How to Attack ACT English

American Diploma › ACT English and Reading — Complete Course

ACT English rewards students who work in a fixed, calm order. The rules of grammar and punctuation are taught on the next pages; this page teaches the method: how to read the passage, when to trust NO CHANGE, why the shortest correct answer usually wins, how to deal with DELETE choices, and how to keep the pace of 50 questions in 35 minutes.

What this section tests

The English section gives you 50 questions in 35 minutes (40 of them scored). The scored questions come from five essays: three of about 340 words with 10 questions each and two of about 185 words with 5 questions each. The essays are informational, argumentative or narrative.

Questions appear next to the passage, each with a number that matches a spot in the essay. There are two kinds:

• Underlined-portion questions. A word, phrase or sentence is underlined. You choose the best of four versions. Very often there is no written question at all, only the four choices, and the first one is NO CHANGE.
• Questions with a stem. These ask you a specific job, in wording such as: "Which choice most effectively introduces this paragraph?", "Should the writer make this addition here?", "Where is the most logical place for this sentence?", or "Suppose the writer's goal had been to… Would this essay accomplish that goal?"

The scored questions fall into three reporting categories: Production of Writing (38–43%), Knowledge of Language (18–23%) and Conventions of Standard English (38–43%). In plain words: about four in ten questions test grammar and punctuation rules, about two in ten test style and word choice, and about four in ten test organisation, relevance and purpose.

Step 1: read the passage while you answer

Do not read the whole essay first and then answer, and do not jump from underline to underline without reading the text in between. Both habits lose points. Use this order:

1. Read the passage normally until you reach an underlined portion.
2. Keep reading to the end of that sentence (sometimes the next sentence too). Many errors only show up later in the sentence: a verb that must agree with a subject, a closing comma that must match an opening one, a pronoun that must match a noun.
3. Now look at the four choices and decide.
4. Continue reading. When you reach a question about a whole paragraph or the whole essay, you already know what the text says.

Why the end of the sentence matters (the underlined portion is in bold): "The tower, which was finished in 1960 and is still the tallest building in the town attracts many visitors." On their own, the words "town attracts" look fine. But the comma before "which" opened an extra-information phrase, and that phrase must close with a second comma: "town, attracts". You only see the problem when you read the whole sentence, not just the underline.

Step 2: scan the choices vertically

Before you think about rules, read the four choices from top to bottom and ask: what is different? The difference tells you the rule being tested. This takes three seconds and stops you from checking the wrong thing.

Example of a vertical scan. Choices: A) NO CHANGE ("it's roots") B) its roots C) its' roots D) it is roots. Only the form of "its" changes, so the question is about possessive its. Answer: B. You do not need to check anything else in the sentence.

Step 3: treat NO CHANGE as a real choice

NO CHANGE is correct on a fair share of questions. It is not a trap and not a safe guess. Choose it only after you have checked the original against the rule you found in the scan.

• Choose NO CHANGE when the original is grammatically correct, punctuated correctly, as short as the other correct choices, and fits the meaning and tone.
• Do not choose NO CHANGE just because the original "sounds fine". Many errors (a missing second comma, a wrong verb after a long phrase) sound natural in speech.
• Do not avoid NO CHANGE because you think the test always wants a change. If your check finds no problem, trust it.
• A quick test: if you can name the error in the original, it is not NO CHANGE. If you cannot name any error, and no other choice is shorter and equally correct, it probably is.

Step 4: the shortest answer that is correct

ACT English likes writing that is clear and concise. When two or more choices are grammatically correct and keep the same meaning, the shortest one is usually right. Extra words that repeat an idea are called redundancy (saying the same thing twice) or wordiness (using many words where few are enough).

But the rule is "shortest correct", not just "shortest". A short choice is wrong if it:

• breaks a grammar or punctuation rule (for example, it creates a fragment or a comma splice);
• loses needed meaning (it removes information the sentence or the next sentence depends on);
• does not do the job the question stem asks for (if the stem says "Which choice most specifically describes…", the more detailed choice may be right even though it is longer).

Step 5: DELETE and OMIT choices

Some choices say "DELETE the underlined portion" or "OMIT the underlined portion". These are often correct, because they are the shortest possible choice — but only when the sentence still works without the words. Check three things:

1. Is the underlined part redundant or off-topic? If it repeats an idea already stated, or adds a detail that does not belong, deletion is probably right.
2. Is the sentence still complete and correctly punctuated after deletion? Read it aloud in your head without the words. Watch for leftover commas or a missing verb.
3. Is any meaning lost? If the words give the only information about who, when or why, keep them.

Example (the underlined portion is in bold): "The bridge took six years to build, and its construction lasted a long time." → DELETE is correct: "six years" already shows that it took a long time, and "The bridge took six years to build." is a complete sentence.

