Essai’s Guide to the Best Resources for ACT Prep

If you are studying independently for the ACT and your scores in the different sections are fluctuating quite a bit, then the answer is not to take more practice tests. It is important to identify the section(s) in which your scores are not consistent and learn the rules/formulas/skills for that particular section. If you simply carry on taking tests from Crackact without “knowing your stuff” then your scores will often be at the mercy of luck.

Good preparation takes luck out of the picture. This post is meant to help you do exactly that. Below are the books and resources that we recommend for your fluctuating scores in individual sections. Additionally, we will not just be pointing you in the direction of resources, but advising you on how to use these resources to gain control over your scores.

Best ACT Reading Resource: UWorld

We think a 30 day subscription to UWorld for $29 can make a world of difference to your score. The Uworld content is very good and, more importantly, the ways in which you can use it are very helpful. Uworld can operate on tutor mode (it explains a question every time you submit an answer) and on an untimed mode. 

How do we recommend you use UWorld? 
Start by trying to increase your accuracy. Do single passages, untimed, tutor mode; when you get something wrong or unsure of an answer, read the explanation that UWorld provides. Do this until you are consistently getting 90% correct: more than 6 in a row. 

Then take off the tutor mode wheels, and start doing two passages untimed, then three, then four. The point here is to develop your own method of answering these questions, becoming very familiar with the questions, and developing your reading stamina. Always make sure to go back over the questions you got wrong – Uworld’s explanations will help you avoid making the same mistakes next time.

Once you are comfortable with doing multiple passages in a row and consistently getting 90% correct, we recommend you start paying attention to time. Try doing one passage timed, then two, then three, then four. Don’t worry too much if your accuracy slips slightly: aim to get one more question done accurately in time each time, and you’ll soon be doing all four passages in time with accuracy!

Best ACT English Textbook: (ACTing English: The Essai Guide to ACT English)

ACTing English is a great guide that equips you with all the tips and tricks you need to master the English Section. 

The textbook takes you through all the concepts you need to know to tackle the English section in a lucid manner. A shining feature of the book are the scaffolding exercises. These are step-by-step questions that force the student to use simple rules rather than intuition when answering ACT English questions. The book isn’t dreary to look at either, with plenty of fun visuals and illustrations included in each chapter.

With nearly a thousand questions including two full tests, the book has enough practice materials to help you raise your score - on average, students who use our English material see a 12 point improvement!

How do we recommend you use ACTing English?
We recommend working methodically through the book. Each chapter begins by teaching a set of related concepts: we recommend you make your own notes based off the teaching material. The teaching is followed by scaffolding exercises focussed on that particular skill. If you struggle with the scaffolding exercises, make sure to go back over the notes on that concept. At the end of each chapter, ACT-style multiple-choice questions test your ability to apply the concepts you’ve learned. The multiple-choice questions will include questions on concepts from previous chapters, so make sure you keep revising what you’ve already learnt.

Once you’ve worked through each of the chapters, you should be good to go. Once you’ve revised the concepts, have a go at the two mocks at the end of the book. Make sure to review your mistakes and brush up on any weak areas after the first mock, then have a go at the second mock. After all that, you should be good to go!

*While this is a book that we have published, we still firmly believe that it is the best sure-fire guide to the ACT English.

Best ACT Math Textbook: (Ultimate Guide to Math ACT: Richard Corn)

After being updated in 2018, Richard Corn’s Ultimate Guide to Math ACT quickly reclaimed its spot as the best ACT Math textbook. It explains each concept that you need to know for the ACT in depth and does not include any extra information. 

The book also moves through pre-algebra and basic algebra before moving on to advanced topics, providing students with a strong foundation to tackle the more difficult concepts towards the end. When used in conjunction with full Math tests, this book is your best bet to conquer the Math section.

How do we recommend using Ultimate Guide to Math ACT?
If you struggle with math in general, or you are unsure which areas you are weak in, then we recommend working through the book methodically from start to finish. The book will guide you from the foundations of math needed for the ACT through to the more difficult concepts.

