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3 Best ACT Reading Tips and Strategies to Raise Your ACT Reading Score

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10 ACT Prep Tips, Tricks, and Strategies to Skyrocket Your ACT Score

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Visit http://bestactprep.co to increase your ACT score even more! Full course - http://bestactprep.org/actcourse! Learn the top 10 tips, tricks, and strategies to raise your ACT score for the English, math, reading, and science test. We cover general strategies, as well as strategies for each individual section of the ACT.

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Act tips and tricks to help raise your score

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Act tips and tricks to help raise your score

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uses really helpful tips to help you mange your time and study for the test

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10 ACT Prep Tips, Tricks, and Strategies to Skyrocket Your ACT Score

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Visit http://bestactprep.co to increase your ACT score even more! Full course - http://bestactprep.org/actcourse! Learn the top 10 tips, tricks, and strategies to raise your ACT score for the English, math, reading, and science test. We cover general strategies, as well as strategies for each individual section of the ACT.

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The English section of the ACT evaluates your standard English skills, including language knowledge, production of writing, and standard English conventions. To help you prepare for this section of the ACT, this page contains everything you need to know, including what topics are covered, how many questions there are, and how you can study effectively.

Click "Start Test" below to take a free ACT English practice test!

What's on the SAT English Section?

ACT Test Online Prep Course

If you want to be fully prepared, Mometrix offers an online ACT Prep Course. The course is designed to provide you with any and every resource you might want while studying. The ACT Course includes:

70 Lessons Covering Every Topic

1,500+ ACT Practice Questions

Over 250 Video Tutorials

More than 500 Electronic Flashcards

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and More!

The ACT Prep Course is designed to help any learner get everything they need to prepare for their ACT exam. Click below to check it out!

FAQs

How many English questions are on the ACT?

There are 70 questions on the English section of the ACT.

How long is the English section of the ACT?

The English section is timed at 45 minutes.

What is a passing score on the ACT English section?

There is no set passing score for the English section of the ACT. However, a score of at least 21 is generally recommended.

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ACT English Practice Test (updated 2023)

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The English section of the ACT evaluates your standard English skills, including language knowledge, production of writing, and standard English conventions. To help you prepare for this section of the ACT, this page contains everything you need to know, including what topics are covered, how many questions there are, and how you can study effectively.

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ACT English 10 Hints, Tips, and Strategies

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Best ACT Math Prep Strategies, Tips, and Tricks - "Cheating" Using the Answer Choices

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ACT Math 21 Concepts to Boost Your Score

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ACT Math

The test isn't just a test of how much math you can do. It's a test of how much math you can do fast. In fact, that's part of what makes it so tough. The test throws 60 questions at you in 60 minutes - one question per minute. That's not a lot of time, so you'll want to make every second count.

That doesn't mean just frantically trying to work faster, though. It's much better to use smart time management strategies and play up your own strengths. Time management means making effective use of your time, so you work smarter, not harder. In this lesson, you'll get some tips and advice for moving through the test fast, without sacrificing accuracy.

Question Order & Skipping

First of all, let's talk about how to approach the questions. Questions on the ACT Math are arranged roughly in order from easier to harder. So, start with the beginning, and work your way through the test.

On the other hand, you don't have to fixate on every question until you solve it. Every question is worth just as much as every other question. So, there's no benefit to killing yourself over the hard ones. Skipping a question and just bubbling in a random answer is perfectly okay if:

You can't answer the question

You could answer the question, but it would take way too long

But wait, if the questions go from easy to hard, why does it make sense to skip any? Won't they just keep getting harder down the line?

Well, first of all, they're arranged roughly in order from easy to hard; it's not an exact science. But more importantly, it often happens that students are better at one subject area than another. For example, let's say there's some student, Joe, and Joe is an algebra whiz but never quite got the hang of geometry.

Joe might start skipping geometry questions around question 30 or so, but he can still answer the algebra questions up to question 45. So even though those geometry questions would be 'easier' for a student who was equally good at everything, they're harder for him personally. It's still useful for Joe to start at the beginning and go from there, but he's also not married to the precise question order on the test. Instead, he's using smart time management strategies to pick the questions he's good at and leave the rest.

Just as a reminder though: even if you skip a question in the sense of not figuring it out, always bubble in something. There's no guessing penalty. So, at worst you'll get zero points, and at best, you'll get lucky and get the point anyway. It's a good idea to quickly glance through your answer sheet in the last 30 seconds of the test and make sure that you haven't left anything blank.

Strategies

By making smart choices about which questions to tackle and which ones to skip, you'll already save yourself a lot of time even if you don't get any faster at the questions themselves. But next we're going to talk about strategies to use once you're already working on a question. Here are three tips to get through the questions faster.

1. Look for formulas and principles. Brute-force arithmetic is rarely an effective way to solve ACT problems. If you're doing a large amount of annoying calculations, writing down huge columns of numbers, or spending a lot of time fiddling with arithmetic, there's probably a faster way to do the problem. For example, take this one:

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time management techniques for the act math - video & lesson transcript | study.com

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Time Management Techniques for the ACT Math - Video & Lesson Transcript | Study.com

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The test isn't just a test of how much math you can do. It's a test of how much math you can do fast. In fact, that's part of what makes it so tough. The test throws 60 questions at you in 60 minutes - one question per minute.

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Are you scoring in the 26-34 range on ACT English? Do you want to raise that score as high as possible-to a perfect 36?

Getting to a 36 ACT English score isn't easy. It'll require near perfection and mastery of both grammar rules and rhetorical skills. But with hard work and my ACT English strategies below, you'll be able to do it. I've consistently scored 36 on English on my real ACTs, and I know what it takes. Follow my advice, and you'll get a perfect score-or get very close.

Brief note: This article is suited for students already scoring a 26 on ACT English or above. If you're below this range, my "How to Improve your ACT English Score to a 26" article is more appropriate for you. Follow the advice in that article, then come back to this one when you've reached a 26.

Overview

Most guides on the internet on how to get a 36 on ACT English are of pretty bad quality. They're often written by people who never scored a 36 themselves. You can tell because their advice is usually vague and not very pragmatic.

In contrast, I've written what I believe to be the best guide on getting a 36 available anywhere. I have confidence that these strategies work because I used them myself to score a perfect ACT English score consistently. They've also worked for thousands of my students at PrepScholar.
In this article, I'm going to discuss why scoring a 36 is a good idea and what it takes to score a 36. Then I'll go into the 10 critical ACT English strategies you need to get a perfect ACT English score.
Stick with me-as an advanced student, you probably already know that scoring high is good. But it's important to know why a 36 English score is useful, since this will fuel your motivation to get a high score.

In this guide, I'm going to talk about doing well on ACT English, rather than about raising your combined English/Language Arts score. The reason is that schools typically care much more about your ACT composite score rather than your subscores and ELA score. However, I'll still touch upon how to raise your essay score at the end.

Final note: In this guide, I talk mainly about getting to a 36. But if your goal is a 34, these strategies still equally apply.

Understand the Stakes: Why a 36 ACT English?

Let's make something clear: for all intents and purposes, a 34 on an ACT is equivalent to a perfect 36. No top college is going to give you more credit for a 36 than a 34. You've already crossed their score threshold, and whether you get in now depends on the rest of your application.

So if you're already scoring a 34, don't waste your time studying trying to get a 36. You're already set for the top colleges, and it's time to work on the rest of your application.

But if you're scoring a 33 or below AND you want to go to a top 10 college, it's worth your time to push your score up to a 34 or above. There's a big difference between a 32 and a 34, largely because it's easy to get a 32 (and a lot more applicants do) and a lot harder to get a 34.

A 33 places you right around average at Harvard and Princeton, and being average is bad in terms of admissions, since the admissions rate is typically below 10%.

So why get a 36 on ACT English? Because it helps you compensate for weaknesses in other sections. By and large, schools consider your ACT composite score more than your individual section scores. If you can get a 36 in ACT English, that gives you more flexibility in your Math, Reading, and Science scores. It can compensate for a 32 in one other section, for example, and bring your average back up to 34.

Princeton's 75th percentile score for ACT English is likely 36.

Even though schools don't typically release their ACT scores by section, they do release SAT section scores. As a stand-in for ACT English, we can take a look at SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores at top schools. (I know ACT English and SAT EBRW don't totally overlap, but you do need to be good at reading and writing to score highly on ACT English.)

Here are a few examples. For Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Dartmouth, the 75th percentile SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing score is an 800 or 790. That means at least 25% of all students at these schools have a 790 in SAT EBRW, or a 36 on ACT English.

But if you can work your way to a 36, you show that you're at an equal level (at least on this metric). Even if it takes you a ton of work, all that matters is the score you achieve at the end.

Know That You Can Do It

This isn't just some fuzzy feel-good message you see on the back of a milk carton.

I mean, literally, you and every other reasonably intelligent student can score a 36 on ACT English.

The reason most people don't is they don't try hard enough or they don't study the right way.

Even if language isn't your strongest suit, or you got a B+ in AP English, you're capable of this.

Because I know that more than anything else, your ACT score is a reflection of how hard you work and how smartly you study.

ACT English Is Designed to Trick You - You Need to Learn How

Here's why: the ACT is a weird test. When you take it, don't you get the sense that the questions are nothing like what you've seen in school?

You've learned grammar before in school. You know some basic grammar rules. But the ACT questions just seem so much weirder.

It's purposely designed this way. The ACT can't test difficult concepts, because this would be unfair for students who never took AP English. It can't ask you to decompose Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. The ACT is a national test, which means it needs a level playing field for all students around the country.

So it has to test concepts that all high school students will cover, like subject-verb agreement, run-on sentences, pronoun choice, etc. You've learned all of this throughout school.

But the ACT still has to make the test difficult, so it needs to test these concepts in strange ways. This trips up students who don't prepare, but it rewards students who understand the test well.

