ACT Tips Guier Millikan Fall 2010

General Information Students need to be made aware of as much as they can be for actual test day We need to remove as much anxiety as we can Go over the day with them in as much detail as possible—the who, where, how long, etc.

Time Students MUST average 7.5 minutes on the English passage and 9 minutes on the Reading passage Students must remember this breakdown and be held to it continuously

On ACT day, students should wear a watch Even though they don’t typically wear one, they need to realize how much it would help them pace themselves Consider using cell phones to teach this

Helpful Tips for Students Answer every question—there is no penalty for guessing Wear a watch! Answer all easy questions first—go back to the hard ones Pay attention to subtle differences in answer choices Talk to them about process of elimination

The Reading Test

The Facts On the actual ACT, the reading portion of the test is four passages with ten questions each Students have 35 minutes to complete this section The passages cover history, science, prose, and humanities

9 Minutes Per Passage

Skills Used Inference Reading comprehension Main idea Supporting details Vocabulary Generalizations Cause and effect relationships Sequence of events

Skills (cont.) What does it mean when they ask for the best answer? Make sure they understand what an inference is asking them to do Process of elimination with vocab is extremely helpful Read the passage —they cannot look for details if they don’t ANNOTATE the PASSAGE!

Annotation Students may write on the passages anywhere they like For this reason, I require two types of annotation: 1.Underline anything that sounds like a main idea sentence 2.Circle any words you don’t know Students may add other notations if they find they are helpful

ID the Verb Students need to look and see what specifically the verb is asking them to do in the question –Conclude, infer, compare, etc. –They need to think specifically about what that means once they identify it

The English Test

Basic Info The English test is divided into five passages, each with about 15 questions. 45 minutes for 75 questions This averages out to about 30 seconds per question However, some questions will be easier than others, allowing students to spend more time on the difficult ones A word, phrase, or sentence will be underlined and there will be four options for correcting it

7.5 Minutes Per Passage

English Test Skills Verbosity—the wrong answers are often wrong because they are too wordy Students do not understand that the long, complicated, sophisticated-sounding answers are WRONG most of the time They think if it sounds complicated and confusing that must mean it’s right They’ve got to learn it is the OPPOSITE

The shortest answer is not always, but often, right We want the clearest, most straightforward answer we can get No more, no less When students are in doubt, instead of wasting time, they should pick the shortest answer on the English test and move on Questions that are long and seem complicated are ones students will often just guess on—they need to understand these are often quite easy

Skills cont. Redundancy—the test looks for students’ abilities to identify redundant information We want no more, no less information than we need to get the point across Tell them the answer should sound like someone would talk

Irrelevance—they will also be tested on whether or not information is relevant exactly where it is placed While it might be relevant in paragraph 2, we don’t want it if we’re answering something about paragraph 5 This also gets into organization, which they will be questioned on, as well

Punctuation and Agreement More than anything, students will encounter subject/verb agreement, pronoun/antecedent agreement, verb tense, and punctuation questions They need to know to look for the subtle differences, like one answer choice offers a comma, one a semicolon, one a colon, and the last a period They will also get questions about apostrophes

Reading the Passages The questions can often be answered as they read—it’s just important that they have read everything that came BEFORE the question in the passage Students should also keep the voice of the passage in mind—this will determine answer choices if they are being asked about voice

Tricks of the Test Many times, an answer with a colon in it will not be correct The more commas in an answer choice, the more likely it is that it’s wrong OMIT is always the shortest answer choice (although that doesn’t mean it’s correct every time) If it sounds really complicated, it’s probably too complicated to be right