If you already have a good sense of specific areas where you struggle (e.g. coordinate geometry), then focus on those chapters. Still take the time to look over the whole book – there might be something you didn’t even know you didn’t know! 

Best ACT Science Textbook: (FTLOAS: Michael Cerro and Prepscholar Guide to ACT Science)

For the Science section, we recommend either For the Love of ACT Science by Michael Cerro or the Prepscholar Guide to ACT Science. 

For the Love of ACT Science is a tried and tested guide that set a new benchmark for ACT Science Textbooks. The book helps you identify different question types and provides specific strategies to help you tackle them. It also includes two full science tests and sectional tests that only include question types that you’ve learned how to solve.

Prepscholar Guide to ACT Science does not include any practice tests, but makes up for it by listing multiple strategies to students for attempting questions - not just one restrictive approach. 

Both books include a list of science facts that you would need to know for the ACT. These books demystify the Science section by identifying patterns in a section that is seemingly random.

How do we recommend using FTLOAS and Prepscholar Guide to ACT Science?
With both these books, we recommend working through them methodically from front to back. That way you will avail yourself of all the skills needed to tackle the Science section, plus be able to try out a variety of strategies (in the case of the Prepscholar Guide) for answering questions in the Science section.

We recommend that you note down the various strategies and then apply these systematically in three untimed Science sectional tests. Using these two books in tandem might help a lot; FTLOAS has questions from all the different question types, while the Prepscholar Guide is heavier on the strategies. You can use the strategies learnt in the Prepscholar Guide and apply them to the questions in the FTLOAS.

ACTing English: Non-Essential Appositives

An appositive is a word or phrase that comes after the primary noun of a sentence: it is a-positioned next to it. It is important to know when the appositive is essential or non-essential: determining this will determine the presence or absence of commas (something the ACT cares a lot about!). Detecting this is also important as it ensures that you don’t add a single, lonely comma as a pause after the primary noun. 

Let’s look at the sentence below and our flowchart that helps you determine whether an appositive is non-essential. 

Claudius, the old man,  gave Tanvi and Ganesh his address.
↓
Appositive (following the primary noun, Claudius)
↓ (Look to the left of the appositive and answer the following question:)
Is the subject (Claudius) of the sentence a specific detail?
↓
Yes (in the context, there’s only one Claudius).
↓
Would we still know who gave Tanvi and Ganesh his address if we got rid of the appositive?
↓
Yes.
↓
Therefore, the old man is a non-essential appositive.

The appositive is non-essential in nature. We know that Claudius gave Tanvi and Ganesh his address.  Any other information about him will be additional information and not necessarily required for the sentence to make sense. Accordingly, the appositive (like any non-essential information) is bracketed off by commas.

Now it’s your turn! Comment with your answer choice and we’ll reveal the answer tomorrow:

Once upon a time, King Arthur the famous British knight [1] drew a sword, Excalibur [2] from a stone.

1. A. NO CHANGE
   B. time King Arthur the famous British knight,
   C. time, King Arthur, the famous British knight,
   D. time, King Arthur, the famous British knight

2. A. NO CHANGE
   B. sword Excalibur
   C. sword Excalibur,
   D. sword, Excalibur,

The ACT's two most common comma traps

Punctuation questions are at the heart of the ACT English section. If you know what you're doing, they are quite straightforward. But they are full of traps, ready to catch the inattentive student. So it's a good thing to know where these traps are set most frequently.

The two most common traps are: 1. comma separating the subject and verb; 2. comma in front of a prepositional phrase.

Commas are meant to separate clauses or items in a list, so commas are totally meaningless in the two places above: subject and verb are the heart of any clause, so don't separate them; prepositional phrases can cluster without any punctuation since they don't affect the number of clauses - they just make clauses bigger and add information.

An example for trap number one would be: He, went home. 'He' is the subject doing the verb 'went'. This duo is at the heart of any clause. The two should never be separated.

