The Enhanced ACT: Complete Overview

American Diploma › ACT English and Reading — Complete Course

This page explains the whole enhanced ACT in one place: the sections, the timing, how the composite score is made, what an ACT English passage and an ACT Reading passage look like, and how to plan your preparation. Read it once carefully before you start the lessons, then come back to it the week before your test.

What the enhanced ACT is

The ACT is a college admission test that many American Diploma students take. Since September 2025 every ACT is the enhanced ACT: the same design is used for all tests, online and paper, in the United States and internationally. If you find an old book or video that describes a longer test with more questions, it is describing the old ACT. Use the numbers on this page.

The ACT is not adaptive. Everyone taking the same test form gets the same questions, and the questions do not get easier or harder because of your answers. (This is a big difference from the Digital SAT, where your Module 1 result decides the level of Module 2.) On the ACT a hard question is simply a hard question, and every question in a section is worth the same.

The sections at a glance

The three core sections (English, Math and Reading) take 125 minutes of testing time in total. This course covers the two verbal core sections, English and Reading.

How the composite score works

Your composite score is on a scale of 1–36. It is the average of your English, Math and Reading scores. Science and Writing are reported separately: they appear on your score report but they do not raise or lower the composite.

• Because the composite is an average, a strong English score can balance a weaker Math score, and the other way round.
• English is usually the section where students improve fastest, because the grammar and punctuation rules are limited and they repeat on every test.
• We do not give target scores or university requirements on this site. Requirements differ from university to university and change from year to year, so check each university's own admissions page.

The optional sections: Science and Writing

Science (40 questions, 40 minutes) and Writing (one essay, 40 minutes) are optional. You choose whether to take them when you register. Neither one changes your composite. Whether you need them depends only on the universities you apply to, so find out early from each university's admissions page and decide before you register.

ACT English: what the section looks like

ACT English is not a list of separate sentences. You read essays and fix them while you read. The scored part of the section is built like this:

The essays are of three kinds: informational (explains a topic, a person, a discovery), argumentative (gives an opinion and supports it) and narrative (tells a story, often in the first person). You do not need any background knowledge; everything you need is in the passage.

Underlined portions and NO CHANGE

Most questions refer to an underlined portion of the passage, marked with a question number. The question shows four versions of that portion. The first choice is very often NO CHANGE, which means "keep the original". Many questions have no written question at all: you simply see the four versions and choose the best one. Here is the shape (original example; the underlined portion is shown in bold):

Passage: "The first lighthouse on this coast was built of wood, it burned down [12] within ten years."

Choices: A) NO CHANGE B) wood, and it burned down C) wood it burned down D) wood, burning it down

Answer: B. The original joins two complete sentences with only a comma (a comma splice). B adds "and", which makes the join correct. C has no punctuation at all (a run-on). D changes the meaning: it now says the wood burned the lighthouse down. Notice that NO CHANGE is a real choice: on some questions the original is already the best version, and then A is the answer.

Questions about the passage as a whole

Some questions have no underlined portion. They ask about a sentence, a paragraph or the whole essay. The stem then tells you exactly what to decide, for example:

• whether the writer should add a new sentence at a certain point, or delete a sentence, and why;
• where a sentence or a paragraph should be placed so that the essay is logical;
• which choice gives the most effective introduction, conclusion or transition;
• whether the essay achieves a goal the writer had in mind ("Suppose the writer's goal had been to…").

For these questions you must understand what the paragraph and the essay are about, which is why you should read the passage as you answer, not jump from underline to underline.

The three reporting categories of ACT English

Every scored English question belongs to one of three categories. The percentages are shares of the scored questions; the last column shows where each skill is taught in this course.

ACT Reading: what the section looks like

The Reading section has 36 questions in 40 minutes. The scored part is built from three passages with 9 questions each:

In total there is one literary narrative (a story or a memoir) and two informational passages from the humanities, social science or natural science. On each form, one of the sets is special: it is either a pair of passages on the same topic (with questions that compare them) or a passage that comes with charts or graphs (with questions that connect the text and the data).

The Reading part of this course gives you a method for 650–750-word passages and a full lesson on each of the three categories.

Rules that change how you take the test

• No penalty for wrong answers. A blank and a wrong answer both score zero, so answer every question. Never leave a bubble or a screen empty.
• Not adaptive. Every question in a section is worth the same, so do not get stuck on a hard one. Answer, mark it if you can, and move on.
• Online or paper. The enhanced design is the same in both. Practise with a clock either way.
• The official information is on act.org. If anything there is different from this page, follow act.org.

A 6-week study plan for ACT English and Reading

Plan for about 45–60 minutes a day, 5 days a week. If you have more time, repeat the weeks where your quiz scores were lowest. Keep a mistake notebook: for every wrong answer write the rule or the trap in one line.

Check your understanding

This short untimed test has two parts. Questions 1–4 check that you understand how the test works. Questions 5–8 are real-format ACT English items on one short narrative essay; the numbers in the passage show which underlined portion each question refers to.

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