Kaplan - ACT advanced practice: prep for 36

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ISBN-13: 978-1-5062-2328-5

Dont be scared of the ACT. Why? Because we know whats on the exam, and we know exactly how you should prepare for it. Kaplan has been teaching students how to succeed on the ACT for more than 75 yearslonger than anyone else, period. Students who are working toward top scores know that they need to practice the most advanced concepts. If your goal is to earn a top score, this ACT Advanced Practice book will help you do just that!

The ACT is 2 hours and 55 minutes long, or 3 hours and 35 minutes long if you choose to complete the optional Writing Test. It consists of a total of 215 scored multiple-choice questions and one optional essay.

ACT scoring can be pretty complex. The most important score is typically the Composite score (which is an unweighted average of the four major subject scores). This is the score used by most colleges and universities in the admissions and scholarship process. Though the subject scores can play a role in decisions or course placement at some schools, the reporting categories and domain scores usually arent as important as the Composite score.

ACT scaled scores range from 1 to 36. Nearly half of all test takers score within a much narrower range: 1723. If you earn a score of 24, youll be in about the 74th percentile. That means that you did as well as or better than 74% of the test takersin other words, youre in the top quarter of people who took the ACT.

The ACT is offered every year on multiple Saturday test dates. Typically, exams are offered in September, October, December, February, April, and June. (The February date is not available in the state of New York.) You can take the ACT multiple times. Some states offer special administrations of the ACT on different dates. Sunday tests are available by request for students requiring religious or other exemptions. The ACT is administered at high schools around the country that serve as testing centers. Your high school may or may not be a testing center. Check www.act.org for a list of testing centers near you. Note that you must register for the ACT approximately one month in advance to avoid paying a late fee.

This book contains hundreds of practice questions. Each question is an ACT question type you will see on Test Day and provides you with plenty of opportunities to assess and practice your strengths and weaknesses before Test Day. Answering practice questions is important, but just as important is understanding why you got a particular question right or wrong. When youre done answering one or more questions, check out the detailed Answers and Explanations at the end of the book. These thorough explanations provide both the correct answers and strategic advice to help you practice thinking like an expert! In addition, every explanation includes the difficulty level of each question. All of this practice is geared toward one thing: getting you the most points on Test Day!

Follow these steps to get the most out of these practice questions:

1. Read the Test Overviews before beginning practice questions within that unit.
2. Assess your strengths and weaknesses. After you finish one set of practice questions, go to the back of the book to check your answers AND read the explanations for questions you missed as well as for questions on which you guessed.
3. Use the minutes per question or per passage rates for each Test to create timed practice question sets. For Math, you should think about how many minutes per question, while for English, Reading and Science, you should think about how many minutes per passage.

Chapter One

The English Test is 45 minutes long and includes 75 questions. The test includes five essays, or passages, each of which includes 15 questions. This means you only have 9 minutes to spend on each passage, or about 3040 seconds on each question. Because time is limited, the Kaplan Method for ACT English will be invaluable in helping you answer the questions strategically within the time allowed.

English passages will be about a variety of subjects and may be written in numerous styles: persuasive, explanatory, narrative, etc. Recognizing the style of an English passage helps you focus on the questions as they relate to the passages general purpose. Knowing the overarching aim of the passage will help you answer questions more efficiently and accurately.

Correct answers must be consistent with a passages overall style.

The directions on the English Test illustrate why theres an advantage to knowing them beforehandtheyre long and complicated, and if you learn them now, then on Test Day, youll already be racking up points while everyone else is reading the directions. The directions will look like this:

Directions: In the five passages that follow, certain words and phrases are underlined and numbered. In the right-hand column, you will find alternatives for the underlined parts. In most cases, you are to choose the one that best expresses the idea, makes the statement appropriate for standard written English, or is worded most consistently with the style and tone of the passage as a whole. If you think the original version is best, choose NO CHANGE. In some cases, you will find in the right-hand column a question about the underlined part. You are to choose the best answer to the question.