Tricky ACT English Example Question

Here's an example: find the grammar error in this sentence:

The commissioner, along with his 20 staff members, run a tight campaign against the incumbent.

This is a classic ACT English problem.

The error is in subject/verb agreement. The subject of the sentence is commissioner, which is singular. The verb is "run," but because the subject is singular, it should really be "runs."

At your level, you probably saw the error. But if you didn't, you fell for a classic ACT English trap. It purposely confused you with the interrupting phrase, "along with his 20 staff members." You're now picturing 20 people in a campaign-which suggests a plural verb!

The ACT English section is full of examples like this, and they get trickier. Nearly every grammar rule is tested in specific ways, and if you don't prepare for these, you're going to do a lot worse than you should.

Here's the good news: this might have been confusing the first time, but the next time you see a question like this, you'll know exactly what to do: find the subject and the verb, and get rid of the interrupting phrase.

So to improve your ACT English score, you just need to:

Learn the grammar rules that the ACT tests.

Study how the ACT tests these grammar rules and learn how to detect which grammar rule you need in a question.

Practice on a lot of questions so you learn from your mistakes.

I'll go into more detail about exactly how to do this. First, let's see how many questions you need to get right to get a perfect score.

What It Takes to Get a 36 in English

If we have a target score in mind, it helps to understand what you need to get that score on the actual test.

As you probably know, writing combines your raw score on the multiple choice section with your essay score to give your final English score out of 36.

Here's a sample raw score to ACT English Score conversion table. (If you could use a refresher on how the ACT is scored and how raw scores are calculated, read this.)

Scaled Score English Raw Score

36

75

35

72-74

34

71

33

70

32

68-69

31

67

30

66

29

65

28

63-64

27

62

Source: ACT
In this grading scale, you can earn a 36 only if you get a perfect raw score of 75. In fact, I've never seen a grading scale where you can earn a 36 after missing one question.

The curve is also typically quite unforgiving. If you miss one question, you drop down to a 35. Miss two, and sometimes you drop down to a 34.
Thus, perfection is really important for ACT English. On every practice test, you need to aim for a perfect raw score for a 36.
It's pretty clear then that you need to try to answer every question. You can't guess on too many questions and get a 36, which means you need to get to a level of mastery where you're confident answering each question.

Whatever you're scoring now, take note of the difference you need to get to a 36. For example, if you're scoring a 30 now, you need to answer nine more questions right to get to a 36.

As a final example, here's a screenshot from my ACT test, showing that I scored a perfect raw score and a 36 on ACT English.

OK-so we've covered why scoring a higher English score is important, why you specifically are capable of improving your score, and the raw score you need to get to your target.
Now we'll get into the meat of the article: actionable strategies that you should use in your own studying to maximize your score improvement.
Strategies to Get a 36 on ACT English

What's your greatest weakness?

Strategy 1: Understand Your High Level Weakness - Content or Time Management?

Every student has different flaws in ACT English. Some people aren't comfortable with the underlying grammar material. Others know the grammar rules well, but can't solve questions quickly enough in the harsh time limit.

(As we'll discuss, the ACT English section applies VERY heavy time pressure. So you likely do suffer from some time pressure-we're trying to figure out how much)

Here's how you can figure out which one applies more to you:

For that section, use a timer for 45 minutes. Treat it like a real test.

If time runs out and you're not done yet, keep working for as long as you need. But starting now, for every new answer or answer that you change, mark it with a special note as "Extra Time."

Grade your test using the answer key and score chart, but we want two scores: 1) The Realistic score you got under normal timing conditions, 2) The Extra Time score. This is why you marked the questions you answered or changed during Extra Time.

Get what we're doing here? By marking which questions you did under Extra Time, we can figure out what score you got if you were given all the time you needed. This will help us figure out where your weaknesses lie.

If you didn't take any extra time, then your Extra Time score is the same as your Realistic score.

Here's a flowchart to help you figure this out:
Was your Extra Time score a 32 or above?
If NO (Extra Time score < 32), then you have remaining content weaknesses. You might have weaknesses across a range of subjects, or a deep weakness in only a few subjects. (We'll cover this later). Your first plan of attack should be to develop more comfort with all ACT English subjects.
If YES (Extra Time score > 32), then: Was your Realistic score a 32 or above?
If NO (Extra Time score > 32, Realistic < 32), then that means you have a difference between your Extra Time score and your Realistic score. If this difference is more than two points, then you have some big problems with time management. We need to figure out why this is. Are you generally slow at English across most questions? Or did particular passages or types of questions slow you down? Generally, doing a lot of practice questions and learning the most efficient solutions will help reduce your time. More on this later.

If YES (both Extra Time and Realistic scores > 32), then you have a really good shot at getting a 36. Compare your Extra Time and Realistic score-if they differed by more than one point, then you would benefit from learning how to answer questions more quickly. If not, then you likely can benefit from shoring up on your last content weaknesses and avoiding careless mistakes (more on this strategy later).

Hopefully that makes sense. Typically I see that students have both timing and content issues, but you might find that one is much more dominant for you than the other. For example, if you can get a 36 with extra time, but score a 32 in regular time, you know exactly that you need to work on time management to get a 36.

Strategy 2: Comprehensively Learn the Grammar Rules

There's just no way around it. You need to know all the grammar rules tested on the test and how they work.

In addition, you'll also need to know rhetorical skills that test you in your writing logic. You'll be asked to decide how to organize sentences and paragraphs together.

Certain grammar rules, like punctuation, appear far more often than other rules. But because we're going for perfection, you'll need to know even the less common rules.

In our PrepScholar program, we've identified the following as the grammar and rhetorical skills you need to know:

Grammar Rules

Punctuation: Commas, Apostrophes, Semicolons, Dashes

Number Agreement: Subject/Verb Agreement, Pronoun Number Agreement

Idioms and Wrong Word (Examples: affect/effect, neither...nor, there/their/they're)

Parallel Construction

Verb Forms: Tense, Conjugation

Conciseness: Eliminating waste from sentence phrasings

Sentence Fragments, Run-on Sentences

Pronouns: Pronoun Choice, Pronoun Case

Faulty Modifier

Comparison/Description

Rhetorical Skills

Macro Logic: How sentences and paragraphs fit together

Transitional Logic: How to connect different thoughts together

Relevance: Determine whether a sentence is extraneous or fits in

Author Intent: Understand the point of the author and writing techniques

Formality and Tone

There are a lot of rules, but they differ from each other in how commonly they appear on the test, and how hard they are to study.

For example, Punctuation is the most common grammar rule on ACT English, but it only uses a few separate concepts. The Idioms skill is also very common, but it uses a wide range of idioms, such that each unique idiom appears no more than once on each test.

It's therefore important for you to focus your time on studying the highest impact grammar rules. Our PrepScholar program, for example, quizzes you in relation to how common each grammar rule is, so that you focus your efforts on the rules that make the biggest difference to your score.

Strategy 3: Do a Ton of Practice and Understand Every Single Mistake

On the path to perfection, you need to make sure every single one of your weak points is covered. Even one mistake on all of ACT English will knock you down from a 36.

The first step is simply to do a ton of practice. If you're studying from free materials or from books, you have access to a lot of practice questions in bulk. As part of our PrepScholar program, we have over 1,200 ACT questions customized to each skill.
The second step-and the more important part-is to be ruthless about understanding your mistakes.
Every mistake you make on a test happens for a reason. If you don't understand exactly why you missed that question, you will make that mistake over and over again.

I've seen students who completed 15 practice tests. They've solved over 3,000 questions, but they're still nowhere near a 36 on ACT English.

Why? They never understood their mistakes. They just hit their heads against the wall over and over again.

Think of yourself as an exterminator, and your mistakes are cockroaches. You need to eliminate every single one -and find the source of each one-or else the restaurant you work for will be shut down.
Here's what you need to do:

On every practice test or question set that you take, mark every question that you're even 20% unsure about

When you grade your test or quiz, review every single question that you marked, and every incorrect question. This way even if you guessed a question correctly, you'll make sure to review it.

In a notebook, write down the gist of the question, why you missed it, and what you'll do to avoid that mistake in the future. Have separate sections by grammar skill (eg Number Agreement, Idioms, Sentence Fragments)

It's not enough to just think about it and move on. It's not enough to just read the answer explanation. You have to think hard about why you specifically failed on this question.

By taking this structured approach to your mistakes, you'll now have a running log of every question you missed, and your reflection on why.
No excuses when it comes to your mistakes.
Always Go Deeper-WHY Did You Miss an English Question?

Now, what are some common reasons that you missed a question? Don't just say, "I didn't get this question right." That's a cop out.

Always take it one step further-what specifically did you miss, and what do you have to improve in the future?

Take the Subject/Verb Agreement example I gave above (with the Interrupting Phrase trick). You likely already know how Subject/Verb Agreement works. But if you missed that question, you'd need to think about why you missed it (because the interrupting phrase made you confuse the subject and verb). Then you need to write down a strategy for noticing this in the future.

Here are some examples of common reasons you miss an English question, and how you take the analysis one step further:

Content: I didn't learn the grammar rule needed to answer this question.

One step further: What specific rule do I need to learn, and what resources will I use to learn this grammar rule?

Overlooked Rule: I knew the grammar rule, but the ACT question was written in a way that made me miss it.

One step further: How do I solve the question now? Is there a strategy I can use to notice this grammar rule in the future?

Careless Error: I knew the grammar rule and normally would get this right, but I slipped up for some reason.

One step further: Why did I make this careless mistake? Was I rushing? Did I misread the question? What should I do in the future to avoid this?

Get the idea? You're really digging into understanding why you're missing questions.

Yes, this is hard, and it's draining, and it takes work. That's why most students who study ineffectively don't improve.

But you're different. Just by reading this guide, you're already proving that you care more than other students. And if you apply these principles and analyze your mistakes, you'll improve more than other students too.

Bonus: If all of this is making sense to you, you'd love our ACT prep program, PrepScholar.

