ACT & College Preparation Course for the Christian Student

Test-Taking Insight

Psychology of the ACT

The ACT, like the SAT, is a critical-thinking exam, which is to say that it is based on Bloom’s Taxonomy, or a cognitive developmental theory of education, particularly analysis, synthesis, and evaluation questions.

BLOOM’S TAXONOMY (Argues that people learn in stages.)

1. KNOWLEDGE: Remembering the material without understanding, using, or changing the material.

2. COMPREHENSION: Understanding the material being given without comparing it to anything else.

3. APPLICATION: Using a general concept to solve a problem.

4. ANALYSIS: Taking something apart.

5. SYNTHESIS: Creating something new by putting different ideas together to make a new whole.

6. EVALUATION: Judging the value of material.

Clearly, your high school courses must teach you to do the above higher, critical thinking. In other words, the more challenging your high school curricula, the higher your ACT score will be. Generally, whole book, classical approaches to education (with emphasis on English and math), will generate much higher scores on the ACT than other curricula. Memorizing the state capitals will do nothing to increase your ACT; however, analyzing why certain places were chosen as state capitals, and then evaluating if these locations were good, will most certainly increase ACT scores! In other words, avoid wimpy high school courses!

RITING

Evaluating Essays

Score the following ACT essay and then discuss how it could be improved.Some people believe that there is only one foolproof plan, perfect solution, or correct interpretation. But nothing is ever that simple. For better or worse, for every so-called final answer there is another way of seeing things. There is always a “however.” Assignment: Is there always another explanation or another point of view? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your positioning with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience, or observations.

In the world, people always have a perfect solution or a truly foolproof plan. There is the right choice to make or the wrong choice. This can be seen in three examples. One is the narrative poem, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Second is the study of medicine and specifically treating an ill patient. Thirdly is Charlie, the main character in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Although one is faced with two different options when making a decision, in the end there is only one perfect solution.

In the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the knight Gawain, a brave, kind, and loyal man is tempted by a beautiful lady. He has a choice of falling into her snare or standing strong and resisting her. These choices are clearly right versus wrong. In the end, this knight remains strong and resists her. As the poem concludes, one sees that Gawain made the right choice, or perfect solution.

The field of medicine represents another reason why there is always just one correct interpretation. When treating a sick patient and working to find the right cure, a doctor will be faced with many options. However, as he learns more about the illness and the possible cures, the doctor will eventually find the only one right cure to the disease. Whatever the number of other available medications, they will not all cure the patient. It’s the one right medication that is the foolproof plan for that specific patient.

The third example that supports this viewpoint is the characters in Ronald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Five children are given a tour of a chocolate factory. Four of these children, in one way or another, disobey Willy Wonka, the owner of the factory, by making a choice. This choice is simply going against Mr. Wonka’s set rules. However, Charlie follows all the rules, which makes him the winner of a certain prize. In this children’s story, the presented rules set the line between right and wrong. Four children, realizing the rules, walk onto the wrong side. Charlie, though, stays in the boundaries, and makes the right decision by following Mr. Wonka’s rules.

In both the worlds of science and literature, there is always just one right choice, although there may be multiple wrong choices. One sees a definite bright line between the perfect solution and the wrong decision, without any “howevers.” (From a student)

OCABULARY

King Solomon’s Mines3

H. Rider Haggard

Guide Allan Quatermain, the original Indiana Jones, helps a young lady (Beth) find her lost husband somewhere in Africa. It’s a spectacular adventure story with romance, because while they fight with ferocious beasts and natives, they fall in love. Will they find the lost husband or skip town for parts unknown?

Suggested Vocabulary Words

With the first light we were up and making ready for the fray.
With great difficulty, and by the promise of a present of a good hunting-knife each, I succeeded in persuading three wretched natives from the village to come with us for the first stage, twenty miles, and to carry a large gourd holding a gallon of water apiece. My object was to enable us to refill our water-bottles after the first night’s march, for we determined to start in the cool of the evening. I gave out to these natives that we were going to shoot ostriches, with which the desert abounded. They jabbered and shrugged their shoulders, saying that we were mad and should perish of thirst, which I must say seemed probable; but being desirous of obtaining the knives, which were almost unknown treasures up there, they consented to come, having probably reflected that, after all, our subsequent extinction would be no affair of theirs.
. . . if indeed there are any other such in the world, measuring each of them at least fifteen thousand feet in height, standing not more than a dozen miles apart, linked together by a precipitous cliff of rock, and towering in awful white solemnity straight into the sky.
These mountains placed thus, like the pillars of a gigantic gateway, are shaped after the fashion of a woman’s breasts, and at times the mists and shadows beneath them take the form of a recumbent woman, veiled mysteriously in sleep. The stretch of cliff that connects them appears to be some thousands of feet in height, and perfectly precipitous, and on each flank of them, so far as the eye can reach, extent similar lines of cliff, broken only here and there by flat table-topped mountains, something like the world-famed one at Cape Town; a formation, by the way, that is very common in Africa.

