A Guide to the English Section of the ACT
What’s Covered:
- What Is the Format of the English Section of the ACT?
- How Is the English Section of the ACT Scored?
- What Skills Does the English Section of the ACT Assess?
- Strategies for the English Section of the ACT
- Free ACT Study Materials
The English section of the ACT tasks you with reviewing five passages, essentially asking that you play editor, by revising the text to demonstrate your understanding of grammatical rules and your rhetorical skills.
Having a clear understanding of the English section’s format, scoring, and skills tested is a great first step to earning an impressive score.
What Is the Format of the English Section of the ACT?
The English section of the ACT is the first part of the test, and consists of 75 multiple-choice questions that you have 45 minutes to complete. There are five written passages in this section, with 15 questions associated with each one. If you’re doing the math, that means you have only 9 minutes to both read and answer the questions for each passage.
On the bright side, you won’t have to jump back and forth from one passage to the next, or wonder which passage a particular question is about. The passages appear in the left-hand column of your test booklet, and the questions will be in the right-hand column. Sections of the passage will be underlined or highlighted (depending on whether you’re taking the test on paper or online) so that you can easily find the lines the questions are referring to.
In terms of what you’ll be asked to fix, the questions can be about a detail as small as an individual word or piece of punctuation, or about entire sentences. For most questions, you will also have the choice to leave the passage as is by choosing the “NO CHANGE” answer option.
The structure of this section can take some getting used to, but with a few practice tests under your belt, navigating it on actual test day should be second nature.
How Is the English Section of the ACT Scored?
Your score in the English section of the ACT will range from 1-36. Of course, this section has 75 questions, not 36–this number is calculated from your raw score using a test-specific scale.
Raw scores are simply your number of correct answers. Then, your raw score is scaled to a number between 1-36, based on the difficulty of the particular test you took compared to other ACT tests. The goal of scaling is to make scoring consistent from one test to the next and ensure the same level of mastery is required to receive a specific score, regardless of what ACT exam you take.
For example, the ACT test makers don’t want a student who took a harder version of the test in September 2023 to be punished, compared to a student who took an easier version in April 2024. The student who took the harder test could potentially earn fewer raw points and end up with the same scaled score as the student who took the easier test, to account for the differences in the exams they took.
Your scaled score, between 1-36, is the number you receive on your score report, and the one that factors into your composite ACT score. Below is a table showing how your number of correct answers in the English section of the ACT is translated into a scaled score.
Do note that this table is for a particular ACT practice test, and the exact scale will vary from test to test, but it should give you a good general idea of how scaling works.
|
Scaled Score |
Questions Correctly Answered |
|
36 |
74-75 |
|
35 |
71-73 |
|
34 |
70 |
|
33 |
69 |
|
32 |
68 |
|
31 |
67 |
|
30 |
66 |
|
29 |
64-65 |
|
28 |
63 |
|
27 |
61-62 |
|
26 |
59-60 |
|
25 |
56-58 |
|
24 |
53-55 |
|
23 |
50-52 |
|
22 |
47-49 |
|
21 |
44-46 |
|
20 |
41-43 |
|
19 |
39-40 |
|
18 |
37-38 |
|
17 |
35-36 |
|
16 |
32-34 |
|
15 |
29-31 |
|
14 |
26-28 |
|
13 |
24-25 |
|
12 |
22-23 |
|
11 |
19-21 |
|
10 |
16-18 |
|
9 |
13-15 |
|
8 |
11-12 |
|
7 |
9-10 |
|
6 |
7-8 |
|
5 |
6 |
|
4 |
4-5 |
|
3 |
3 |
|
2 |
2 |
|
1 |
0-1 |
What Skills Does the English Section of the ACT Assess?
The English ACT assesses your ability to edit written work. It asks you to recognize and fix grammar and punctuation errors, and to improve the style, tone, or organization of different written passages.
To complete these tasks successfully, you need to have a strong understanding of the conventions of standard written English, including grammar rules, punctuation, and sentence structure. In addition, you need to have a good eye for identifying how sentences and paragraphs work together, and how ideas connect throughout a written piece.
In terms of the specific grammar skills assessed on the test, be prepared to show your mastery of punctuation such as commas, apostrophes, and semicolons. Know how to track number agreement between subjects and verbs and between pronouns. Be familiar with common idioms and frequent mix ups between words like affect/effect and its/it’s. You’ll also want to pay attention to parallel sentence construction, verb tense and conjugation, and sentence fragments or run-on sentences.