We designed our program around the concepts in this article, because they actually work. When you start with PrepScholar, you'll take a diagnostic that will determine your weaknesses in over forty ACT skills. PrepScholar then creates a study program specifically customized for you.

To improve each skill, you'll take focused lessons dedicated to each skill, with over 20 practice questions per skill. This will train you for your specific area weaknesses, so your time is always spent most effectively to raise your score.

We also force you to focus on understanding your mistakes and learning from them. If you make the same mistake over and over again, we'll call you out on it.

There's no other prep system out there that does it this way, which is why we get better score results than any other program on the market.

Check it out today with a 5-day free trial:

Strategy 4: Justify Every Answer and Point Out Specific Grammar Errors

Many top students take a "soft approach" to ACT English. They learn the grammar rules when studying, but on the test they go "by ear": if a sentence sounds off, they'll assume it's wrong without thinking too hard about why.

When you've mastered grammar rules, this can serve you well. For example, if I said, "The bee fly to the hive," you'd know this was wrong instantly-it just feels wrong. You know simple subject/verb agreement so well that you can tell something is wrong before you can articulate what exactly it is.

However, most students never get to this level of familiarity with all ACT grammar rules. This makes trusting your ear unreliable for many rules.

This is especially true for wrong word choice, like "Its a good day to be an American." Because "its" sounds the same as "it's," your ear is of no help here!

What's the strategy to counter this? Point out the specific error, and justify it to yourself.

Let's run through an example. This is a grammar question that needs only one line from the passage to answer:

Here's what I'm thinking as I read the question (a stream of consciousness):

" 'The Sun sets gradually the images of a winged horse'...this doesn't seem right. I know 'sets' can take an object, like 'Tom sets the bowl down slowly,' but the Sun can't set anything down, and especially not images of a winged horse. This has got to be a run-on sentence, but let me keep reading. 'the images of a winged horse, a drinking gourd, a heartbroken hero appear in lights overhead.' Yep-the second part of this sentence is an independent clause, and it's a run-on because it's improperly connected to the first clause, 'The Sun sets gradually.' So I need an answer choice that fixes this:"

F: no change, which is wrong

G: this has a comma splice error-you can't connect two independent clauses with just a comma.

H: this looks good. It joins two independent clauses properly-with a comma and a conjunction ('and').

J: 'The Sun setting gradually' is now a dependent clause, but to join a dependent clause with an independent clause, you need a comma that's missing here. For example, 'The Sun setting gradually, we drove down the highway.' would be correct. Thus answer J is wrong.

Now, I'm not literally thinking all these words in my head, but it matches my thinking process as I go through the question and evaluate each answer choice.

You can see how I first identified the run-on sentence error in the original sentence. That made it very clear to me how I could find an answer choice that fixed this error.

As you learn the different grammar skills and how they appear on the test, you'll start evaluating answer choices for common ways that the ACT tries to trick you.

Is a verb underlined? I'm going to check the subject to see if it follows subject/verb agreement. Then I'll check the verb tense.

Is a pronoun underlined? I'm going to check the antecedent to see if it matches.

Does an underline come right after a comma? I'm going to check if there's a faulty modifier error.

I can justify every one of my answers because I know the grammar rules. This makes my answering more robust, not just based on whether something 'feels' right or wrong.

Note as well that in these questions, the ACT often fixes the original error in an answer choice-but then introduces another error. You need to make sure the answer you choose is 100% correct, in terms of both grammar and logic.

Don't be intimidated if you can't do this right now. With practice and reflection, you will get to this point.

Once again, it's like "the bee fly to the hive." You want to get to a point where all ACT grammar rules automatically sound as wrong as that sentence.

Find patterns to your mistakes, and make sense of the chaos.
Strategy 5: Find Patterns to Your Weaknesses and Drill Them

Remember Strategy 3 above about keeping a list of every mistake? You need to take this even one step further.

If you're like most students, you're better at some areas in ACT English than others. You might know pronouns really well, but you'll be weak in sentence constructions and fragments. Or maybe you really like parallel construction, but have no idea what faulty modifiers are.

This is especially true in grammar and ACT English, because some grammar mistakes likely sound obvious to you, but others are completely foreign.

If you're like most students, you also don't have an unlimited amount of time to study. You have a lot of schoolwork, you might be an athlete or have intense extracurriculars, and you have friends to hang out with.
This means for every hour you study for the ACT, it needs to be the most effective hour possible.
In concrete terms, you need to find your greatest areas of improvement and work on those.

Too many students study the 'dumb' way. They just buy a book and read it cover to cover. When they don't improve, they're shocked.

I'm not.

Studying effectively for the ACT isn't like painting a house. You're not trying to cover your bases with a very thin layer of understanding.

What these students did wrong was they wasted time on subjects they already knew well, and they didn't spend enough time improving their weak spots.

Instead, studying effectively for the ACT is like plugging up the holes of a leaky boat. You need to find the biggest hole, and fill it. Then you find the next biggest hole, and you fix that. Soon you'll find that your boat isn't sinking at all.

How does this relate to ACT English? In this analogy, your knowledge of English grammar is the leaky boat, and the holes are the gaps in your knowledge. You need to find the grammar rules you're struggling with the most, then do enough practice questions until they're no longer a weakness.
For every question that you miss, you need to identify the type of question it is and why you missed it. Once you discover patterns to the questions you miss, you then need to find extra practice for this grammar rule.
Let's say you analyze your past practice tests and questions and find that you're missing a lot of misplaced modifier questions. After you identify this pattern, the next step is to find good lesson material to teach yourself the main concepts behind what misplaced modifiers are and how to fix or avoid them. You'll also need to find more practice questions that test you on misplaced modifiers and drill until you're making few, if any, mistakes.

This is the best way for you to improve your English score.

Strategy 6: Be Careful With "No Change" Answers

In ACT English, most questions have a NO CHANGE option.

The ACT loves tricking students using these answer choices, because it knows that students who don't know grammar rules won't see anything wrong with the sentence. No Change is a really easy answer to choose.

No changes are one of the most common careless mistakes-make sure you don't fall for them.

Be very careful whenever you choose one of these No Change answer choices. Typically, these are correct answers around 25% of the time-not much more. (We actually went through and counted this in real tests). If you find that you're choosing No Change 40% of the time, you're definitely not detecting grammar errors well enough.

Every time you choose No Change, try to double-check the other answer choices to make sure you're not missing a grammar error. Especially take note of grammar rules that you tend to ignore mistakenly. Like I mentioned in Strategy 2 above, if you write down your mistakes and study your weaknesses, you'll be able to know which grammar rules you're weak at, and pay special attention to.

Personally, this was my most common careless mistake on ACT English. When I could see the error, I got the question correct nearly 100% of the time. The only times I missed questions were when I accidentally ignored an error.
I solved this by double-checking each of the answer choices to make sure I wasn't leaving any stone unturned.
Strategy 7: Think About Grammar in Everyday Life

Among all subjects, English on the ACT is special because it appears in your everyday life.

For school, you have to read a lot and you have to write a lot. Use these experiences as opportunities to notice grammar rules and sentence constructions.

This is unique to ACT English. ACT Math is so bizarre compared to everyday life that you won't just naturally find ways to apply the Pythagorean theorem at breakfast. ACT Reading and Science similarly require very specific skills when reading a passage or chart.

But you can practice your grammar skills throughout the day. Here are some ideas:

Proofread your friends' essays. Challenge yourself to uncover every grammatical error.

Read high quality, formal publications, like the New York Times or the Economist. These articles go through editors, so they rarely have grammar errors. You'll develop that ear for language I mentioned.

Notice common errors around you. A lot of people comma splice, for example.

Hold yourself to a higher standard in texting and messaging. (I know this isn't that cool-you don't have to capitalize every sentence and use periods, but at least use its/it's and their/there/they're correctly.)

The more you think about grammar as a fundamental skill rather than something specialized for ACT, the more natural it will feel to you.

Strategy 8: Finish With Extra Time and Double Check

Your goal at the end of all this work is to get so good at ACT English that you solve every question and have extra time left over at the end of the section to recheck your work.

In high school and even now, I can finish a 45 minute English section in 30 minutes or less. I then have 15 minutes left over to recheck my answers two times over.

As I've explained above, the best way to get faster is to get so fluent with ACT grammar that you rapidly zero in on the grammar mistakes without having to think hard about it.

Try to aim for a target of spending 40 seconds on average for each question. This gives you enough time to double-check comfortably.

What's the best way to double-check your work? I have a reliable method that I follow:

Double-check any questions you marked that you're unsure of. Try hard to eliminate those answer choices. If it's a No Change question, double-check that you're not missing any grammar mistakes.

If I'm 100% sure I'm right on a question, I mark it as such and never look at it again. If I'm not sure, I'll come back to it on the third pass.

At least two minutes before time's up, I rapidly double-check that I bubbled the answers correctly. I try to do this all at once so as not to waste time looking back and forth between the test book and the answer sheet. Go five at a time ("A G C F B") for more speed.

If you notice yourself spending more than 30 seconds on a problem and aren't clear how you'll get to the answer, skip and go to the next question. Even though you need a perfect raw score for a 36, don't be afraid to skip. You can come back to it later, and for now it's more important to get as many points as possible.

Quick Tip: Bubbling Answers
Here's a bubbling tip that will save you two minutes per section.
When I first started test taking in high school, I did what many students do: after I finished one question, I went to the bubble sheet and filled it in. Then I solved the next question. Finish question 1, bubble in answer 1. Finish question 2, bubble in answer 2. And so forth.

This actually wastes a lot of time. You're distracting yourself between two distinct tasks-solving questions, and bubbling in answers. This costs you time in both mental switching costs and in physically moving your hand and eyes to different areas of the test.

Here's a better method: solve all your questions first in the book, then bubble all of them in at once.

This has several huge advantages: you focus on each task one at a time, rather than switching between two different tasks. You also eliminate careless entry errors, like if you skip question 7 and bubble in question 8's answer into question 7's slot.