Step 6: know the question families

Step 7: timing — 50 questions in 35 minutes

That is about 42 seconds per question, or about 10 questions every 7 minutes. Conventions questions are faster than that; whole-passage questions are slower. Use these checkpoints:

• If you are behind at a checkpoint, speed up on the next few conventions questions; do not skip whole-passage questions, because they depend on reading you have already done.
• If one question takes more than about a minute, choose your best answer, mark it if you can, and move on. Every question is worth the same.
• In the last minute, make sure every question has an answer. There is no penalty for wrong answers.

Worked examples

Each example is a piece of an ACT-style essay. The underlined portion is shown in bold; on the real test it is underlined and numbered.

Worked example 1. "The first recorded football match in Cairo was played in the early 1900s. The players, who were mostly students, had no proper pitch, so they used an empty square near the railway."

Question: Choose the best version of the underlined portion. If the original is best, choose NO CHANGE.

• A) NO CHANGE
• B) players who were mostly students, had
• C) players, who were mostly students had
• D) players who, were mostly students, had

Answer: A.

• A is correct. "who were mostly students" is extra information about the players, so it sits inside a pair of commas, and both commas are there.
• B removes the first comma but keeps the second — now a single comma separates the subject "players" from its verb "had".
• C opens the pair but never closes it (half a pair).
• D places the commas in random spots; "who" cannot be separated from its verb "were".
• Lesson: NO CHANGE won because the check found no error, not because the sentence "sounded fine".

Worked example 2. "My cousin Laila trains for marathons at five in the morning, which is very early, when the streets of Alexandria are still cool."

Question: Choose the best version of the underlined portion. If the original is best, choose NO CHANGE.

• A) NO CHANGE
• B) at five in the morning,
• C) at five in the morning, an early hour of the day,
• D) DELETE the underlined portion.

Answer: B.

• B is correct. "Five in the morning" already tells the reader that it is very early, so B keeps the time and cuts the repetition. The sentence is complete and correctly punctuated.
• A is redundant: "which is very early" repeats what "five in the morning" already shows.
• C is even longer and repeats the same idea in new words.
• D is the shortest choice, but it removes the only information about *when* Laila trains, and the sentence becomes "trains for marathons when the streets… are still cool", which loses the exact time the essay describes. Shortest, but not correct.
• Lesson: shortest *correct* answer — "correct" includes keeping the meaning the sentence needs.

Worked example 3. "Paper was invented in China about two thousand years ago. For example, it reached the Arab world much later, and Baghdad had its first paper mill in the eighth century."

Question: Choose the best version of the underlined portion. If the original is best, choose NO CHANGE.

• A) NO CHANGE
• B) Later,
• C) In contrast,
• D) Therefore,

Answer: B.

• B is correct. The second sentence moves forward in time (two thousand years ago → much later → eighth century), so a time transition fits.
• A is wrong: the spread of paper to Baghdad is not an example of its invention in China.
• C signals an opposite idea, but the two sentences do not disagree.
• D signals a result: the invention did not cause the timing of its arrival.
• Lesson: name the relationship (time) before you read the choices.

Worked example 4. (Narrative essay about a family trip to Aswan.) "We sailed past Elephantine Island as the sun went down. Aswan's granite was also used for many statues in ancient times. My little brother fell asleep on my shoulder, and for once nobody was talking." — The writer is considering deleting the bold sentence. Should the writer do this?

Question: Should the sentence be kept or deleted?

• A) Kept, because it explains why the family chose to visit Aswan
• B) Kept, because it gives historical background that makes the essay more informative
• C) Deleted, because it interrupts the description of a quiet personal moment with an unrelated fact
• D) Deleted, because it repeats information given earlier about Elephantine Island

Answer: C.

• C is correct. The paragraph describes a calm evening on the boat; a fact about ancient statues breaks that moment and does not connect to the brother or the sunset.
• A gives a reason the sentence does not state (nothing about why they chose Aswan).
• B sounds positive, but "more informative" is not the goal of a personal narrative paragraph; the detail is off-topic here.
• D is factually wrong: nothing about granite was said before.
• Lesson: for keep/delete questions, decide first (on topic here?), then check that the reason is true.

Practice

This quiz is one long ACT-style essay with 10 questions, mixing every question family on this page. The numbers in brackets in the passage match the question numbers; the underlined portions are the ones you must judge. Use the full method on every question.

All pages in this course

Start here

• The Enhanced ACT: Complete Overview
• How to Attack ACT English

English: Conventions of Standard English

• ACT Punctuation
• ACT Grammar and Usage
• Sentence Structure

English: Production of Writing and Knowledge of Language

• Concision and Redundancy
• Relevance: Add, Delete and Writer's Goal
• Organisation: Order and Transitions
• Word Choice and Tone

Reading

• ACT Reading Strategy: Read Fast, Answer Smart
• Key Ideas and Details
• Craft and Structure
• Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

Practice tests

• ACT English — Practice Test 1
• ACT English — Practice Test 2
• ACT Reading — Practice Test 1
• ACT Reading — Practice Test 2