Beyond grammar skills, you also need to demonstrate your grasp of written style, strategy, and organization. Style refers to things like formality and tone. Strategy questions will test your knowledge of how the author builds and supports an argument, and your ability to evaluate how well the author communicates their intent. Organizational questions focus on how sentences and paragraphs fit together, how ideas are connected through transitions, and whether specific words or sentences are relevant or unnecessary.
Strategies for the English Section of the ACT
1. Time Management
The ACT’s quick pace is notorious, especially on the sections that involve reading. You’ll need a plan to ensure you’re able to get through all five passages and 75 questions in only 45 minutes without rushing or resorting to random guessing. Some popular time-management strategies include:
- Answering easier questions first, then going back to the more challenging questions
- Answering the questions as you read—the side-by-side format lends itself especially well to this strategy
- Reading the passage in its entirety before answering the questions
- Answering the questions sentence by sentence as they appear, even if that’s not the order the questions are presented in
Use your practice tests to find which time-management method is most effective for you, then become a master of that method so that you can apply your knowledge on test day without the clock getting in the way.
2. Learn How the Test Tries to Trick You
The English section of the ACT has some common grammar tricks that almost always appear at least once on every test. For example, expect to encounter questions about subject-verb and antecedent-pronoun agreement.
Familiarizing yourself with sentence diagraming—a pictorial representation of the grammatical structure of a sentence—is a popular method for mentally breaking sentences down into their bare grammatical elements, which in turn can give you a clearer idea of how those elements relate to each other.
Questions with unnecessary or missing commas are another way the English section of the ACT tries to trip up test takers. For comma questions, the best approach is often reading the sentence in your head as if you were reading it aloud and trusting your ear. Do you hear a pause? If so, you might need to add a comma, whereas if there’s no pause, you may need to take one out.
3. Do Lots of Editing
At its most basic, the English section of the ACT tests your editing skills. So, a great way to prepare is to do as much editing as possible. Edit your own work, edit your friends’ work, and review your teacher’s edits on your work carefully.
When you get feedback on your work, whether from a teacher, tutor, or peer, make sure you understand why each edit was made. If you’re unclear on why they suggested a particular change, ask! Learning how to critically evaluate your own work will both boost your performance on the ACT’s English section and make you a better writer in general.
4. Actual ACT Questions
No matter how much you practice writing, editing, and diagramming sentences, nothing compares to taking an actual ACT. The best way to prepare for the ACT is to practice ACT questions, and take lots of full practice tests.
By covering as many individual questions as possible, you’ll familiarize yourself with the full range of topics you could encounter. Full practice tests will get you comfortable with the pacing and structure of the test, so that you don’t make any silly mistakes that aren’t related to your actual knowledge of the test content.
In the end, the more you can work with ACT practice materials, the better off you’ll be on test day.
5. Hit the Ground Running
Finally, the English section is the first section of the ACT and getting off to a good start is key to earning an attention-grabbing score on the exam as a whole. A smart strategy is to warm up your brain, body, or both before sitting down for the exam.
Brain stretches such as counting backward from 100 as quickly as you can, or naming an advanced vocabulary word for each letter of the alphabet, are useful for getting your brain going, but are different enough from the test content that they shouldn’t cause any extra stress. A little exercise like a short walk or some light stretching can also help get the blood flowing and prepare your body for the exam.
Free ACT Study Materials
A number of free resources are available online to students studying for the ACT. Tthese include:
Another fun way to prep specifically for the English section of the ACT is to play word games like Scrabble, Wordle, and the New York Times Spelling Bee. These games offer engaging, fun ways to build familiarity with language and grow your vocabulary, and studying in a less dry way can help with your retention.
Test prep books also provide a tried-and-true method to study for the ACT. Ask your friends or family if they have any prep books from when they took the test. Prep books also frequently pop up in Little Free Libraries, so take a peek when you pass by one.
How Will the ACT Impact Your Chances of Acceptance?
Even with the expansion of test-optional policies, standardized tests like the ACT (or SAT) continue to play a major role in the college admissions process, especially at highly selective schools. However, test scores aren’t the only factor considered—your GPA, course rigor, extracurriculars, essays, letters of recommendation, and so on are also crucial.
If you’re wondering how your overall profile will stack up at the colleges you’re considering, check out CollegeVine’s free chancing engine, which evaluates all quantifiable aspects of your application, including grades, course rigor, extracurriculars, and, yes, standardized test scores to estimate your odds of being accepted at over 1,600 schools across the country.
Our admissions calculator can also give you suggestions for how to boost your chances of acceptance—for example, by raising your ACT score.