By saving just four seconds per question, you get back 300 seconds on a section that has 75 questions. This is huge.

Note: If you use this strategy, you should already be finishing the section with ample extra time to spare. Otherwise, you might run out of time before you have the chance to bubble in the answer choices all at once.

Strategy 9: Read the Whole Sentence

Most of the questions ACT English ask you the underlined part of a sentence should be changed. When you answer these questions, don't just read the underlined portion. To correctly answer the questions, you must read the whole sentence (or sentences, if the underlined section overlaps across two different sentences).

Phrases not included in the underlined portion of the sentence often provide information that's essential for deciding whether or not the underlined portion should be changed.

Let's go through another example from the ACT to see this strategy in action.

If you only read the underlined word, you probably won't think there's anything wrong with it. "Consecutively" is an adverb modifying the verb "to speak"-nothing to change there.

When you read the whole sentence, however, you're able to notice that because of the phrase "for twelve hours straight", "consecutively" is redundant. In the context of the full sentence, consecutively means "without stopping," and the phrase "for twelve hours straight" implies that she could speak that long without stopping. Therefore, the word "consecutively" is unnecessary and should be omitted.

If you didn't read the whole sentence, you might not notice the redundancy error and would most likely select A. However, since the word "consecutively" is unnecessary, the correct answer is D.

In addition, certain types of questions on the ACT require reading not just the sentence with the underlined section, but sentences before and after it as well. For example, you need the context provided by multiple sentences to answer some verb tense and paragraph order questions as well.

Strategy 10: Experiment with Passage Strategies and Find the Best One for You

The format of ACT English is unlike any high school English test most students have seen before. As a result, many students don't intuitively know which method of approaching the passages will be the most effective for them.

Because you're already scoring at a high level, I can't say with 100% accuracy which approach will work best for you. You're aiming for a perfect English score, which means that if your strategy doesn't perfectly line up with your strengths and weaknesses, you'll make mistakes or run out of time.

Rather than prescribing you one strategy that you must use for ACT English passages, then, I'll instead go through what ways of approaching the passage are the most effective. You can then try the different strategies out and see which one leads to the highest score for you.

Passage Method 1: Graf-by-Graf

Though every student is different, this is the one strategy that we recommend everyone at least tries. Here it is:

Read through the passage one paragraph at a time.

After each paragraph, answer the questions referring to that paragraph. Skip if you can't answer a question within 30 seconds.

Repeat for each succeeding paragraph.

The great part about this strategy is that it both gives you a clear sense of the passage and forces you to read through whole sentences before answering questions about them.

The only drawback is that going graf-by-graf can be a little time-consuming, so if you struggle with running out of time on ACT English, you might want to consider one of the other passage methods. Definitely try going graf-by-graf first, though-you might be pleasantly surprised by how well it works for you!

Passage Method 2: Answer as You Go

Many students gravitate to this method by default because it's both straightforward and quick. We don't recommend it as our top method, however, because of its potential pitfalls.

Here's the method:

Start reading through the passage.

When you come to an underlined word, phrase, or sentence, continue reading past it to the end of the sentence.

Answer the question about the underlined word, phrase, or sentence, then move on.

The answer-as-you-go method is great if you're using the graf-by-graf approach but keep running out of time with just a few questions left or if you find yourself distracted or overwhelmed by multiple hops back and forth between the same paragraph and different questions.

Unfortunately, this method does have one major drawback: you won't get as thorough a perspective on a question's context, which makes answering questions about transitions or the paragraph as a whole more challenging. It can also fail completely if you don't always read to the end of the sentence (for the importance of this, see Strategy 9).

Passage Method 3: Sentence-by-Sentence

In this approach, you only read the sentences of the passage that include underlined words, phrases, or sentences.

If you're running out of time with a lot of questions left over when you use the graf-by-graf method, this strategy might be a good option for you. The key to using this method is that you always have to read the entire sentence.

Even if you do execute this method perfectly, however, it suffers from the same drawbacks as answering as you go: if you read through the passage a sentence at a time, you won't get as clear an understanding of the overall structure and context of the passage, which makes answering rhetorical skills questions more difficult. We don't recommend using this method if you're aiming for a score higher than a 25.

Passage Method 4: Read the Passage First

The final ACT English passage approach we recommend is skimming the entire passage first, then going back through sentence-by-sentence to answer the questions.

Of all the approaches to the ACT English passage, this is the most thorough. If you find yourself missing most of the macro logic or big picture questions because you didn't really understand the passage as a whole, this strategy could be a good fit for you.

For most students, however, this approach is more trouble (and time) than it's worth-the graf-by-graf method is usually sufficient for answering macro logic questions and is much more time effective.

Choose Which Method Works Best for You

While we do recommend the graf-by-graf method as a starting point for most students, we can't predict which method will be most effective for you. To figure this out for yourself, you need some cold, hard data about your ACT English performance.

Try out each method on at least one (and preferably two) sample passages each, then compare your performance on each. If one method is a clear winner for you, go with it; if not, choose the method that's the most comfortable for you.

Once you've tried out all the passage approach strategies and figured out which one works best for you, you must use it consistently with every ACT English practice passage and test. These strategies all depend on teaching you to approach passages methodically, which means that they will only be effective if you use them every single time.

In Overview

Those are the main strategies I have for you to improve your ACT English score to a 36. If you're scoring above a 26 right now, with hard work and smart studying, you can raise it to a perfect English score.

Even though we covered a lot of strategies, the main point is still this: you need to understand where you're falling short, and drill those weaknesses continuously. You need to be thoughtful about your mistakes and leave no mistake ignored.

One last tip: try to keep a steady head while you're taking the test. It's really easy to start doubting yourself because you know you need a near-perfect raw score. Even if you're unsure about two questions in a row, try to treat every question as its own independent test. If you start doubting yourself, you'll perform worse, and the worse you perform, the more you doubt yourself.

Avoid this negative spiral of doubt and concentrate on being confident. You'll have studied a lot, and you'll do great on this test.

Keep reading for more resources on how to boost your ACT score.

What's Next?

We have a lot more useful guides to raise your ACT score.

Read our accompanying guides on how to get a 36 on ACT Math and how to get a 36 on ACT Reading.

Better yet, read my high-level guide on how to score a perfect 36 on the entire test.

Learn how to write a perfect-scoring 12 ACT essay, step by step. We also have a rough index to all ACT Prep info here.

Want to improve your ACT score by 4 points? We have the industry's leading ACT prep program. Built by Harvard grads and ACT full scorers, the program learns your strengths and weaknesses through advanced statistics, then customizes your prep program to you so you get the most effective prep possible.

I built the PrepScholar program based on the principles in this article-the principles that worked for me and thousands of our students.
Check out our 5-day free trial today:

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How to Get 36 on ACT English: 10 Strategies From a Perfect Scorer

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Are you scoring in the 26-34 range on ACT English? Do you want to raise that score as high as possible-to a perfect 36? Getting to a 36 ACT English score isn't easy. It'll require near perfection and mastery of both grammar rules and rhetorical skills.

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How I Scored a 30+ on My ACT I ACT Tips & Tricks

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Hello, loves! Today I'm sharing my tips and tricks on how I scored above a 30 on my ACT! I hope you enjoy! If you did, make sure you give this video a BIG thumbs up! Subscribe: https://goo.gl/sUivDp -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Does Your College Require the ACT essay?

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5 ways to improve your act score

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Our ACT Test Prep gives you the tools you need to test with confidence. From full-length practice tests and answer key to focused tutorials and smart test taking strategies, we help you get ready to do well.

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ACT Grammar - Top Punctuation Rules(HD) - Brightstorm ACT Prep

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ACT Grammar - Top Punctuation Rules(HD) - Brightstorm ACT Prep

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https://youtu.be/Hp2cbK5vO9U

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18 ACT Tips and Tricks to Improve Your Score

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Need quick ACT tips and tricks to improve your score? Get our tips in ACT Math, Science, English, and Reading to boost your ACT score quickly.

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Taking the SAT? ACT? Watch our quick SAT and ACT Test Prep Tips video to get inspired!

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Family with 3 perfect scores shares tips.

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Family with 3 perfect scores shares tips.

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This is a great article. It shares tips not only how to study for the Act but also how to broaden your knowledge on life. It has tips on how to increase your knowledge on things you will need later.

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I was still half asleep when Stefan raced into my room, "I just checked my ACT scores online and I got a perfect score! But," he confessed, "I also opened the cereal box from the wrong end this morning. So I'm not really all that."

We've had three happy mornings like that over the last five years and FAR more boxes opened incorrectly than I can count.

When you have three kids in a row who receive a perfect score on the SAT/ACT test, people clamor for advice. I'm happy to share, but you should know a perfect score doesn't guarantee acceptance into Harvard or even a mention at your school's senior awards night. And it doesn't make you a better, nicer person, but the path to get there might help with that.

A perfect score will boost your odds of acceptance to hundreds of excellent schools, garner excellent scholarships and guarantee you'll be teased for every dumb thing you do for the rest of your life-- "And you're supposed to be soooo smart!"

While the elusive 1600 or 36 isn't a wise goal for a lot of people, improving test scores remains a primary concern for college bound teens. Focusing too much on standardized tests can take time away from the activities that really make a student shine: music, sports, AP classes, IB, drama, service, student government, etc. But boosting those number by even a few points can make the difference between acceptance and rejection.

I've compiled two lists for your test prep enjoyment. The first offers long term ideas for parents and kids of all ages, the second for students taking the SAT/ACT in the next two weeks to six months.

Cultivate kindness. Ask any of my kids their top school advice and they'll respond, "Be kind. Be kind. Be kind." Our schools are full of overstressed, overscheduled, lonely kids who shiver for a compliment or sympathetic word. Say 'hello' to people in the halls, seek out lonely students at lunch, take time to talk to friends who've had a bad day. A stack of awards and scholarships don't mean a thing if you haven't made your school a happier place.