An example for trap number two would be: He went, to school. The prepositional phrase 'to school' does not alter the number of clauses; it is an extension of the clause started by 'he went'.

This is by far the most common trap in the ACT English section. So watch out, and don't get tempted to put in a comma before such a phrase even if it reflects a pause you would make when speaking. 

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Appositive, are you essential or not?

There are a number of questions in the ACT English section that test your understanding of appositives. But what, exactly, is an appositive? To answer that, we first have to understand what the word 'apposition' means. 'Apposition' really just means 'putting something in close proximity with something else'.

In our case, these two 'somethings' would be a name and a phrase, i.e. a bunch of words. So the definition of an appositive is 'a bunch of words that is put next to a name in order to give additional information about the name'. It also works the other way around: an appositive is a name that is put into close proximity with a bunch of words in order to give additional information about the bunch of words.

To be more concrete, we could take the phrase 'the great English writer' and put it into apposition with the name 'William Shakespeare' to make provide more information about William Shakespeare. 

What can be tricky is to understand whether the appositive in question is essential or non-essential. The status of the appositive is important because it determines whether the appositive in question will need to be set off by commas or not. The general rule is: Only non-essential appositives need to be set off by commas. People get very confused about this. What's essential? What's non-essential? Is that not something subjective? So let's try to get some clarity right from the start. 

How do we determine whether an appositive is essential or not? In fact, it's quite easy. You just need to think whether the phrase that goes with the name excludes any other name. If it does, the appositive will be non-essential.

What does that exactly mean? That's where the confusion can start. But no need for that at all. Let's go back to the example about Shakespeare. What you need to ask yourself is: does the phrase 'the great English writer' exclude anyone else than Shakespeare? The answer is obviously no. There are many great English writers; Shakespeare is only of them, so the appositive offers vital clarification of a quite vague phrase. In other words, the appositive is essential.

How, you might ask, can we make 'William Shakespeare' an non-essential appositive? We simply need to find a phrase that is more narrow in scope. How can we narrow it down to good old William? A example would be to use the phrase 'the author of Hamlet'. There is only one author of Hamlet. There can be no other name in apposition than 'William Shakespeare'. Here, the name becomes non-essential. Used in a complete sentence, the correct punctuation would be 'the author of Hamlet, William Shakespeare, was born in Stratford-upon-Avon'. The name needs to be set off by commas.

It's important to understand that it does not matter whether you know who the author of Hamlet was. The only thing that matters is that the phrase obviously narrows down the possible options to just one (there can be only one author), making the appositive non-essential. 

Considering this concept of limitation, you always have to look out of superlatives (i.e. forms like best, greatest, etc.) since they automatically exclude any other option. If we were to start the sentence with 'the greatest Elizabethan playwright', the name 'William Shakespeare' would automatically come between commas.

The important fact is that it really doesn't matter whether you would agree with the statement that Shakespeare was the greatest playwright of the period. In the context of the sentence, there can be only one name since there can obviously be only one 'greatest'. In the sentence 'the greatest Elizabethan playwright, William Shakespeare, was born in Stratford-upon-Avon' the name will therefore come between commas.

You can also replace the name and make the sentence 'the greatest Elizabethan playwright, Christopher Marlowe, was murdered under mysterious circumstances'. The name still comes between commas; the appositive is still essential. Some people might disagree, but the appositive doesn't care. 

This leaves us with three rules of thumb:

1. If you go from unspecific phrase to name, the name will not need to be set off by commas.

The author (unspecific) William Shakespeare wrote great tragedies.

2. If a sentence starts with a name (i.e. the most specific thing there is) and then phrase (less specific than a name) give more information about the name, the phrase will be non-essential and therefore need to be set off by commas.

William Shakespeare (very specific), a prolific writer of plays (less specific), remains today a very mysterious character.

3. If a very specific bunch of words comes before a name, the name will come between commas.

The greatest of all English tragedies (very specific), Hamlet, was written sometime between 1599 and 1602.