NGLISH

Grammar: Complex Sentences

Change each compound sentence below to a complex sentence. Relate the ideas in each part of the sentence by using the subordinating conjunction or relative pronoun given in parenthesis.

Mary plays the guitar beautifully, and so we will ask her to play for church. (who)
My homework needs some attention, so I asked my mother to help me. (because)
I gathered as much coal as I could, and the winter storm struck. (before)
We slowed down, and we saw the roadblock. (when)

Rewrite the following paragraph, which consists wholly of simple and compound sentences. To vary the style, change or combine some of the sentences.

My friends could hear the enemy growing closer, and they were talking. Finally we could see the enemy emerge around the bend. The captain was motioning with his hand to be quiet and the soldiers were laughing. One blew his nose and coughed and stumbled. All my friends were staring and waiting and the enemy soldiers came forward.

EADING

Idea Stated

David Livingston was born into a Christian Scottish family outside Glasgow and he made a commitment to Christ when he was young. He studied medicine and theology at the University of Glasgow. He tried to go to China as a missionary in 1838, but was unable to do so. Contact with Robert Moffat, pioneer missionary to Africa, prompted Livingstone to dedicate his life to African missions. On December 8, 1840, Livingstone sailed for Africa for the first time. He had a burden that all natives should have an opportunity to embrace Christianity, and he wanted to go where no missionary had gone. On his first mission trip he was almost eaten by a lion! It was not a propitious beginning.

In 1844 he was married to Mary Moffat, oldest daughter of Robert and Mary Moffat. Sadly, Dr. Livingston’s work took him away from his beloved wife Mary and their five children too much.

Livingstone was more convinced than ever of his mission to reach unsaved people groups in the interior of Africa and introduce them to Christianity, and, at the same time, freeing them from slavery. Normally slave traders were hesitant to buy converted African captives. They were harder to sell to American traders.

In 1849 and 1851, he traveled across the Kalahari, on the second trip sighting the upper Zambezi River.

In 1842, he began a four-year expedition to find a route from the upper Zambezi to the coast. This filled huge gaps in western knowledge of central and southern Africa. In 1855, Livingstone discovered a spectacular waterfall that he named “Victoria Falls.” He reached the mouth of the Zambezi on the Indian Ocean in May 1856, becoming the first European to cross the width of southern Africa.

Returning to Britain, where he was now a national hero, Livingstone did many speaking tours and published his best selling Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (1857). In 1862, while Livingstone was in Africa, his wife died.

He returned to Africa. This expedition lasted from 1866 until Livingstone’s death in 1873. After nothing was heard from him for many months, Henry Stanley, an explorer and journalist, set out to find Livingstone. This resulted in their meeting near Lake Tanganyika in October 1871 during which Stanley uttered the famous phrase: “Dr Livingstone, I presume?” With new supplies from Stanley, Livingstone continued his efforts to find the source of the Nile. He discovered it late in his life.

His health had been poor for many years and he died on May 1, 1873. His body was taken back to England and buried in Westminster Abbey. His heart, it is purported, was buried in Africa.4 (James Stobaugh, British History)

What best describes the author’s attitude toward David Livinston?

David Livingston was one of the most important, seminal figures in English colonial history.
David Livingston’s greatness was somewhat tarnished by his shabby treatment of his family.
David Livingston was an unorthodox, troublesome religious fanatic.
David Livingston was more an ambassador for English culture than Christianity.

David Livingston is best known for:

His discovery of Victorian Falls.
His encounter with Henry Stanley.
His translation of the Bible into a native Language.
His participation in World War I.

No matter how long a writing passage is, authors vary their sentence types. Each writer uses different sentences to keep his reader’s attention. One effective technique is to use transitions — for instance, in spite of, therefore, etc. Another strategy is to combine sentences together: “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” — Abraham Lincoln, “The Gettysburg Address”