And while you're making friends...

Become buddies with Sal Khan. If you haven't checked out khanacademy.org, head over there right now and set up an account for everyone in your family. Khan Academy provides "a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere." Whether you're in high school or preschool, start with Early Math and work your way through. Why start at the beginning? Because you probably had the flu for a week in second grade or spaced off when turning decimals into percentages was explained. Every one of my kids found elementary concepts they'd missed and, as my 15-year-old says, "You just get better at understanding the questions."

In addition to math, Khan Academy offers classes in science & engineering, computing, arts & humanities, economics & finance and test prep (including 11 AP classes).

Maybe you think there's no way your kid will spend time on a math site? Khan Academy is strangely addictive. Kids earn badges and points and as 13-year-old Mary says, "It just makes you feel smart." Sal explains everything beautifully and his automated videos never grow impatient when you need something explained over and over.

Learn to juggle. Or ride a unicycle, or learn card tricks or solve a Rubik's Cube. The confidence kids gain from learning new skills carries over into academic learning. Simply deciding, "I can do anything" changes everything.

Take hard classes. I talk to a lot of teens who sign up for easier classes in order to maintain their grade point average. I feel your pain. The advanced teachers are often the hardest to please, so taking rigorous classes poses a double threat to the GPA. But those demanding classes prepare a student for standardized tests better than any last-minute cramming. All my boys are also AP National Scholars-- which means they scored 4 or better on 8 AP tests. There's no coincidence. Tough classes prepare kids for tough tests.

Buy books. Everyone knows reading expands your vocabulary and increases empathy for others. You've read all the studies and worn a path to your local library. But don't forget to buy books. Research proves book owners have smarter children and there's even a study that found giving 12 books to underprivileged kids offers more benefits than summer school. When families own books they are much more likely to all read them and discuss concepts and characters (which is where the real learning begins!). Thanks to used book stores, school discount orders, library sales and the nation's current obsession with decluttering, assembling a library of classics and favorites for your family can be done at very little cost. Buy digital books if you must, but there's nothing quite like the real thing.

Binge on YouTube videos. Along with a whole lot of nothing, YouTube hosts some of the richest educational sources in the world. When my kids are tired from a long day, they turn on TedEd, Extra History, SmarterEveryDay and MinutePhysics, as well as Studio C, Jimmy Fallon and anything featuring Lin-Manuel Miranda.

Subscribe to the Newspaper. Sure, you've switched to reading news on your phone or your laptop. You're saving the planet from paper waste and reading about events minutes after they occur. But your kids aren't reading the news online. The old-fashioned paper offers multiple rewards to learners. Simply by opening the paper, kids are exposed to new ideas, information about other countries, advanced vocabulary, sports stats, crossword puzzles, etc. Besides, childhood without the comics is just SAD.

Choose good schools. It's worth moving across town or driving daily to good schools. Not simply because they offer superior programs and dedicated teachers, but because your kids will be joining other kids who make learning a priority. Take advantage of positive peer pressure.

Make good use of time. I'm the last person who would make a kid spend hours on a workbook or math website. Kids should be playing outside, joining teams, volunteering with service clubs and playing Mario Kart. But there are plenty of opportunities to learn during the day. Fairly often, my kids' teachers say, "I don't have anything else today. You can play on your phones for the rest of class." As a parent, you can choose to be horrified by this or to teach your kids to take advantage of that time to do homework, study a language on Duolingo, or use a school computer to practice math on Khan Academy. My 7th grade daughter finished all of 8th grade math simply by taking advantage of 'play time' at school.

Work it out. Fit kids = smarter kids. It's that simple. Make sure your kids are getting plenty of physical activity even in the off season. Invest in a pull-up bar, a few hand weights and be ready and willing to walk, run, bike, ski and hike with your kids.

Play an instrument. Learn a language. Music and languages may be losing funding in our schools, but pursuing these classical education skills literally wires the brain to learn. Besides, some of the nicest kids hang out in orchestra and Mandarin class.

OK, along with eating dinner together and watching PBS, these ideas create a foundation for kids who love to learn. But as you get closer to the test it's worth focusing on a few specifics:

Throw your money at your kids. Conscientious parents often want to throw money at SAT/ACT prep companies and programs. Some kids need personalized tutoring but others will learn better at their own pace from a book and the free tests offered on SAT/ACT websites than they will in a class. If you have the money to spend, consider buying a book for $10-20 and offering your kids the difference. You can choose whether to reward them for time spent, tests completed or an increase in score. The Official guides, Barron's and Princeton Review test prep books are all excellent.

Take and then retake. Study all you like, but most teens won't get a good sense of the test until they take it in a formal setting with time constraints. If you're happy with your score then celebrate and shred your study books. But if you don't score as well as you'd hoped, take the time to analyze your scores a bit. Are you struggling with math, science, English? Focus your study time on your weaker areas and just do a quick review on the others. Test-taking wisdom decrees a limit of three times for test takers, but you're an individual. You know if you did your very best on the second time and can't do better. You'll also know if you've taken the test four times but really haven't hit your stride. One of my sons earned his perfect score on the first try, the other two tested three and four times.

Make sleep a priority. A tired brain is a stupid brain. It can be REALLY hard to sleep well the night before a big test. So follow the marathoner's tactic-- bank your sleep for weeks ahead of time. At least ten days before the test, go to bed an hour earlier and schedule more time to sleep on weekends. Get extra sleep ahead of time and you won't need to worry the night before. In fact, just removing that worry might help you get your zzzzs.

Get fishy. I can't remember how many years ago I read about fish making you smarter, but we've followed the advice at our house ever since. Bon Appetit adds leafy greens, berries, walnuts and turmeric to the list. I don't know how many pounds of fish you need to eat to increase your SAT/ACT score, but just the psychological boost of "I'm eating brain building fish" gives kids confidence for big tests.

Pray and cross yourself. I'm not Catholic and I'm not kidding. Taking time to pray or meditate will clear you mind and help you remember the things you've studied. Hey, you're not asking for a miracle, just for clarity. As for crossing yourself, numerous studies prove the brain wakes up when you cross the midline of your body. When you get stumped on a problem, take a few seconds to touch your opposite shoulder, or pull on your ears with the opposite hand. You'll want to save those cross body jumping jacks for another time, but even simple movements will help your brain during a test.

Once the test ends, take some time to relax and have fun. And when those scores arrive a few weeks later, be careful not to assign too much value to high or low numbers. Numbers don't quantify the worth of a human being or predict future success.

No matter what your score looks like, your preparation increases your ability to learn, your resilience and your curiosity. Wherever you go to college and whatever you might pursue, those qualities will serve you well.

Most likely, you'll continue to do brilliant and stupid things for the rest of your life. But watch those cereal boxes - those can be tricky.
Related video: This post comes from the TODAY Parenting Team community, where all members are welcome to post and discuss parenting solutions. Learn more and join us! Because we're all in this together.

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ACT/SAT Test Prep Tips from a Family With Three Perfect Scores

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I was still half asleep when Stefan raced into my room, "I just checked my ACT scores online and I got a perfect score! But," he confessed, "I also opened the cereal box from the wrong end this morning. So I'm not really all that."

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-4tH1oSXTI

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The reason why I chose this video because it gives you step by step explanation on how the ACT will be and how you can prep for it.

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Best ACT English Prep Strategies, Tips, and Tricks - 4 Key Things to Know About the ACT English Test

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Visit http://bestactprep.co to increase your ACT score even more! Full course - http://bestactprep.org/actcourse! In this video series, we talk about the best strategies for the ACT English test. Here, we provide an introduction to and overview of the ACT English test, covering four key things you should know about this test.

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most importantThings to know about ACT english

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most importantThings to know about ACT english

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https://www.brightstorm.com/test-prep/act/overview/

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Test prep for SAT, ACT, PSAT and AP videos - Brightstorm

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Time-saving online SAT Prep, online ACT prep, PSAT prep, AP Calculus, AP Biology, AP US History and AP Government from Brightstorm.

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How to get a 36 on the english portion of the act

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How to get a 36 on the english portion of the act

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Are you scoring in the 26-34 range on ACT English? Do you want to raise that score as high as possible-to a perfect 36?

Getting to a 36 ACT English score isn't easy. It'll require near perfection and mastery of both grammar rules and rhetorical skills. But with hard work and my ACT English strategies below, you'll be able to do it. I've consistently scored 36 on English on my real ACTs, and I know what it takes. Follow my advice, and you'll get a perfect score-or get very close.

Brief note: This article is suited for students already scoring a 26 on ACT English or above. If you're below this range, my "How to Improve your ACT English Score to a 26" article is more appropriate for you. Follow the advice in that article, then come back to this one when you've reached a 26.

Overview

Most guides on the internet on how to get a 36 on ACT English are of pretty bad quality. They're often written by people who never scored a 36 themselves. You can tell because their advice is usually vague and not very pragmatic.

In contrast, I've written what I believe to be the best guide on getting a 36 available anywhere. I have confidence that these strategies work because I used them myself to score a perfect ACT English score consistently. They've also worked for thousands of my students at PrepScholar.
In this article, I'm going to discuss why scoring a 36 is a good idea and what it takes to score a 36. Then I'll go into the 10 critical ACT English strategies you need to get a perfect ACT English score.
Stick with me-as an advanced student, you probably already know that scoring high is good. But it's important to know why a 36 English score is useful, since this will fuel your motivation to get a high score.

In this guide, I'm going to talk about doing well on ACT English, rather than about raising your combined English/Language Arts score. The reason is that schools typically care much more about your ACT composite score rather than your subscores and ELA score. However, I'll still touch upon how to raise your essay score at the end.

Final note: In this guide, I talk mainly about getting to a 36. But if your goal is a 34, these strategies still equally apply.

Understand the Stakes: Why a 36 ACT English?