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The big three in the ACT English - part 3

This post completes the set of three basic grammar skills. After this, you'll know exactly what to focus on when dealing with the ACT's grammar questions. The number of grammatically really important words is actually very small: subjects, conjugated verbs, and conjunctions. Confusion about grammar arises mainly if you don't know which words to look for when looking for the right answer. This post is all about eliminating words that make sentences look more complicated than they are.

The last basic skill is find the preposition and its prepositional phrase. This is important not mainly because prepositions are important, but because they don't really matter and just clutter sentences. If you lose your way in grammar, prepositional phrases will probably be the reason.

First of all, let's clear up a very common misunderstanding about prepositions: they are not called prepositions because they indicate position, but because they are prepositioned to other words (i.e. put in front) with which they form a prepositional phrase. The name preposition is purely a structural description; it tells you where these words stand, not what they mean or do.

There are indeed prepositions that indicate position (i.e. in, at, on, under, etc.), but some of the most common ones are very different: of, with, from, for, to, etc. 

So, by definition, prepositions can't be used on their own: they need something to lean against. They will always be part of a prepositional phrase, which is a bunch of words to which the preposition adds more precise meaning by creating a specific relationship with another word outside the phrase. Not complicated at all. Let's have a look at an example.

Let's take 'the car' and 'my father'. Just like that, we don't know anything about the relationship of these two. But if we add a preposition, the relationship becomes clear. E.g. the car of my father, or the car for my father. 'My father' has become part of a prepositional phrase that clarifies the relationship with 'the car'. The important thing to understand when thinking about grammar is that the words in the prepositional phrase will never really do anything in the sentence, nor is anything going to be done to them directly. In short, words in a prepositional phrase are neither going to be the object nor the subject of a sentence. 

So we know that 'my father' will not do anything in either of the examples above. If we complete the examples to a full sentence with a verb, the verb is never going to go with 'my father. E.g. the car of my father really needs servicing. Who needs servicing? Not the father, the car does. A full sentence for the second example would be 'I bought the car for my father'. Here a subject 'I' has been added, which agrees with the verb bought.

This fact becomes a vital skill when you are dealing with confusing long sentences, such as 'the team of players from the most prominent South American football nations at the International tournament in Spain were disqualified due to a doping scandal'.

This sentence contains a mistake in subject verb agreement, but it is made difficult to pick up on because of the long string of prepositional phrases: of players from the most prominent South American football nations at the International tournament in Spain. The basic sentence without prepositional clutter is 'the team were disqualified'. Were? No, obviously not; the verb needs to be was. Your ear might take the players to be the subject, which makes the sentence sound sort of ok if you are not attentive, but this is not possible: 'the players' is part of a prepositional phrase: of players. The players are grammatically not important; they are not doing anything. 

When combined, the three basic skills become a powerful tool to solve any ACT grammar questions with surgical precision. More importantly, these skills will also turn you into a better and confident writer who knows how to put together sentences that can cope with the scrutiny of any university professor. So, if you develop a good grasp of these three basic skills, you don't just learn something for your ACT English score but also for your academic career ahead and, ultimately, for life.

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The big three in the ACT English - Part 2

To really rock the any punctuation question of the ACT grammar section you need to know your dependent clauses from your independent clauses. That's not really hard, but frequently people do not focus on the right thing when trying to determine to which of the two types a clause belongs.

As a little recap from the last post, a clause is a unit of meaning that contains both a subject and a conjugated verb. So 'they run' is a clause. 

Now, is this clause dependent or not? Can it stand on its own, or does it need completion by another clause? The answer is yes, it can stand alone. You might want to say that 'they run' is not enough information to stand on its own - that we don't know who is 'they', or that we don't know where or why they run - but as a unit containing a subject and a verb that goes with it, it is a complete thought able to stand on its own.

