the Science).</p>
<p>Anecdotally, this is one of the two sections (the other being the Science, to a lesser degree) where students tend to have trouble with time even after good preparation. Unlike Math, where you improve in speed the more you prepare (since you’ll be more practiced, spending less time on questions you already knew before preparation and spending less time stuck on questions you formerly couldn’t figure out, now that you can actually work them) or the English (where people very rarely have time problems), Reading speed is limited in large measure by your reading speed, appropriately enough.</p>
<p>That being said, I have gleaned a few tips from my own experience taking the test, teaching it, and reading various guides on sites like College Confidential.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Don’t waste your time reading the questions before you read the passage. Not only does this waste precious time, but your retention of the passage will be worse when you do read it since you’ll be distracted from trying to keep all of those questions in your head.</p></li>
<li><p>Don’t read too slowly, but don’t hurry too much either, or else you won’t remember anything and will have wasted the time you did spend. I’d say 3 1/2 minutes is a good benchmark to shoot for that strikes the right balance between time management and understanding the passage. If you’re a fast reader and can read the passage faster and remember it well, more power to you.</p></li>
<li><p>Questions can generally be divided into two categories: fact-based (answer can be found in black-and-white in the passage) and interpretation-based (answer must be found “between the lines”), with about 2/3 being the former and 1/3 being the latter. There tend to be an even greater proportion of fact-based questions on the more fact-based Social Science and Natural Science passages, while the split is tends to more 50/50 on the Prose and Humanities passages. In my experience, performance on fact-based questions can be improved, but performance on interpretation-based questions is pretty strongly reliant on your natural ability to “read between the lines.” Either you see it or you don’t. Try not to worry about the ones you don’t and focus on the ones you do.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>a. For the reasons I’ve detailed above, the Social Science and Natural Science passages tend to be easier for most people, but not for everyone.</p>
<p>b. If you KNOW you won’t have enough time to do all 4 passages, I’d do the passages from easiest to hardest, based on your personal preferences. This is because it’s obviously better to have time to do the one you usually get 8 out of 10 on rather than the one you usually get 4 out of 10 on. But if you usually have extra time, barely finish, or almost finish (1 or 2 questions left), I’d recommend going and ahead and just doing the passages in order, since it won’t be worth the mind game you’re playing with yourself.</p>
<ol>
<li>To find answers faster and more accurately, I recommend the “key word” method. A lot of people try to re-read the passage for each question and find its answer. Not only does this waste a lot of time, it actually lessens your ability to actually pinpoint the answer’s location since you don’t really know what to look for. The “key word” method is detailed below.</li>
</ol>
<p>a. Find a “key word” in the wording of the question. Don’t pick a word like “he” or “is”, for obvious reasons. Also, if the passage is on wildlife management, don’t pick a word like “wildlife” or “management.” The reason for both of these is the same: the word will show up in a lot of contexts not related to the question or the answer.</p>
<p>b. Instead, pick a word that seems unique to the question. For example, say you have a question like “According to the passage, what is NOT a negative externality of wildlife management?” A good key word would be “externality”. Note: the actual wording in the passage may be something like “externalities”, but will almost always be something either identical or very visually similar to your key word.</p>
<p>c. Once you have your key word, quickly skim the passage for that specific word. If you’re looking for a specific word, it will tend to jump out at you, making it easy.</p>
<p>d. Once you’ve located the key word, start reading a little before it (a couple of sentences) and read until a little after it. This is called “being aware of context” and the ACT-makers will often put the answer before or after where the answer’s subject mentioned explicitly to make sure you’re being circumspect.</p>
<p>e. It’s also worth noting that the key word may show up several times in the passage, and the answer may not always show up in the first instance every time. Don’t give up if you don’t see it, and don’t waste a lot of time re-reading the same bit over and over if you’ve already followed part d.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>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.</p></li>
<li><p>If you’ve done the strategies I recommend and are still having problems with time, I recommend trying speed reading, even though it doesn’t work for everyone. There are many forms of speed reading, and it’s difficult to explain in writing, but my best attempt goes like this:</p></li>
</ol>
<p>a. People tend to read slowly not because they are inherently slow readers, but because they get distracted, especially with boring ACT passages. Their eyes lose their place, they start to think about other things, they slow down and then speed up artificially, and so on.</p>
<p>b. To help focus the eyes, maintain mental focus, and enforce a certain reading speed, trace under the line you’re currently on at a steady speed you want to read at. Don’t make your pencil follow your eyes: that will just distract you. Instead, take advantage of the fact that our brains are evolutionarily wired to notice moving objects: your eyes will be “bothered” by the moving pencil and will be naturally drawn to it. To speed up reading, simply move your pencil faster.</p>
<p>c. Don’t underestimate the mental advantage of doing this. Doing this puts you in “ACT mode”, reminding you why you’re here and keeping you focused.</p>