Let's make something clear: for all intents and purposes, a 34 on an ACT is equivalent to a perfect 36. No top college is going to give you more credit for a 36 than a 34. You've already crossed their score threshold, and whether you get in now depends on the rest of your application.

So if you're already scoring a 34, don't waste your time studying trying to get a 36. You're already set for the top colleges, and it's time to work on the rest of your application.

But if you're scoring a 33 or below AND you want to go to a top 10 college, it's worth your time to push your score up to a 34 or above. There's a big difference between a 32 and a 34, largely because it's easy to get a 32 (and a lot more applicants do) and a lot harder to get a 34.

A 33 places you right around average at Harvard and Princeton, and being average is bad in terms of admissions, since the admissions rate is typically below 10%.

So why get a 36 on ACT English? Because it helps you compensate for weaknesses in other sections. By and large, schools consider your ACT composite score more than your individual section scores. If you can get a 36 in ACT English, that gives you more flexibility in your Math, Reading, and Science scores. It can compensate for a 32 in one other section, for example, and bring your average back up to 34.

Princeton's 75th percentile score for ACT English is likely 36.

Even though schools don't typically release their ACT scores by section, they do release SAT section scores. As a stand-in for ACT English, we can take a look at SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing scores at top schools. (I know ACT English and SAT EBRW don't totally overlap, but you do need to be good at reading and writing to score highly on ACT English.)

Here are a few examples. For Harvard, Princeton, Yale, and Dartmouth, the 75th percentile SAT Evidence-Based Reading and Writing score is an 800 or 790. That means at least 25% of all students at these schools have a 790 in SAT EBRW, or a 36 on ACT English.

But if you can work your way to a 36, you show that you're at an equal level (at least on this metric). Even if it takes you a ton of work, all that matters is the score you achieve at the end.

Know That You Can Do It

This isn't just some fuzzy feel-good message you see on the back of a milk carton.

I mean, literally, you and every other reasonably intelligent student can score a 36 on ACT English.

The reason most people don't is they don't try hard enough or they don't study the right way.

Even if language isn't your strongest suit, or you got a B+ in AP English, you're capable of this.

Because I know that more than anything else, your ACT score is a reflection of how hard you work and how smartly you study.

ACT English Is Designed to Trick You - You Need to Learn How

Here's why: the ACT is a weird test. When you take it, don't you get the sense that the questions are nothing like what you've seen in school?

You've learned grammar before in school. You know some basic grammar rules. But the ACT questions just seem so much weirder.

It's purposely designed this way. The ACT can't test difficult concepts, because this would be unfair for students who never took AP English. It can't ask you to decompose Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov. The ACT is a national test, which means it needs a level playing field for all students around the country.

So it has to test concepts that all high school students will cover, like subject-verb agreement, run-on sentences, pronoun choice, etc. You've learned all of this throughout school.

But the ACT still has to make the test difficult, so it needs to test these concepts in strange ways. This trips up students who don't prepare, but it rewards students who understand the test well.

Tricky ACT English Example Question

Here's an example: find the grammar error in this sentence:

The commissioner, along with his 20 staff members, run a tight campaign against the incumbent.

This is a classic ACT English problem.

The error is in subject/verb agreement. The subject of the sentence is commissioner, which is singular. The verb is "run," but because the subject is singular, it should really be "runs."

At your level, you probably saw the error. But if you didn't, you fell for a classic ACT English trap. It purposely confused you with the interrupting phrase, "along with his 20 staff members." You're now picturing 20 people in a campaign-which suggests a plural verb!

The ACT English section is full of examples like this, and they get trickier. Nearly every grammar rule is tested in specific ways, and if you don't prepare for these, you're going to do a lot worse than you should.

Here's the good news: this might have been confusing the first time, but the next time you see a question like this, you'll know exactly what to do: find the subject and the verb, and get rid of the interrupting phrase.

So to improve your ACT English score, you just need to:

Learn the grammar rules that the ACT tests.

Study how the ACT tests these grammar rules and learn how to detect which grammar rule you need in a question.

Practice on a lot of questions so you learn from your mistakes.

I'll go into more detail about exactly how to do this. First, let's see how many questions you need to get right to get a perfect score.

What It Takes to Get a 36 in English

If we have a target score in mind, it helps to understand what you need to get that score on the actual test.

As you probably know, writing combines your raw score on the multiple choice section with your essay score to give your final English score out of 36.

Here's a sample raw score to ACT English Score conversion table. (If you could use a refresher on how the ACT is scored and how raw scores are calculated, read this.)

Scaled Score English Raw Score

36

75

35

72-74

34

71

33

70

32

68-69

31

67

30

66

29

65

28

63-64

27

62

Source: ACT
In this grading scale, you can earn a 36 only if you get a perfect raw score of 75. In fact, I've never seen a grading scale where you can earn a 36 after missing one question.

The curve is also typically quite unforgiving. If you miss one question, you drop down to a 35. Miss two, and sometimes you drop down to a 34.
Thus, perfection is really important for ACT English. On every practice test, you need to aim for a perfect raw score for a 36.
It's pretty clear then that you need to try to answer every question. You can't guess on too many questions and get a 36, which means you need to get to a level of mastery where you're confident answering each question.

Whatever you're scoring now, take note of the difference you need to get to a 36. For example, if you're scoring a 30 now, you need to answer nine more questions right to get to a 36.

As a final example, here's a screenshot from my ACT test, showing that I scored a perfect raw score and a 36 on ACT English.

OK-so we've covered why scoring a higher English score is important, why you specifically are capable of improving your score, and the raw score you need to get to your target.
Now we'll get into the meat of the article: actionable strategies that you should use in your own studying to maximize your score improvement.
Strategies to Get a 36 on ACT English

What's your greatest weakness?

Strategy 1: Understand Your High Level Weakness - Content or Time Management?

Every student has different flaws in ACT English. Some people aren't comfortable with the underlying grammar material. Others know the grammar rules well, but can't solve questions quickly enough in the harsh time limit.

(As we'll discuss, the ACT English section applies VERY heavy time pressure. So you likely do suffer from some time pressure-we're trying to figure out how much)

Here's how you can figure out which one applies more to you:

For that section, use a timer for 45 minutes. Treat it like a real test.

If time runs out and you're not done yet, keep working for as long as you need. But starting now, for every new answer or answer that you change, mark it with a special note as "Extra Time."

Grade your test using the answer key and score chart, but we want two scores: 1) The Realistic score you got under normal timing conditions, 2) The Extra Time score. This is why you marked the questions you answered or changed during Extra Time.

Get what we're doing here? By marking which questions you did under Extra Time, we can figure out what score you got if you were given all the time you needed. This will help us figure out where your weaknesses lie.

If you didn't take any extra time, then your Extra Time score is the same as your Realistic score.

Here's a flowchart to help you figure this out:
Was your Extra Time score a 32 or above?
If NO (Extra Time score < 32), then you have remaining content weaknesses. You might have weaknesses across a range of subjects, or a deep weakness in only a few subjects. (We'll cover this later). Your first plan of attack should be to develop more comfort with all ACT English subjects.
If YES (Extra Time score > 32), then: Was your Realistic score a 32 or above?
If NO (Extra Time score > 32, Realistic < 32), then that means you have a difference between your Extra Time score and your Realistic score. If this difference is more than two points, then you have some big problems with time management. We need to figure out why this is. Are you generally slow at English across most questions? Or did particular passages or types of questions slow you down? Generally, doing a lot of practice questions and learning the most efficient solutions will help reduce your time. More on this later.

If YES (both Extra Time and Realistic scores > 32), then you have a really good shot at getting a 36. Compare your Extra Time and Realistic score-if they differed by more than one point, then you would benefit from learning how to answer questions more quickly. If not, then you likely can benefit from shoring up on your last content weaknesses and avoiding careless mistakes (more on this strategy later).

Hopefully that makes sense. Typically I see that students have both timing and content issues, but you might find that one is much more dominant for you than the other. For example, if you can get a 36 with extra time, but score a 32 in regular time, you know exactly that you need to work on time management to get a 36.

Strategy 2: Comprehensively Learn the Grammar Rules

There's just no way around it. You need to know all the grammar rules tested on the test and how they work.

In addition, you'll also need to know rhetorical skills that test you in your writing logic. You'll be asked to decide how to organize sentences and paragraphs together.

Certain grammar rules, like punctuation, appear far more often than other rules. But because we're going for perfection, you'll need to know even the less common rules.

In our PrepScholar program, we've identified the following as the grammar and rhetorical skills you need to know:

Grammar Rules

Punctuation: Commas, Apostrophes, Semicolons, Dashes

Number Agreement: Subject/Verb Agreement, Pronoun Number Agreement

Idioms and Wrong Word (Examples: affect/effect, neither...nor, there/their/they're)

Parallel Construction

Verb Forms: Tense, Conjugation

Conciseness: Eliminating waste from sentence phrasings

Sentence Fragments, Run-on Sentences

Pronouns: Pronoun Choice, Pronoun Case

Faulty Modifier

Comparison/Description

Rhetorical Skills

Macro Logic: How sentences and paragraphs fit together

Transitional Logic: How to connect different thoughts together

Relevance: Determine whether a sentence is extraneous or fits in

Author Intent: Understand the point of the author and writing techniques

Formality and Tone

There are a lot of rules, but they differ from each other in how commonly they appear on the test, and how hard they are to study.

For example, Punctuation is the most common grammar rule on ACT English, but it only uses a few separate concepts. The Idioms skill is also very common, but it uses a wide range of idioms, such that each unique idiom appears no more than once on each test.

It's therefore important for you to focus your time on studying the highest impact grammar rules. Our PrepScholar program, for example, quizzes you in relation to how common each grammar rule is, so that you focus your efforts on the rules that make the biggest difference to your score.

Strategy 3: Do a Ton of Practice and Understand Every Single Mistake

On the path to perfection, you need to make sure every single one of your weak points is covered. Even one mistake on all of ACT English will knock you down from a 36.

