You’ll use this three-step method for every question that includes an underlined part of the passage and for most questions that appear with a question stem:
Recall the timing for the English test: You have to get through five passages, including a total of 75 questions, in 45 minutes. You need to work efficiently to get through all the questions, and the first step of the Kaplan Method addresses the efficiency challenge. Step 1 of the method provides an alternative to the approach that’s recommended in the directions for the ACT English test. Those directions include the words, “Read each passage through once before you begin to answer the questions that accompany it.”
Our advice, on the other hand, is to answer each question as soon as you’ve read far enough in the passage to do so. Let’s look in detail at Step 1 of the Kaplan Method. It says, “Read until you have enough information to identify the issue.” What do you think “the issue” means here? You might be tempted to say “the error,” but remember that for some English questions “NO CHANGE” will be the best answer. Not every ACT English question includes an underlined part of the passage, and even for a question that does, the underlined portion is not necessarily wrong. Therefore, instead of reading the passage and looking for an error, think about what issue the question is testing. In other words, “the issue” is the reason that the test maker included the question.
Right now, you may feel as though you have no idea what issues are likely to be tested in the English section. The ACT is a standardized test, so it covers predictable issues. With practice, you can know what to expect. The information in the English Overview chapter includes rules and guidelines that are tested on the ACT. To succeed on the ACT English section, you don’t need to know every rule in the grammar book. You only need to know what issues are tested and how to recognize them as they appear on the ACT.
Now that you know what “the issue” refers to in Step 1 of the Kaplan Method for ACT English, let’s look at how you know when you’ve read far enough in the passage to identify the issue. Consider the following excerpt from an ACT English passage, in the standard form. Question 1 asks you to identify which of the four choices would fit best in the sentence. Question 2 asks you to identify the sentence that would fit best in the rest of the paragraph. Read until you have enough information to identify the issue (Step 1), and then skip down to the explanation.
Which of the following is the most effective first sentence for this paragraph?
If you stopped reading at the end of the first sentence, terrific! The underlined part comes in the middle of the sentence. It should be pretty easy to determine that reading through to the end of the sentence is enough here. Can you tell what the issue is? On the ACT, an underlined comma in the middle of a sentence is often a clue that sentence structure is the issue. Indeed, that is the case here; the sentence as written is a run-on.
Now that you’ve identified the issue, move on to Step 2 of the Kaplan Method for ACT English. Step 2 is to eliminate answer choices that don’t address the issue. Can you spot any other answer choices that, like A, create a run-on sentence by using a comma? Choice C also forms a run-on. You can eliminate this choice because it doesn’t address the issue you identified in Step 1. Having eliminated two choices, you can now plug each remaining choice into the sentence.
Step 3 of the Kaplan Method for ACT English gives you three criteria on which to judge the results of plugging each answer choice in: The best answer uses wording that is correct, concise, and relevant. “Plugging in” means simply reading the answer choice in the sentence in place of the underlined portion. You are left with B and (D), so examine the difference between these choices. Plug in (D) first; because it is shorter than B, it is more likely to be the best answer. With (D), the sentence reads as a compound sentence: Mice are small and easy to maintain. Even if you didn’t notice that the conjunction and makes this choice the correct answer, you should have noticed that B is considerably longer and more wordy. Because conciseness is one of the issues that’s tested on the ACT, a good guideline is if in doubt, start with the shortest answer. The shortest answer choice won’t always be correct, but it often is.
Now, refer back to Question 2 in the passage. The numeral 2 appears in a box at the end of a paragraph. Questions such as this ask about the meaning of a paragraph or about the purpose of the passage. This question is presented not as an underlined portion of the passage, but instead with a question stem. For these questions, it’s important to know what the question is asking. Reading carefully will help you identify the issue. For Question 2, because the question stem asks you to choose the best first sentence for the paragraph, relevance—more so than correctness or conciseness—is likely to be the issue. To address the issue, think about what the first sentence of a paragraph should do: It must introduce the topic of the paragraph. How much of the passage do you think you need to read to determine the best answer? You should consider the whole paragraph, but nothing beyond it.
Ask yourself what the purpose of the paragraph is. Certain words in the paragraph, especially because and most important, indicate that the paragraph is listing reasons. Choice (H) uses the word reasons, and it is the best answer for this question. In this case, the best answer choice hinges on relevance rather than correctness or conciseness.
Knowing how the ACT is written will help you manage your time in each section. Recall that the English section contains five passages. The passages are all very similar in length, and each passage has 15 associated questions. Given that you have 45 minutes, you have roughly 9 minutes per passage. That’s a little less than half a minute per question.
On Test Day, as you pace yourself on the English section, be aware of the time you spend on each passage. Some English questions can be answered more quickly than others can. Often, questions that are presented with a question stem take a little longer to answer than those made up of an underlined segment with various revisions. As you practice in this book, stay focused on Step 1 of the Kaplan Method for English: Always be thinking about how much of the passage you need to read to identify the issue for a particular question. Identifying the tested issue is the key factor in learning to manage your time efficiently in the ACT English section.