Vibrant Publishers - Winning Strategies for ACT Essay Writing: With 15 Sample Prompts

This guidebook will help you to:

Analyze each prompt

Plan the essay carefully

Make a compelling argument

Use the allotted time effectively

Evaluate sample essays

Increase your confidence

Test Prep Series

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Dear Student/Parent/Tutor

Thank you for purchasing Winning StrategiesFor ACT Essay Writing: With 15 Sample Prompts. We are committedto publishing books that are content-rich, concise and approachableenabling more students to read and make the fullest use of them. Wehope this book provides the most enriching learning experience asyou prepare for your ACT exam.

Should you have any questions or suggestions,feel free to email us at reachus@vibrantpublishers.com

Vibrant Publishers Team

Thanks again for your purchase. Good luck foryour ACT!

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Dr. Aimee Weinstein is a writer and professorwhose passion is coaching students on how to write effective essaysfor college applications as well as the ACT and SAT. She worksfull-time at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia as a TermAssistant Professor of Humanities and Graduate Pathway Advisor withINTO Mason. Dr. Weinstein works with the INTO Mason MentoringCommittee and is part of the Mason Faculty Learning Community onthe Study of Teaching and Learning. She received her doctorate fromthe Department of Higher Education at George Mason University whereshe focused on teaching writing to second language learners via ahybrid classroom. Dr. Weinstein lived for more than ten years inTokyo, Japan where she taught writing at Temple University, Japan.She has held positions at The George Washington University andPrince George's Community College (MD), teaching classes in variouslevels and genres of writing. Her previous publications includeseveral food and travel articles in English-language magazines inJapan. Dr. Weinstein currently lives in McLean, Virginia.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Ethan Dixon, writer extraordinaire,who helped with the sample essays in this book. Thanks also tointern Sakshi Ashar, who has helped us with many of the ideas thathave shaped this book into its structure of success. And lastly,thank you to my loving and tolerant family, including my two kids,who have been through the ACT process and have been the guinea pigsof many prompts, as well as my darling husband, Marc, who createsthe environment in which I can write. I am grateful beyondmeasure.

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Table ofContents

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The ACT itself was developed in the mid-twentieth century as an alternative to the SAT. It is comprised of four main sections, English, Math, Reading and Scientific Reasoning. Traditionally it is thought of as measuring more of what students know, rather than how they use what they know, but as time has gone on, the focus on reasoning has increased in importance. Most colleges do not prefer one test to the other, but still most often require students to submit scores from one or the other. Some schools are becoming test optional so that the tests are not required, but most students are still taking the tests just in case one of their top choice universities require them. The test is offered at testing centers around the US and abroad upwards of seven times a year. While still important, the essay section of the ACT is indeed optional students can take the test with or without the essay. It is up to the individual schools to which the student is applying whether or not the essay score is required for a complete application to that institution.

Welcome to the ACT Essay! Once you master the method of approaching the prompt, you might even have a bit of fun with the process. The essay is based on not only formulating an opinion on a given topic, but also understanding and addressing various sides to an argument. The people who score the test will look for your ability to think through a problem, understand multiple perspectives on the problem with deep nuance and then to explain your approach to the issue while also defending why your idea is the best one among the multiple perspectives.

The essay is an optional section of the ACT and is taken AFTER the 3 hours of testing has taken place. Students will have 40 minutes to read the prompt, analyze the given perspectives, formulate a response and then write. While the ACT itself is computer-based, the essay is hand-written.

Schools have a choice whether or not to requirethat applicants for admission sit for the essay in addition to thetest. There is not one right or wrong way; some schools see theessay as valuable while others do not. Those schools that tend tolook at the essay are looking to assess thinking process as much asthe ability to put sentences together in a coherent format. Whenmaking decisions on whether or not to sit for the ACT essay, it isgood to have an idea of which schools you will be applying to, soyou know if you have to take the essay section. If you do not yethave a list of schools, then it behooves you to sit for the essaysection because if just one of your desired schools requires it andyou have not yet taken it, then you will have to take the entireACT over again to engage with the essay. You cannot just sit forthe essay without taking the full exam.

When approaching this task, we strongly recommend that you PLAN your work before you write. A general guideline is to spend 10 minutes reading the prompt and planning what you will write (along with your Pro-Con chart deconstructing the argument see below) and then 30 minutes actually writing. Ideally you would spend 25 minutes writing and 5 minutes checking over your work, but most students cannot manage their time that closely. Do give it a try though!

The ACT essay prompt is generally a paragraph about some sort of social issue. It can range from computers taking over jobs, to the pros and cons of owning a pet. The essay is designed for students to show how they think through an issue and explain how they arrived at their ideas. While issues generally have two sides to them pro and con, the ACT essay requires more nuance than that.

The prompt offers three perspectives, two of which are normally very closely related to each other. The prompt and the perspectives could be addressing a very small part of a larger issue or it could be combining issues in creative ways. For example, an essay might not be just asking students to take a side on whether its good to recycle or not, but rather, might require students to think about whether or not it is economically feasible to recycle in most cities. The perspectives will offer ideas on the sides of an issue, which is great when an issue arises that a student has not considered before, but then the student still has to arrive at his or her own approach to the problem. Often, its easiest to agree with one of the perspectives and to refute the other, but sometimes theres a way to combine the perspectives into a new, coherent argument to address the problem.