The first step is simply to do a ton of practice. If you're studying from free materials or from books, you have access to a lot of practice questions in bulk. As part of our PrepScholar program, we have over 1,200 ACT questions customized to each skill.
The second step-and the more important part-is to be ruthless about understanding your mistakes.
Every mistake you make on a test happens for a reason. If you don't understand exactly why you missed that question, you will make that mistake over and over again.

I've seen students who completed 15 practice tests. They've solved over 3,000 questions, but they're still nowhere near a 36 on ACT English.

Why? They never understood their mistakes. They just hit their heads against the wall over and over again.

Think of yourself as an exterminator, and your mistakes are cockroaches. You need to eliminate every single one -and find the source of each one-or else the restaurant you work for will be shut down.
Here's what you need to do:

On every practice test or question set that you take, mark every question that you're even 20% unsure about

When you grade your test or quiz, review every single question that you marked, and every incorrect question. This way even if you guessed a question correctly, you'll make sure to review it.

In a notebook, write down the gist of the question, why you missed it, and what you'll do to avoid that mistake in the future. Have separate sections by grammar skill (eg Number Agreement, Idioms, Sentence Fragments)

It's not enough to just think about it and move on. It's not enough to just read the answer explanation. You have to think hard about why you specifically failed on this question.

By taking this structured approach to your mistakes, you'll now have a running log of every question you missed, and your reflection on why.
No excuses when it comes to your mistakes.
Always Go Deeper-WHY Did You Miss an English Question?

Now, what are some common reasons that you missed a question? Don't just say, "I didn't get this question right." That's a cop out.

Always take it one step further-what specifically did you miss, and what do you have to improve in the future?

Take the Subject/Verb Agreement example I gave above (with the Interrupting Phrase trick). You likely already know how Subject/Verb Agreement works. But if you missed that question, you'd need to think about why you missed it (because the interrupting phrase made you confuse the subject and verb). Then you need to write down a strategy for noticing this in the future.

Here are some examples of common reasons you miss an English question, and how you take the analysis one step further:

Content: I didn't learn the grammar rule needed to answer this question.

One step further: What specific rule do I need to learn, and what resources will I use to learn this grammar rule?

Overlooked Rule: I knew the grammar rule, but the ACT question was written in a way that made me miss it.

One step further: How do I solve the question now? Is there a strategy I can use to notice this grammar rule in the future?

Careless Error: I knew the grammar rule and normally would get this right, but I slipped up for some reason.

One step further: Why did I make this careless mistake? Was I rushing? Did I misread the question? What should I do in the future to avoid this?

Get the idea? You're really digging into understanding why you're missing questions.

Yes, this is hard, and it's draining, and it takes work. That's why most students who study ineffectively don't improve.

But you're different. Just by reading this guide, you're already proving that you care more than other students. And if you apply these principles and analyze your mistakes, you'll improve more than other students too.

Bonus: If all of this is making sense to you, you'd love our ACT prep program, PrepScholar.

We designed our program around the concepts in this article, because they actually work. When you start with PrepScholar, you'll take a diagnostic that will determine your weaknesses in over forty ACT skills. PrepScholar then creates a study program specifically customized for you.

To improve each skill, you'll take focused lessons dedicated to each skill, with over 20 practice questions per skill. This will train you for your specific area weaknesses, so your time is always spent most effectively to raise your score.

We also force you to focus on understanding your mistakes and learning from them. If you make the same mistake over and over again, we'll call you out on it.

There's no other prep system out there that does it this way, which is why we get better score results than any other program on the market.

Check it out today with a 5-day free trial:

Strategy 4: Justify Every Answer and Point Out Specific Grammar Errors

Many top students take a "soft approach" to ACT English. They learn the grammar rules when studying, but on the test they go "by ear": if a sentence sounds off, they'll assume it's wrong without thinking too hard about why.

When you've mastered grammar rules, this can serve you well. For example, if I said, "The bee fly to the hive," you'd know this was wrong instantly-it just feels wrong. You know simple subject/verb agreement so well that you can tell something is wrong before you can articulate what exactly it is.

However, most students never get to this level of familiarity with all ACT grammar rules. This makes trusting your ear unreliable for many rules.

This is especially true for wrong word choice, like "Its a good day to be an American." Because "its" sounds the same as "it's," your ear is of no help here!

What's the strategy to counter this? Point out the specific error, and justify it to yourself.

Let's run through an example. This is a grammar question that needs only one line from the passage to answer:

Here's what I'm thinking as I read the question (a stream of consciousness):

" 'The Sun sets gradually the images of a winged horse'...this doesn't seem right. I know 'sets' can take an object, like 'Tom sets the bowl down slowly,' but the Sun can't set anything down, and especially not images of a winged horse. This has got to be a run-on sentence, but let me keep reading. 'the images of a winged horse, a drinking gourd, a heartbroken hero appear in lights overhead.' Yep-the second part of this sentence is an independent clause, and it's a run-on because it's improperly connected to the first clause, 'The Sun sets gradually.' So I need an answer choice that fixes this:"

F: no change, which is wrong

G: this has a comma splice error-you can't connect two independent clauses with just a comma.

H: this looks good. It joins two independent clauses properly-with a comma and a conjunction ('and').

J: 'The Sun setting gradually' is now a dependent clause, but to join a dependent clause with an independent clause, you need a comma that's missing here. For example, 'The Sun setting gradually, we drove down the highway.' would be correct. Thus answer J is wrong.

Now, I'm not literally thinking all these words in my head, but it matches my thinking process as I go through the question and evaluate each answer choice.

You can see how I first identified the run-on sentence error in the original sentence. That made it very clear to me how I could find an answer choice that fixed this error.

As you learn the different grammar skills and how they appear on the test, you'll start evaluating answer choices for common ways that the ACT tries to trick you.

Is a verb underlined? I'm going to check the subject to see if it follows subject/verb agreement. Then I'll check the verb tense.

Is a pronoun underlined? I'm going to check the antecedent to see if it matches.

Does an underline come right after a comma? I'm going to check if there's a faulty modifier error.

I can justify every one of my answers because I know the grammar rules. This makes my answering more robust, not just based on whether something 'feels' right or wrong.

Note as well that in these questions, the ACT often fixes the original error in an answer choice-but then introduces another error. You need to make sure the answer you choose is 100% correct, in terms of both grammar and logic.

Don't be intimidated if you can't do this right now. With practice and reflection, you will get to this point.

Once again, it's like "the bee fly to the hive." You want to get to a point where all ACT grammar rules automatically sound as wrong as that sentence.

Find patterns to your mistakes, and make sense of the chaos.
Strategy 5: Find Patterns to Your Weaknesses and Drill Them

Remember Strategy 3 above about keeping a list of every mistake? You need to take this even one step further.

If you're like most students, you're better at some areas in ACT English than others. You might know pronouns really well, but you'll be weak in sentence constructions and fragments. Or maybe you really like parallel construction, but have no idea what faulty modifiers are.

This is especially true in grammar and ACT English, because some grammar mistakes likely sound obvious to you, but others are completely foreign.

If you're like most students, you also don't have an unlimited amount of time to study. You have a lot of schoolwork, you might be an athlete or have intense extracurriculars, and you have friends to hang out with.
This means for every hour you study for the ACT, it needs to be the most effective hour possible.
In concrete terms, you need to find your greatest areas of improvement and work on those.

Too many students study the 'dumb' way. They just buy a book and read it cover to cover. When they don't improve, they're shocked.

I'm not.

Studying effectively for the ACT isn't like painting a house. You're not trying to cover your bases with a very thin layer of understanding.

What these students did wrong was they wasted time on subjects they already knew well, and they didn't spend enough time improving their weak spots.

Instead, studying effectively for the ACT is like plugging up the holes of a leaky boat. You need to find the biggest hole, and fill it. Then you find the next biggest hole, and you fix that. Soon you'll find that your boat isn't sinking at all.

How does this relate to ACT English? In this analogy, your knowledge of English grammar is the leaky boat, and the holes are the gaps in your knowledge. You need to find the grammar rules you're struggling with the most, then do enough practice questions until they're no longer a weakness.
For every question that you miss, you need to identify the type of question it is and why you missed it. Once you discover patterns to the questions you miss, you then need to find extra practice for this grammar rule.
Let's say you analyze your past practice tests and questions and find that you're missing a lot of misplaced modifier questions. After you identify this pattern, the next step is to find good lesson material to teach yourself the main concepts behind what misplaced modifiers are and how to fix or avoid them. You'll also need to find more practice questions that test you on misplaced modifiers and drill until you're making few, if any, mistakes.

This is the best way for you to improve your English score.

Strategy 6: Be Careful With "No Change" Answers

In ACT English, most questions have a NO CHANGE option.

The ACT loves tricking students using these answer choices, because it knows that students who don't know grammar rules won't see anything wrong with the sentence. No Change is a really easy answer to choose.

No changes are one of the most common careless mistakes-make sure you don't fall for them.

Be very careful whenever you choose one of these No Change answer choices. Typically, these are correct answers around 25% of the time-not much more. (We actually went through and counted this in real tests). If you find that you're choosing No Change 40% of the time, you're definitely not detecting grammar errors well enough.

Every time you choose No Change, try to double-check the other answer choices to make sure you're not missing a grammar error. Especially take note of grammar rules that you tend to ignore mistakenly. Like I mentioned in Strategy 2 above, if you write down your mistakes and study your weaknesses, you'll be able to know which grammar rules you're weak at, and pay special attention to.

Personally, this was my most common careless mistake on ACT English. When I could see the error, I got the question correct nearly 100% of the time. The only times I missed questions were when I accidentally ignored an error.
I solved this by double-checking each of the answer choices to make sure I wasn't leaving any stone unturned.
Strategy 7: Think About Grammar in Everyday Life

Among all subjects, English on the ACT is special because it appears in your everyday life.

For school, you have to read a lot and you have to write a lot. Use these experiences as opportunities to notice grammar rules and sentence constructions.