The important thing to understand is that all clauses are born free and independent. What can make them dependent is the use of conjunctions. This is why conjunctions are extremely important words. Conjunctions are words that create joints between clauses and determine the type of clause at the beginning of which they stand.

Understanding this is important since it drastically reduces the number of words you focus on when determine the type of a clause: one; only the first word counts. If the clause does not begin with a conjunction, the clause will automatically be independent, as in the example 'they run'.

If a clause is headed by a conjunction, the clause can be either dependent or independent. 

When a clause is headed by one of the FANBOYS conjunction (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so), the clause will always be independent. E.g. they run, but he doesn't. Both clauses are independent; the comma could easily be replaced by a full stop without any sense that something is left incomplete. As far as punctuation is concerned, it's important to remember that FANBOYS will always be preceded by a comma. So the formula to remember is CLAUSE COMMA FANBOYS CLAUSE.

A common mistake consists of doing the same thing but leaving out the FANBOYS. This is called a comma splice. Never pick an option that has the structure CLAUSE COMMA CLAUSE, the comma splice formula.

There is a another type of conjunction, called subordinating conjunction (Sub), which always makes the clause to which it is joined independent. Common Subs are after, when, because, if, although. 

Whenever a clause begins with one of these, an independent clause will need to follow in order to complete the thought. If I just say 'when they run', everyone is going to wait for me to finish the sentence - the thought is incomplete, the clause dependent - and say something like 'they get very hungry'. 

Now, for punctuation, the order in which dependent and independent clauses follow each other is key to deciding whether the two clauses need to be separated by a comma or not.

When a sentence opens with a dependent clause that is followed by an independent clause, the two will always need to be separated by a comma. Always follow the formula SUB CLAUSE COMMA CLAUSE. E.g. because they run, they are fit.

If the dependent clause comes second, no comma is needed. The formula is CLAUSE SUB CLAUSE. E.g. they are fit because they run.

So there are only a handful of formulas you need to know in order to totally rock any clause and punctuation question:

CLAUSE (INDEPENDENT)

CLAUSE COMMA FANBOYS CLAUSE (INDEPENDENT + INDEPENDENT)

CLAUSE COMMA CLAUSE !!! COMMA SPLICE: DON'T DO THAT

SUB CLAUSE COMMA CLAUSE (DEPENDENT + INDEPENDENT)

CLAUSE SUB CLAUSE (INDEPENDENT + DEPENDENT)

Determining the type of clause is really very easy. You only need to look out for the first word in the clause; that's all. That's the power of conjunctions. 

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The big three in the ACT English - part 1

When you deal with the English section of the ACT, there are three basic skills that can get you to make decisions fast and accurately. These are: 1. find the conjugated verb and identify its subject; 2. find and identify the conjunction; 3. find and identify the prepositional phrases. 

Whenever you struggle with a pure grammar question (i.e. not one where the test asks you to arrange sentences or something similar), these three basic skills will get you on the right track. They help you to focus on the right words and replace educated guesses by informed decisions. It's all about understanding that there are not that many grammatically important words in a sentence.

In this post we'll have a look at the first basic skill, which is the most important of them all: find the conjugated verb and identify its subject. In any question on punctuation or clauses (i.e. one that gives you options between forms such as walk, walking, or to walk), this will help you find the right option with speed and confidence.

The first thing you need to know is that verbs fall into two different categories depending on whether or not they are joined to a subject, i.e. someone or something doing the verb. When a verb form is directly linked to a subject it is called conjugated. 'I walk' and 'he walks' are conjugated forms. See how the form of the verb changes as it changes person from I (first person) to he (third person). Now, in English the change does not always show, i.e. walk can be a conjugated form with you, we, and they, but this should not prove too much of an obstacle in finding which verb form is directly done by the subject of a sentence. Since a clause contains always only one conjugated verb, and the number of clauses in a sentence has a lot to do with how many commas will be needed, finding the conjugated verb is a very important skill when dealing with punctuation questions.

