1. Major categories of test
Act: English & reading
Major categories of test

2. english

3. Usage and mechanics Punctuation (10-15% of questions)
Unnecessary commas
Parenthetical elements & commas
Commas for ambiguity and series
Apostrophes
Colons & semicolons

4. Usage and mechanics, cont’d
USAGE CONVENTIONS (15-20% OF QUESTIONS)
Adjectives & adverbs
Pronoun-antecedent agreement
Comparative & superlative
Pronouns
Confusing pairs
Subject-verb agreement
Forming verbs
Idiom
Prepositions

5. Usage and mechanics, cont’d
SENTENCE STRUCTURE & FORMATION (20-25% OF QUESTIONS)
sentence structure disturbances
Relative pronouns
Verb tense & pronoun person
Faulty coordination & subordination
BD B6D
Fragments & run-ons
Misplaced modifiers & phrases
Parallelism
Participial phrases

6. Rhetorical skills Topic development (15-20% of questions)
Accomplish purpose
Identify purpose
Relevance
Writer’s goal

7. Rhetorical skills, cont’d
Organization, unity, and cohesion (10-15% of questions)
Introductions & conclusions
Paragraph division
Paragraph sequence
Sentence placement
Sentence sequence
transitions

8. Rhetorical skills, cont’d
Knowledge of language (15-20% of questions)
Conjunctions
Redundancy
Style & tone
Vague & clumsy writing
Word choice

9. reading

10. Top five act reading categories
Close reading 30-35% of questions)
Paraphrase
Locate
Draw conclusions

11. Top five reading categories, cont’d
Central ideas, themes & summaries (15-20% of questions)
Central ideas & themes
Summarize key ideas and details

12. Top five reading categories, cont’d
Word meaning & word choice (15-20% of questions)
Analyze word & phrase choices
Interpret words & phrases

13. Top five reading categories, cont’d
Purpose & point of view (10-15% of questions)
Intent & purpose
Point of view

14. Top five reading categories, cont’d
Text structure (5-10% of questions)
Analyze structure
Function
Relate to passage as a whole