Your Comprehensive Guide to the ACT

Table of Contents

1 - Introduction

2 - English

3 - Math

4 - Reading

5 - Science

6 - Conclusion

Introduction

I've been teaching the ACT since 2007, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that the ACT is EXTREMELY learnable. This is because the test is extremely repetitive. The best, easiest way to improve your score is to learn the different types of questions, how to recognize them, and the steps to get to the right answer (you'll see this sentence a lot on this website). I teach students to turn the exam into a very mechanical process. You can become an ACT robot.

The English section is one of the easiest tests sections on either the ACT or the SAT. Over 35 minutes you must answer 50 questions (10 of which won’t count) that can be categorized into one of two major categories: mechanics/usage and rhetoric. Mechanics and Usage questions cover just that, topics such as subject-verb agreement, punctuation, apostrophes, pronouns, etc. The Rhetoric questions cover rhetoric issues: Relevant/Irrelevant information, sentence orders, paragraph orders, transition sentences and words, and occasionally word usage.

The Math section covers quite a broad array of information. Fortunately, each topic is relatively narrow. So, for instance, all the trigonometry questions are limited to only 3 or so different types of questions. The Math section is extremely predictable, and this predictability is what I teach students to exploit. With some basic math review and strategy, anyone can see a huge improvement on this section.

The Reading section is composed of four passages with 9 questions each. The topics and order are always the same: prose fiction, social sciences, humanities, and natural science. This is the one section that does not increase in order of difficulty. Though a very strong reading ability is required for an elite score, anyone can increase their score using my specific strategy that exploits the predictability of the section. There are only so many different types of questions; you can use this to your advantage.

The Science section, now optional, is perhaps the one section that causes the most consternation among students. This section is extremely easy and requires virtually no science knowledge at all. It should be called the Common Sense section. There are only so many different types of questions here as well. I teach students to understand how the questions are composed and the simple underlying logic required throughout the exam. If you know what you're doing, this section is the simplest of the four. However, it won’t affect your overall ACT score.

Oh, and there's an optional essay as well, which also does not affect your 1-36 composite score. Instead, if you decide to take it, you'll receive an extra Writing score from 2-12 and a Writing/English combined score from 1-36.