<p>d. I’ve had mixed results with this. Some people cut their passage reading time from 6 minutes to 3 minutes, giving them 12 extra minutes over 4 passages that they can now spend answering the questions. I had one guy go from a 21 to a 29 on the Reading using this tactic. More typical improvement is from 4 1/2 minutes to 3 1/2 minutes, bringing about an estimated 2 point improvement, with the other 2 points (my students’ average improvement is 4 points) coming from the other strategies I’ve listed. Anecdotally, I’d say it helps about 60% of people. But if you’re already reading at a pace of 3 1/2 minutes per passage or faster, or if this method just distracts you and slows you down, I wouldn’t bother with it. There is no question that while this method helps most people, it does hurt some people, and you should follow your best judgment.</p>
<p>SCIENCE:</p>
<p>Science is probably the section least like the subject that bears its name, at least on the surface. In reality, it’s less physics and chemistry and more “interpreting tables/charts/graphs/etc.” mixed with a bit of “compare these two scientists/students/etc.” as a Science version of reading comprehension.</p>
<p>There are three types of passages in the Science section. You do the first two one way and the last a different way.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Data Representation (3 of these, 5 questions each): almost entirely charts/graphs/etc. with few words. Tend to be the most straightforward.</p></li>
<li><p>Research Summaries (3 of these, 6 questions each): paragraphs mixed with charts/graphs/etc. Tend to revolve around several experiments that you have to examine in isolation and in comparison with one another.</p></li>
<li><p>Conflicting Viewpoints (1 of these, 7 questions): two or three short passages written by “students”, “scientists”, etc. They all talk about the same topic, but have different stances on a key issue.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Here are my strategies for the first two:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Read the short blurb at the top of the page to get a very vague, general idea of what you’re dealing with, and then go straight to the questions. Not only does this save time, but it reinforces the central theme of taking the Science successfully: the focus isn’t on understanding the material, but on just answering the questions correctly.</p></li>
<li><p>Don’t try to understand the material beyond what you absolutely have to. It wastes time and will usually needlessly confuse you. The ACT makers don’t expect you to be an expert on engines, pendulums, lightning, or God knows what (as can be seen by the fact that comprehension isn’t necessary to answer the questions correctly), so you shouldn’t either.</p></li>
<li><p>Even in the Research summaries passages, the vast majority of questions will be found in the charts/graphs/tables/etc., so spend your time there. Only if you can’t find it there (and sometimes you won’t) should you look to the paragraphs.</p></li>
<li><p>Watch out for the little things. This is the main trademark of high scorers in the Science: they are careful. Most questions people miss have to do with little things like negative signs (-100 is not less than -500, it’s greater), not noticing differences in decimal places or scientific notation between different numbers, automatically assuming that the two things next to one another in a table are what you should be comparing, assuming that the table is in order of least to greatest or vice versa, and so on. Take the time to be careful.</p></li>
<li><p>Take the time to memorize the simple graphs and what they mean about the data they’re representing. These include positive slopes, negative slopes, flat lines, vertical lines, “peaks” (line goes up then down; these lines look like mountain peaks), “valleys” (line goes down then up; these lines look like valleys as well as the letter “v”), exponential-based curve (slope keeps increasing), and the limit curve (slope keeps decreasing, or trending toward a specific flat line). These kinds of graphs all tell you something about their data. Not only will you have to sometimes have to choose between several graphs, but it can also help you with random problems to quickly draw the data’s overall trend.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Here are my strategies for the last kind:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The 2 or 3 passages will be the same except that they differ in opinion on 1 or 2 key issues. These 1 or 2 main points can almost always be found in the first sentence of the first paragraph and the last sentence of the last paragraph. This isn’t an accident: it has to do with where the ACT makers believe the thesis and the conclusion, respectively, should be placed.</p></li>
<li><p>Don’t try to hurry and just underline these two sentences. Take the time to re-write in shorthand, in your own words, what each is saying. Not only does this provide an easy place to refer to for the numerous questions that refer to these main topics, but it also forces you to understand what it’s saying and prevents you getting screwed later. Do this for the 2 points in passage 1, then the 2 points in passage 2, etc.</p></li>
<li><p>There may not be a second main point, so don’t spend a lot of time trying to find the hidden point in the last sentence if one isn’t immediately apparent. A good way to tell if something is a main point or not is that a main point will show up in all of the passages (“Tornadoes break windows because of X” “Tornadoes break windows because of Y” etc.), due to the Science section’s design.</p></li>
<li><p>As for reading the passages in full, it’s up to you. There will be some questions that ask about specific details in the body of the passage, but these can usually be located easily and are pretty obvious. If you’re fine on time, I’d recommend reading them for peace of mind’s sake, but I wouldn’t worry if you’re pressed on time and want to skip it.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>So there you have it! Thanks for reading and I hope you gleaned a few tips. Do you have any suggestions for me?</p>