What will go a long way in helping you identify the conjugated verb is a good knowledge of the other type of verb forms: the unconjugated forms. There are two different types of unconjugated forms: the infinitive and the participles.

The infinitive is the base form of the verb and usually always has a 'to' before it. See how when I say 'to walk' you would not be able to tell who is walking. The reason is simple: the form is not conjugated; it has no subject, so how should we know.

There are two different participles: present and past. The present participle is the form that always ends in -ing. I cannot say 'I walking'; the participle can only be used together with a conjugated form. 'I am walking' works because there is the conjugated form 'am' of the verb 'to be'. 

The past participles are forms like gone, done, swum, run. These, too, can never be used alone. You cannot say 'I gone' or 'she swum'. You need a conjugated verb: 'I have gone' and 'she has swum'. Note how the form of 'to have' changes from the first to the third person, proof that it is indeed conjugated, while the form 'gone' will never change, i.e. you can use it with 'I' (I have gone) and with 'she' (she has gone). 

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Sentences, clauses, and phrases

These are three essential words for anyone who has something to do with grammar, especially for the ACT. But many people get very confused about them. What are they exactly, and how do we use them precisely?

The most important of the three is without doubt the clause. A clause is a unit of meaning built around a conjugated verb, i.e. a verb that is used together with a subject. 'Walking around in the park', for example, is not a clause. Who's walking in the park. Well, I couldn't tell; you couldn't either, and there's a good reason for it: there's no conjugated verb. That's the trick. Similarly, 'my uncle's big beautiful house at the end of the road' might contain quite a lot of words, but there is nothing going on. There is no verb. What's up with the house? Not clear at all. This is not a clause either. It´s not about quantity; it's all about the verb, and someone doing the verb. So, 'he walks' is a clause. We know who is doing what.

A sentence can contain just one clause followed by a  full stop. 'He walks' therefore is both a clause and a sentence. A sentence can also contain many clauses joined together, e.g. he comes home after he finished work, but his kids have not yet arrived. This sentence contains three clauses containing three conjugated verbs: comes, finished, have. So the sentence is a larger unit than the clause.

Finally, a phrase is just a bunch of words. Phrases come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. There is the noun phrase. 'The car', 'my friend's really fast car', and 'the astonishingly realistic replica of the 1950s Chevrolet' all count as noun phrases. Making big subjects with a lot of information is one of the main jobs of the noun phrase. 

One of the most important types of phrases is the prepositional phrase. It helps putting in more information into a thought without opening a new clause. Prepositional phrases are for example: in the room, at the office, for my dad, etc. When things get complicated it's mostly because of clusters of prepositional phrases. Consider the sentence 'she managed an exciting project for her boss at the art fair in Delhi during the summer of 2016'. Most of this sentence is just a load of prepositional phrases. 

There is one other, less important but very interesting, type of phrase: the verb phrase. It consists of all the verb forms in a sentence and any added prepositions used together with the verb. The addition of prepositions to change the meaning of a verb is one of the great features of the English language. Consider, for example, the verb 'to tell'. On its own it just means 'to say something', but if you add the preposition 'off', it means to scold; as in the sentence 'dad again told me off for coming home late'. Verbs joined to prepositions are called phrasal verbs. 

If you ever get confused about clauses, phrases, and sentences, just look out for the conjugated verb. Is something happening or not? How many actions are happening? Sentences can contain an infinite number of conjugated verbs. Clauses always contain only one. Phrases do not necessarily contain a conjugated verb.

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Oh comma, my comma

The ACT is full of questions concerning the necessity and placement of commas. It wants to know whether you are aware that commas are not about pauses but about clauses. If, a, comma, was, just, about, pauses, then, we, could, put, them, anywhere. A pause in a sentence is often a matter of personal preference; it is a matter of what you might intend to emphasise. This is a part of speech; it is not a part of grammar. There are rules concerning the placement of commas; a comma is not a pawn in the game of the sentence. 

Lesson one: Commas possess culture. Please use them with care.

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