This was written by request of the people who run our school's social media account. I was not sure about it because I don't have much suggestions to offer. I was eventually persuaded to write this anyways, but note that the content was written very quickly and the suggestions probably aren't all that good. Keeping this here just for reference.
P.S. Some of the writing is informal. Sorry about that, I think I lost the final version.
According to ACT the English section is:
The English section consists of multiple essays, or passages, each followed by a set of multiple-choice questions.
And the Reading section is:
The reading section measures your ability to read closely, reason logically about texts using evidence, and integrate information from multiple sources.
Like any other test, the ACT exam requires 2 important things:
1. Knowledge of tested information
2. Test skills
We will break this down by analyzing how you can master both of these parts for the English and Reading sections.
For the English and Reading sections, this is just your grammar and comprehension skills. As such, study basic grammar conventions and try to read a lot of English books. Also try to use English in your daily life, such as when talking with friends.
Other more fun but perhaps less effective methods of practicing your English include:
1. Watching English TV shows
2. Playing English video games
3. Listening to English music
The ACT test is all about speed! There are more questions than there are minutes, and on top of that you will have to leave some time in the end to check your responses. As such, you will need to be able to answer questions in just a few seconds.
Gaining a good score is dependent on your pace; you need to get into a rhythm of quickly answering questions accurately. For each section, take your test time, take away 5 minutes for a bit of breathing room, and divide the rest by the total amount of questions to get the amount of time you should spend on average on a question. I suggest you take 5 seconds off that as well, just so you have a bit more time for the harder questions.
Now, all you have to do is to be able to answer questions in the calculated time frame. I have no tips for this: the best way to perfect this is to do a lot of practice tests.
For The English Section:
If there is an opening bracket, always add an end bracket. Same for dashes, though there are a few exceptions to this rule.
Understand then vs than. There is invariably a question where you have to choose between the two.
Use commas to separate lists.
For Reading:
Practice Speed Reading, so like practice skimming text as fast as possible.
The tactic should be to read as much as possible initially and then go back to find things you missed for the questions.
Be able to identify allusions, metaphors etc.
For all sections:
Don’t linger too long, mark question if unsure and move on
Use the answer eliminator function, helps narrow down choices
Basically do practice questions: there are a lot of good ones in the Act Prep Book if you can get that
Also try the CBT before the test to familiarize yourself with the system. There should be a free practice test on the ACT website
By: Jason Wang