ACT English Test

Description: This course is designed to help students with the ACT English test.

Objective: Become familiar with what's on the English test, strategies, and more.

The ACT English test gives you 45 minutes to answer 75 questions that test two skill sets—your written skills and your rhetorical skills. The 40 questions on written skills test your abilities at punctuation, sentence structure, grammar, and usage. The 35 questions on rhetorical skills test your strategy, organization, and style abilities. You receive an overall English score, as well as two subscores—one for Usage and Mechanics and one for Rhetorical Skills.

The English test includes five passages, each with a set of questions following it. One question type that appears often on this test asks you to replace an underlined phrase with the alternate text that best fits in its place. Many of these questions include a multiple-choice option of “No Change.” Selecting this answer means you believe the underlined text should not be changed. The test also includes questions on each passage as a whole rather than a specific phrase. These questions don’t include underlined phrases. They come at the end of each passage’s section and include their own set of directions.

Some tips will help you score well on the ACT English test:

• Pace yourself. You have 45 minutes to answer 75 questions. If you spend about 90 seconds skimming each passage, you’ll have about 30 seconds to answer each question.

• Read the underlined phrases thoroughly. Avoid making a hasty decision without examining the phrase and each answer choice carefully. Each passage has a different topic and writing style. In addition, some questions ask you to choose the phrase that represents the least likely replacement for the underlined text, so make sure you read each question carefully, as well.

• Pay attention to more than just a single writing element in each underlined phrase and answer choice. Many incorrect multiple-choice answers will correct one aspect of the phrase but will cause another error.