This is unique to ACT English. ACT Math is so bizarre compared to everyday life that you won't just naturally find ways to apply the Pythagorean theorem at breakfast. ACT Reading and Science similarly require very specific skills when reading a passage or chart.

But you can practice your grammar skills throughout the day. Here are some ideas:

Proofread your friends' essays. Challenge yourself to uncover every grammatical error.

Read high quality, formal publications, like the New York Times or the Economist. These articles go through editors, so they rarely have grammar errors. You'll develop that ear for language I mentioned.

Notice common errors around you. A lot of people comma splice, for example.

Hold yourself to a higher standard in texting and messaging. (I know this isn't that cool-you don't have to capitalize every sentence and use periods, but at least use its/it's and their/there/they're correctly.)

The more you think about grammar as a fundamental skill rather than something specialized for ACT, the more natural it will feel to you.

Strategy 8: Finish With Extra Time and Double Check

Your goal at the end of all this work is to get so good at ACT English that you solve every question and have extra time left over at the end of the section to recheck your work.

In high school and even now, I can finish a 45 minute English section in 30 minutes or less. I then have 15 minutes left over to recheck my answers two times over.

As I've explained above, the best way to get faster is to get so fluent with ACT grammar that you rapidly zero in on the grammar mistakes without having to think hard about it.

Try to aim for a target of spending 40 seconds on average for each question. This gives you enough time to double-check comfortably.

What's the best way to double-check your work? I have a reliable method that I follow:

Double-check any questions you marked that you're unsure of. Try hard to eliminate those answer choices. If it's a No Change question, double-check that you're not missing any grammar mistakes.

If I'm 100% sure I'm right on a question, I mark it as such and never look at it again. If I'm not sure, I'll come back to it on the third pass.

At least two minutes before time's up, I rapidly double-check that I bubbled the answers correctly. I try to do this all at once so as not to waste time looking back and forth between the test book and the answer sheet. Go five at a time ("A G C F B") for more speed.

If you notice yourself spending more than 30 seconds on a problem and aren't clear how you'll get to the answer, skip and go to the next question. Even though you need a perfect raw score for a 36, don't be afraid to skip. You can come back to it later, and for now it's more important to get as many points as possible.

Quick Tip: Bubbling Answers
Here's a bubbling tip that will save you two minutes per section.
When I first started test taking in high school, I did what many students do: after I finished one question, I went to the bubble sheet and filled it in. Then I solved the next question. Finish question 1, bubble in answer 1. Finish question 2, bubble in answer 2. And so forth.

This actually wastes a lot of time. You're distracting yourself between two distinct tasks-solving questions, and bubbling in answers. This costs you time in both mental switching costs and in physically moving your hand and eyes to different areas of the test.

Here's a better method: solve all your questions first in the book, then bubble all of them in at once.

This has several huge advantages: you focus on each task one at a time, rather than switching between two different tasks. You also eliminate careless entry errors, like if you skip question 7 and bubble in question 8's answer into question 7's slot.

By saving just four seconds per question, you get back 300 seconds on a section that has 75 questions. This is huge.

Note: If you use this strategy, you should already be finishing the section with ample extra time to spare. Otherwise, you might run out of time before you have the chance to bubble in the answer choices all at once.

Strategy 9: Read the Whole Sentence

Most of the questions ACT English ask you the underlined part of a sentence should be changed. When you answer these questions, don't just read the underlined portion. To correctly answer the questions, you must read the whole sentence (or sentences, if the underlined section overlaps across two different sentences).

Phrases not included in the underlined portion of the sentence often provide information that's essential for deciding whether or not the underlined portion should be changed.

Let's go through another example from the ACT to see this strategy in action.

If you only read the underlined word, you probably won't think there's anything wrong with it. "Consecutively" is an adverb modifying the verb "to speak"-nothing to change there.

When you read the whole sentence, however, you're able to notice that because of the phrase "for twelve hours straight", "consecutively" is redundant. In the context of the full sentence, consecutively means "without stopping," and the phrase "for twelve hours straight" implies that she could speak that long without stopping. Therefore, the word "consecutively" is unnecessary and should be omitted.

If you didn't read the whole sentence, you might not notice the redundancy error and would most likely select A. However, since the word "consecutively" is unnecessary, the correct answer is D.

In addition, certain types of questions on the ACT require reading not just the sentence with the underlined section, but sentences before and after it as well. For example, you need the context provided by multiple sentences to answer some verb tense and paragraph order questions as well.

Strategy 10: Experiment with Passage Strategies and Find the Best One for You

The format of ACT English is unlike any high school English test most students have seen before. As a result, many students don't intuitively know which method of approaching the passages will be the most effective for them.

Because you're already scoring at a high level, I can't say with 100% accuracy which approach will work best for you. You're aiming for a perfect English score, which means that if your strategy doesn't perfectly line up with your strengths and weaknesses, you'll make mistakes or run out of time.

Rather than prescribing you one strategy that you must use for ACT English passages, then, I'll instead go through what ways of approaching the passage are the most effective. You can then try the different strategies out and see which one leads to the highest score for you.

Passage Method 1: Graf-by-Graf

Though every student is different, this is the one strategy that we recommend everyone at least tries. Here it is:

Read through the passage one paragraph at a time.

After each paragraph, answer the questions referring to that paragraph. Skip if you can't answer a question within 30 seconds.

Repeat for each succeeding paragraph.

The great part about this strategy is that it both gives you a clear sense of the passage and forces you to read through whole sentences before answering questions about them.

The only drawback is that going graf-by-graf can be a little time-consuming, so if you struggle with running out of time on ACT English, you might want to consider one of the other passage methods. Definitely try going graf-by-graf first, though-you might be pleasantly surprised by how well it works for you!

Passage Method 2: Answer as You Go

Many students gravitate to this method by default because it's both straightforward and quick. We don't recommend it as our top method, however, because of its potential pitfalls.

Here's the method:

Start reading through the passage.

When you come to an underlined word, phrase, or sentence, continue reading past it to the end of the sentence.

Answer the question about the underlined word, phrase, or sentence, then move on.

The answer-as-you-go method is great if you're using the graf-by-graf approach but keep running out of time with just a few questions left or if you find yourself distracted or overwhelmed by multiple hops back and forth between the same paragraph and different questions.

Unfortunately, this method does have one major drawback: you won't get as thorough a perspective on a question's context, which makes answering questions about transitions or the paragraph as a whole more challenging. It can also fail completely if you don't always read to the end of the sentence (for the importance of this, see Strategy 9).

Passage Method 3: Sentence-by-Sentence

In this approach, you only read the sentences of the passage that include underlined words, phrases, or sentences.

If you're running out of time with a lot of questions left over when you use the graf-by-graf method, this strategy might be a good option for you. The key to using this method is that you always have to read the entire sentence.

Even if you do execute this method perfectly, however, it suffers from the same drawbacks as answering as you go: if you read through the passage a sentence at a time, you won't get as clear an understanding of the overall structure and context of the passage, which makes answering rhetorical skills questions more difficult. We don't recommend using this method if you're aiming for a score higher than a 25.

Passage Method 4: Read the Passage First

The final ACT English passage approach we recommend is skimming the entire passage first, then going back through sentence-by-sentence to answer the questions.

Of all the approaches to the ACT English passage, this is the most thorough. If you find yourself missing most of the macro logic or big picture questions because you didn't really understand the passage as a whole, this strategy could be a good fit for you.

For most students, however, this approach is more trouble (and time) than it's worth-the graf-by-graf method is usually sufficient for answering macro logic questions and is much more time effective.

Choose Which Method Works Best for You

While we do recommend the graf-by-graf method as a starting point for most students, we can't predict which method will be most effective for you. To figure this out for yourself, you need some cold, hard data about your ACT English performance.

Try out each method on at least one (and preferably two) sample passages each, then compare your performance on each. If one method is a clear winner for you, go with it; if not, choose the method that's the most comfortable for you.

Once you've tried out all the passage approach strategies and figured out which one works best for you, you must use it consistently with every ACT English practice passage and test. These strategies all depend on teaching you to approach passages methodically, which means that they will only be effective if you use them every single time.

In Overview

Those are the main strategies I have for you to improve your ACT English score to a 36. If you're scoring above a 26 right now, with hard work and smart studying, you can raise it to a perfect English score.

Even though we covered a lot of strategies, the main point is still this: you need to understand where you're falling short, and drill those weaknesses continuously. You need to be thoughtful about your mistakes and leave no mistake ignored.

One last tip: try to keep a steady head while you're taking the test. It's really easy to start doubting yourself because you know you need a near-perfect raw score. Even if you're unsure about two questions in a row, try to treat every question as its own independent test. If you start doubting yourself, you'll perform worse, and the worse you perform, the more you doubt yourself.

Avoid this negative spiral of doubt and concentrate on being confident. You'll have studied a lot, and you'll do great on this test.

Keep reading for more resources on how to boost your ACT score.

What's Next?

We have a lot more useful guides to raise your ACT score.

Read our accompanying guides on how to get a 36 on ACT Math and how to get a 36 on ACT Reading.

Better yet, read my high-level guide on how to score a perfect 36 on the entire test.

Learn how to write a perfect-scoring 12 ACT essay, step by step. We also have a rough index to all ACT Prep info here.

Want to improve your ACT score by 4 points? We have the industry's leading ACT prep program. Built by Harvard grads and ACT full scorers, the program learns your strengths and weaknesses through advanced statistics, then customizes your prep program to you so you get the most effective prep possible.

I built the PrepScholar program based on the principles in this article-the principles that worked for me and thousands of our students.
Check out our 5-day free trial today:

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How to Get 36 on ACT English: 10 Strategies From a Perfect Scorer

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Are you scoring in the 26-34 range on ACT English? Do you want to raise that score as high as possible-to a perfect 36? Getting to a 36 ACT English score isn't easy. It'll require near perfection and mastery of both grammar rules and rhetorical skills.