ACT Prep
Anyone who takes this test wants to do well on it, and that probably means utilizing an ACT prep course, or book, or tutor. The only reason to take the ACT is if you’re trying to get into a college, and it only makes sense that you want to do the very best you can. However, it’s going to be hard to do well on the ACT without knowing a little more about it, so let’s talk about some of the fundamental information regarding this test.
The ACT is a standardized admissions test administered in the United States. It was created around fifty years ago as a competitor to the College Board’s SAT Reasoning Test. A variety of ACT prep options exist to help students with this exam. The ACT consists of four separate tests, each on its own subject: English, Math, Reading, and Science Reasoning. In 2005 the ACT added an optional Writing component in for which students must plan and write an essay; this was similar to the new essay writing component which was added to the SAT that same year.
ACT Prep
1 Purpose
2 Structure
3 English
4 Math
5 Reading
6 Science reasoning
7 Writing
8 ACT Prep
Purpose
According to ACT, Inc., the purpose of the ACT is to assess the general educational development of the students who take it, and to come to a reasonable conclusion about how well they will do in college. The test evaluates their readiness in four main areas: English, Math, Reading, and Science. ACT Inc. makes the test by consulting various textbooks as well as teachers, and then using those resources to determine which skills are most important and fundamental to the different subjects that the various sections are supposed to cover. Your choice of an ACT prep class will help you to tackle these sections. The point of tests like the SAT and the ACT is to provide an objective standard against which students can be measured, since GPAs from different school and different parts of the country do not necessarily reflect similar skill sets for different students. In general, colleges use ACT scores to evaluate only one aspect of a student’s readiness for college, and use other factors like grades, essays, and letters of recommendation to get a more holistic view of the student.
Structure
There are five sections on the entire ACT, although only four are required and are always taken. Those four multiple choice tests cover English, math, reading, and science reasoning. The scores on each of the subject tests can range from 1 to 36. All but the science test also have subscores which range from 1 to 18. The final score that student gets on the ACT, or the “composite score,” is the average of all the four individual test scores. If students choose to take the fifth section of the test, which is the Writing section, their essays will receive a score from 2 to 12, and that will be considered into a combined English and writing score, which again can be between 1 and 36. Your ACT prep course should cover all sections of this exam. The writing score has no impact on the final composite score. Each question answered correctly on the ACT earns the test-taker one raw point. Unlike the SAT, the ACT does not have a penalty for answering questions incorrectly.
ACT English
The first section of this exam is the English test, which evaluates rhetorical skills and usage as well as mechanics. Students have 45 minutes to complete the 75-question test. ACT English contains five passages, with some sections of those passages underlined, on one side of a page, and then it has various options to correct those underlined portions on the opposite side of the page. The questions focus on a variety of English skills, including issues related to commas, apostrophes, modifiers, colons, semi-colons, fragments, and run-on sentences–as well as on rhetorical skills like organization, style, transitions, and writing strategy. Make sure you choose an ACT prep class that will prepare for all of these aspects of the test.
ACT Math
This is the second section of the ACT. The math section takes 60 minutes, and requires students to answer 60 questions in that time. This is the only section of the test for which students are allowed to use a calculator–however, the ACT rules for calculators are different from the SAT rules, so if you want to use an unusual caluclator on either test, it is best to contact the testing agency directly and find out for sure exactly what you will be allowed to use on test day. The other peculiarity about the ACT math section is that questions have five possible answer choices, instead of four, as on all the other sections.
ACT Reading
In this section, students have 35 minutes to answer 40 questions. The 40 questions are based on four passages that are presented to the students in the test booklet. Those passages are taken from a variety of sources, and cover a number of topics including the sciences and humanities. It is crucial, on questions like these, to have a sound ACT prep strategy that you can apply to the various question types.
ACT Science Reasoning
This portion of the test consists of seven passages which are followed by five to seven questions. Although many people prepare for this section by studying various science subjects, such as chemistry, physics, biology, and so on, your ACT prep course should teach you a better way to approach this section. The real skills that are necessary for this part of the test are more along the lines of a combination of the reading section and the math section combined–straightforward reading skills and the ability to read charts and graphs.
ACT Writing
The optional ACT Writing section takes thirty minutes to complete. Students decide when they sign up for the test date whether or not they would like to take this part of the exam. The essays are written in response to prompt which relates to an issue that most high schoolers would have an opinion about. The results of a test-taker’s performance on the ACT Essay has no impact on the final composite score, but instead produces an English/Writing score which is separate from the other scores. It is important to find out whether or not the schools that you will be applying to have a policy of requiring you to take this part of the test, or even if they specifically do not care about it. That way, you won’t be wasting your time when you take the test and practice in your ACT prep course.
ACT Prep
In general, students who hope to do well on this test will plan to employ one of a number of ACT prep resources. ACT preparation is a good idea because it can expose to all the various question types ahead of time so that you will know what kind of strategies and tactics to apply on test day. What you choose to do as far as ACT prep goes will probably have a significant impact on your score, so make sure you give it careful consideration.