Top 10 Grammar Rules to Beat ACT English

A complete sentence contains a subject, a predicate verb, and a complete thought.  If any of the three is lacking, the sentence is called a fragment.  A run-on contains too much information, usually because two independent clauses (two complete thoughts) are being improperly combined.

The ACT English section often includes long sentences in which the main subject and the verb are separated by lots of words or clauses. If you identify the subject of each sentence and make sure the verb matches it, you can ace this grammar rule. In addition, the ACT tests your knowledge of past, present, future, past perfect, present perfect, and future perfect tenses.

Commas, apostrophes, colons, semicolons, dashes, periods, question marks, and exclamation points are all tested on the ACT.

Idioms are expressions native to the English language. There are two part idioms such as “neither…nor” and ”not only…but also” as well as prepositional idioms like “opposed TO” and “participate IN.”

As long as there are no new grammar errors introduced, the shortest answer choice is often correct. Redundancy is a type of wordiness where the same thing is said twice such as “happy and joyful.” Keep it simple, to the point, and don’t repeat yourself.

Parallelism is tested on the ACT English section in a series of phrases or items in a list. In parallel construction, the phrases or items must be in the same form. This can be tested with a number of parts of speech: nouns, verbs, prepositions, etc.

The most common error associated with pronouns is pronoun-antecedent agreement. The antecedent is the word the pronoun is replacing. A pronoun must have a clear antecedent in the sentence; the lack of an antecedent is itself an error.  The antecedent may often be present, but will disagree with the pronoun in number.  A less common error is the ambiguous pronoun in which a pronoun could represent more than one noun.  For example, “The president and his adviser spoke for hours before he reached a decision.”  The pronoun ‘he’ could be referring to the president or the adviser, so it is incorrect.

Modifiers are words and phrases that describe nouns. Adverbs can only modify verbs, while adjectives modify nouns. Be on the lookout for suspicious adverb-noun and adjective-verb pairings. Also be aware that many sentences will begin with a modifying phrase and a comma. The subject after the comma must be the person or thing doing the action of the modifying phrase.

You want to pay attention to transition words and phrases to make sure they reflect the author’s purpose.  Transitions can demonstrate continuation, contrast, or cause-and-effect.  In addition, the ACT may try to fool you by using words that sounds similar to the intended words, but does not make sense in context (for example, replacing “could have” with “could of”). It’s important not to rush on the ACT.

The ACT English section will ask you to determine the order and focus of sentences or paragraphs. You will also be asked about adding, revising, or deleting sentences as well as how a sentence fits with the purpose, audience, and focus of  a paragraph or the essay as a whole.