ACT Quick Facts

The ACT is extremely learnable

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 test 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 topics such as subject-verb agreement, punctuation, apostrophes, pronouns, etc. The Rhetoric questions cover rhetorical 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.

English

I've said it many times, and I'll say it again: the best way to improve on the English section is by learning the question types! There are only so many types of questions, and once you know them, you can easily learn the steps to get the right answer. Every time!

Usage & Mechanics

Basically, these questions cover the grammar topics the English section tests. Punctuation questions can be broken down into two types: varied punctuation and comma-only punctuation. Each type has its own easy process you should use to get to the right answer. Additionally, you'll see questions related to apostrophes, subject-verb agreement, pronouns, who/whom, and a few other topics.

The thing to remember is that this section is, by and large, quite straightforward. For instance, let's look at questions about subject-verb agreement. They can be split into two distinct types: plural vs. singular and past vs. present. Whenever you see a verb underlined on the English section, simply: 1. Find the subject. 2. Check whether the verb is the appropriate singular or plural form. 3. If there are past and present forms among the answer choices, check the next or previous sentence to arrive at the correct form. It's as simple as a set of instructions. All these types of questions can be reduced in this manner.

Rhetoric

A VERY common type of question, VERY easily done. These questions cover rhetorical issues — they test whether you can recognize logical and cohesive writing. Questions will ask you about transition words, transition sentences, sentence relevancy, ordering (where to place a word within a sentence, a sentence within a paragraph, and a paragraph within an essay), active vs. passive voice, and sometimes word usage.

Each of these question types can be as easily learned and mechanized as the usage/mechanics questions. For instance, if a question asks where to place a sentence within a paragraph, you only need to look for a logical gap between sentences. 'The little girl went to the mall. Fortunately, her brains were not eaten.' You can easily recognize that these two sentences don't belong next to each other. A question will ask where the sentence 'Unfortunately, there was a zombie outbreak' should be placed. If you know you're looking for a logical gap, this question type — which is supposed to be challenging — becomes very simple. This is true of all types of rhetoric questions.

Math

You need to know a lot of information to answer every question on the ACT Math section. Fortunately, most of the actual math you need you've already learned by the time you finish Algebra 2. The rest — which is not much — can easily be learned. What makes it manageable is that the breadth of each subject is very narrow on the ACT, so you don't need to learn the full scope. Trigonometry in school takes quite a while; you need to learn the theory of angles, trig functions, various Pythagorean identities, etc. On the ACT, however, there are only three types of trig questions: finding a missing side of a triangle, finding the value of a trig function on the unit circle, and what sine and cosine transformations look like on the coordinate plane. Each type is extremely repetitive — you can follow the same steps every time.

Math Topics

You need to know basic algebra, ratios, percentages, exponents, scientific notation, coordinate geometry, plane geometry (including various formulas), function notation, trigonometry, and a handful of infrequently tested topics: matrices, imaginary numbers, logarithms, and 3D spatial reasoning. These last topics usually appear as later, more difficult questions and are primarily used to limit the number of perfect scores.

Test-Taking Strategies

Good test takers learn how to get the right answer without doing the math — especially when they don't know how to do the math. The overarching philosophy is to always turn abstract problems into concrete ones. Often a question will ask you to manipulate quantities they never give you. 'Sarah increased her long jump distance by 20%, and then by 10%.' No initial distance is given. Here you can simply substitute your own number. Abstract to concrete.

Many questions ask you to simplify an equation and find the equivalent answer. You can substitute a simple number in for the variable and turn the problem from one requiring advanced algebra into one that only requires basic arithmetic. When all answer choices are numbers listed in order, you can work backwards and plug in answer choices instead of solving the problem from scratch.

Here's an example. For an exponents problem, one easy approach: when you raise exponents to a power, you multiply. If both terms end up with exponent 12 (3×4 and 4×3), the right answer must have 12 as an exponent. No further work needed. You've saved time and avoided mistakes by NOT fully expanding the problem. The fallback: set x=2, plug into the expression with your calculator, get the result, then plug x=2 into each answer choice until you find the match. Right answer, no algebra required.

Reading

The reading section is for the most part straightforward, but very long and very boring. The length of the passages and the sheer amount of information in each one makes this section especially challenging. Furthermore, the way questions are composed — particularly the extremely tempting wrong answers — adds to the difficulty. However, if you learn how the section is composed and follow an innovative strategy designed to overcome these challenges, you can make this section simple.

Types of Questions

There are basically two major types of questions: those that ask about specific details in the passage, and those that ask about the passage overall. Each passage has 10 questions — 7 to 8 will be specific and only 2 to 3 will ask about the passage overall.

Think about what the test wants you to do and why. They want you to read the passage first, then go to the questions. Because: 1. You'll spend a lot of time reading material that isn't even asked about. 2. Once you get to the questions, you'll have to go back and re-read, wasting even more time. Furthermore, many of the wrong answers come directly from the passage — but from irrelevant parts. This makes the test very confusing. However, if you can learn to answer the questions without reading the passage first, you can save precious time and avoid the most common wrong-answer traps.

Types of Wrong Answers

There are three major types of wrong answers. If you know them, and if you use my reading strategy, you can eliminate wrong answers far more easily. Some answers are completely irrelevant (but appear somewhere in the passage). Some are half right and half wrong. And some are completely wrong — but sound completely right. Fortunately, all three types are easy to learn to recognize. Using my reading strategy, knowledge of wrong answer types, and the process of elimination can get anyone significant increases on their results.

Science

The Science section might be the one that causes the most apprehension and confusion among students. What is it? What's on it? Have I taken enough science classes to do well?

The reality is that this section has virtually nothing to do with actual science knowledge, and it is really, very, truly easy. It should simply be called the Common Sense section. All it tests is whether you can recognize patterns in graphs and tables, see how one variable changes as another does, and apply some basic reading comprehension inside of a science-flavored passage.

Increase / Decrease Questions

A good plurality of the Science section is composed of what I call Increase/Decrease questions. Essentially, they can be formulated like this: as X goes up (or down), what happens to Y? Or, as X changes, what other variable goes up? Questions will either ask this outright, or will require you to know this in order to answer a different question.

Chart & Graph Analysis

Another major chunk of questions is based primarily on your ability to analyze graphs and charts. These questions are easy — they're simply made to sound difficult. One common tactic is to give you too much information. But if you understand that when they give you one point on one axis and ask for a point on another axis, all you need to do is trace up and over (or over and down, as the case may be). A harder version might ask for a point on one graph and require you to use it on a second graph — but even that follows easily learned steps. It's simply a matter of recognizing the question type and the simple steps to the right answer. This is true of almost every question on this exam.