Introduction
Welcome to 1,001 ACT Practice Questions For Dummies. Don’t take the book title personally. We certainly aren’t suggesting you’re a dummy. In fact, we’re celebrating your overwhelmingly sage foresight in purchasing this valuable text! Putting in the time and dedication to practice for the ACT is a very wise decision indeed.
Along with your GPA and the rigor of your high school curriculum, your ACT score is a very important factor in getting into college and getting money to pay for your education. Improving your score by just a couple of points can mean gaining thousands of dollars in scholarships and financial aid. With that in mind, don’t waste any time. Get practicing already!
What You’ll Find
One of the best ways to maximize your exam performance (and elevate the quality of your free time, of course) is to continually expose yourself to questions that mimic the ones you’ll encounter on the ACT. The practice problems in this book are divided into five chapters that correspond to the five sections on the test: English, math, reading, science, and the optional writing. We’ve constructed the questions to closely resemble the actual test in both format and level of difficulty so you know what to expect when you plop yourself down in front of the proctor on test day.
If you miss a question or just make a good guess, be sure to examine the answer explanations for tips on how to master your approach next time. Heck! Check out the explanations for those questions you answer correctly. Often, we reveal not only how to answer the problem but how to answer it most efficiently.
Be proactive. This book contains hundreds of questions, so after you’ve taken a bunch of tests and evaluated your performance, review the questions you miss and form your own explanations for why the credited answer is better than yours. Then check our explanations for confirmation. Apply your discoveries to more practice problems.
You can benefit from this book all by itself, but it’s even better when you pair it with the in-depth reviews and strategies available in latest edition of ACT For Dummies (Wiley). Either way, this book helps you solidify your approach and confidence in all subject areas.
How This Book Is Organized
The first half of this workbook contains the practice English, math, reading, science, and writing questions. You find the answers and explanations in the second half of the book.
When you open your test booklet on exam day, the first test you see is the English. Five scintillating passages await. Each presents around 15 questions for a total of 75 questions. To maintain the pace required by the ACT, plan to spend no more than 9 minutes answering the questions for one passage. The English questions may be classified in one of two main categories: grammar and usage and rhetorical skills (a fancy way of saying knowing what makes for good writing):
- Grammar and usage: Included grammar concepts are punctuation, proper pronoun use, parts of speech, subject and verb agreement, verb tense, parallel structure, possessive forms, and the correct positioning of describing elements. The ACT tests your knowledge of hard and fast rules. “Controversial” grammar issues, such as whether you place a comma before the and at the end of the series, won’t be tested.
- Rhetorical skills: In addition to grammar and usage, the ACT also determines what you know about the practices of good writing. Questions regarding rhetorical skills test your awareness of the need to eliminate redundant and irrelevant information, choose precise words and phrasings, include specific detail rather than general statements, make smooth transitions between ideas, and organize sentences and paragraphs logically.
The many math questions in the book represent the range of topics and difficulty in the 60 questions ACT math test. Formatted as word problems or straightforward expressions, these questions provide you with practice in the following subtopics:
- Pre-algebra and elementary algebra: These questions are based on core arithmetic and algebra concepts, including number definitions, absolute values, decimals, fractions, ratios, proportions, operations, solving equations, variables, inequalities, factoring, and quadratic equations. You can also expect to see both basic and advanced statistics problems involving average, median, probability, combinations, and permutations.
- Plane geometry and trigonometry: The ACT presents problems regarding the rules and formulas surrounding basic 2D and 3D shapes, such as angles, triangles, circles, squares, and regular solids. Also included are questions that test your knowledge of trigonometric ratios and identities.
- Intermediate algebra and coordinate geometry: These questions test a variety of concepts: functions, linear equations, graphing functions and shapes on the coordinate plane, vectors, unit circle, periodic functions, logarithms, imaginary numbers, and other advanced topics covered in algebra II and pre-calculus classes.
The ACT tests your reading ability through a set of four passages: fiction, social science, humanities, and natural science. Each passage contains 10 questions that should be answered in less than 9 minutes. One of the passages in each section is actually a set of two passages on a similar topic; a few questions require to you to compare the ideas in both.
The passages in the science section primarily test your ability to carefully examine and apply data conveyed in tables and graphs and evaluate experimental procedure and the reasons for a study’s set up. The ACT presents you with six science passages per test and allows you roughly six minutes per passage. Although almost all you need to know comes straight from the passages, a few questions require you to rely on basic vocabulary and concepts you picked up in middle school science and freshman biology.
The ACT gives you the option of writing a 40-minute essay. “If it’s optional, why do it?” you ask? Many colleges require the essay part, so if you’re applying to one of those colleges, taking the writing test is not optional. For your writing pleasure, the ACT describes a current issue, gives you three perspectives on the issue, and asks you to create a persuasive essay that advances your position. Included in our answer explanations for the writing questions in this book are sample essays of varying proficiency to show you examples of how your response may be scored. Your writing test score ranges between 2 and 12 and is never averaged into your composite score.
Beyond the Book
Your purchase of this book gives you so much more than a thousand (and one) problems to work on to improve your ACT performance. It also comes with a free, one-year subscription to hundreds of practice questions online. Not only can you access this digital content anytime you want, on whichever device is available to you, but you can also track your progress and view personalized reports that show you which concepts you need to study the most.
What you’ll find online
The online practice that comes free with this book offers you the same questions and answers that are available here. Of course, the real beauty of the online problems is your ability to customize your practice. In other words, you get to choose the types of problems and the number of problems you want to tackle. The online program tracks how many questions you answer correctly versus incorrectly so you can get an immediate sense of which topics need more of your attention.
This product also comes with an online Cheat Sheet that helps you increase your odds of performing well on the ACT. To get the Cheat Sheet, go to www.dummies.com and type 1,001 ACT Practice Questions For Dummies cheat sheet in the search box. (No access code required. You can benefit from this info before you even register.)
How to register
To gain access to practice online, all you have to do is register. Just follow these simple steps:
- Find your PIN access code:
- Print-book users: If you purchased a print copy of this book, turn to the inside front cover of the book to find your access code.
- E-book users: If you purchased this book as an e-book, you can get your access code by registering your e-book at
www.dummies.com/go/getaccess. Go to this website, find your book and click it, and answer the security questions to verify your purchase. You’ll receive an email with your access code.
- Go to
Dummies.com and click Activate Now.
- Find your product (1,001 ACT Practice Questions For Dummies) and then follow the on-screen prompts to activate your PIN.
Now you’re ready to go! You can come back to the program as often as you want — simply log in with the username and password you created during your initial login. No need to enter the access code a second time.
For Technical Support, please visit http://wiley.custhelp.com or call Wiley at 1-800-762-2974 (U.S.) or +1-317-572-3994 (international).
Where to Go for Additional Help
The solutions to the practice problems in this book are meant to walk you through how to get the right answers; they’re not meant to teach the material. If certain concepts are unfamiliar to you, you can find help at www.dummies.com. Just type “ACT” into the search box to turn up a wealth of ACT-related information.
If you need more detailed instruction, check out ACT For Dummies, 6th Edition, written by none other than the humble authors of this practice text.