1. Strategies for Taking the ACT English Test

2. Pace Yourself!
If you spend 1.5 minutes skimming through each essay, you have 30 seconds to respond to each question.
A different way to think of this is spending a maximum of 9 minutes for each essay and its questions.

3. Know the writing style used!
You have to take into account the writing style used for each essay.
Some essays will be anecdotes or narratives written from an informal, first person point of view.
Others will be more formal essays. These are scholarly or informative in nature and are written in the third person.
Style questions do not ask you to answer based on grammatical correctness, but on consistency of style and tone of the piece.

4. Consider the Context
Skim the essay and the questions before you try to answer.
This can help give you a general sense of the essay before answering questions about writing strategy and style.
If questions exist regarding the order of sentences in a paragraph or about the order of paragraphs in the essay, it will help to answer those questions first.

5. The connotations of words
Don’t just focus on the denotation (dictionary definition) of words.
Pay attention to the way the word is used and the feeling it conveys. This may make the word choice a poor one.
Ex. – the difference between car and jalopy.