ACT – English Section
Information
English/Honors Eng. 2

What is it?
It is designed to measure your ability to accomplish a wide variety of decisions involved in revising and editing a given piece of writing.
 Two Categories:


◦ Usage/Mechanics (punctuation, grammar and usage, sentence structure)
◦ Rhetorical Skills (writing strategy, organization, style) How long is it?
75 questions
 45 minutes
 2 subscores – one based on 40
Usage/Mechanics questions and the other on 35 Rhetorical Skills questions.


What will NOT be tested


Spelling, vocabulary, or rote recall of rules of grammar (ex: Must an appositive always be set off by commas?)

Types of ?’s for
Usage/Mechanics
◦ Grammar & Usage
◦ Punctuation – commas, apostrophes, colons, semicolons, dashes, periods, question marks, exclamation points.
◦ Grammatical Agreement – Subject/Verb;
Pronoun/Antecedent; Adjectives & adverbs with corresponding nouns and verbs
◦ Verb forms

More types of ?’s for
Usage/Mechanics
◦ Pronoun forms and cases
◦ Comparative and superlative modifiers
◦ Idioms
◦ Sentence Structure –
◦ Subordinate or dependent clauses
◦ Run-on/fused sentences
◦ Comma splices
◦ Fragments

More Types of ?’s for
Usage/Mechanics
◦ Misplaced modifiers
◦ Shifts in verb tense or voice
◦ Shifts in pronoun person or number

Types of ?’s for Rhetorical
Skills


Writing Strategy ?’s
◦ These may ask you to make decisions concerning the appropriateness of a sentence/essay in relation to purpose, audience, unity, or focus, or the effect of adding, revising, or deleting supporting material.

Types of ?’s for Rhetorical
Skills


Organization ?’s
◦ These deal with the order or coherence of ideas in an essay and the effective choice of opening, transitional, and closing statements.



Style ?’s
◦ These involve effective word choices in terms of writing style, tone, clarity, and economy.

Strategies
You have exactly 36 seconds per question.
 Spending 1 ½ minutes skimming through each essay leaves you about 30 seconds to answer each question.
 Another way to think about it: You have 45 mins. to read/answer ?’s