Did you know that students tend to lose the most ACT English points on just TWO grammar mistakes? I’ve witnessed this first-hand over the course of my fourteen years of working one-on-one with high schoolers to send their ACT scores soaring. Of course, if there are just two misunderstandings that tend to make test-takers bleed points, our path forward today is clear, right? Let’s make absolutely sure you know how to identify this pair of traps…so you can avoid falling into them and hurting your score.
Article Contents
1. Video version of this article
2. How is the ACT English Section Structured?
3. Mistake #1: thinking the subject is in a prepositional phrase
4. Mistake #2: connecting two complete clauses with a comma
5. Conclusion
Video version of this article:
How is the ACT English Section Structured?
The structure of the ACT English section is pretty straightforward: you’ll read five passages and answer fifteen questions about each passage.
All passages are about the same difficulty level, and the questions about a given passage are randomized by difficulty. In other words, no passage is meant to be any harder than another—and within a passage, there is no consistent rule that determines which questions are harder or easier. (This is importantly different from the ACT Math!) You may get a hard question, followed by a few easies, then a medium, then another hard.
As for content, the ACT English asks you a combination of straight-up grammar questions and Qs about rhetorical devices. More questions will be dedicated to grammar, however.
Common ACT English mistake #1: thinking the subject is in a prepositional phrase
The ACT English dedicates a fair number of Qs to subject-verb agreement. Most native English speakers are already intuitively good at picking the appropriate form of a verb to match the subject.
For example, if you grew up speaking English and hear someone say “the cow sleep,” your ear would likely tell you something was off. It just sounds wrong. When you break it down, this is because there’s a singular subject (i.e. “the cow”), which needs to be matched with a singular verb—and singular verbs usually end with an “s” (i.e. “sleeps” and not “sleep”).
That part’s easy. The hard part is correctly identifying the subject of a given sentence…so that you can know what you’re matching the verb conjugation to!
There are 6 main ways the ACT might try to sneakily hide the subject. But the single sneakiest, trickiest one—AND the one that pops up the most frequently?
Confusing you with a prepositional phrase.
Here's an example of a sentence the ACT might give you:
One of the binders are red.
In this sentence, many students will mistakenly think the subject is the word “binders.” However, if we look closely, the word “binders” has cropped up in a phrase that starts with “of”—and “of” is a preposition.
The rule of thumb you need to remember here is that the subject is NEVER in a prepositional phrase.
So here’s a trick that works for my students. Just cross out the phrase starting with the preposition, like so:
One
of the bindersare red.
Now, it’s easy to see that the subject is the only noun left: “One”! (By definition, singular.)
Thus, the correct sentence looks like this:
One of the binders is red.
The reason this is tricky is that if we rely on our ears, we hear “binders are” and that seems right. That’s exactly what the ACT wants you to hear, and to think. That’s why they make sure that the noun at the end of the prepositional phrase does NOT match the number of the real subject—the one they’re trying to hide. In other words, if the real subject is singular, the noun at the end of the prepositional phrase will likely be plural, and vice versa.
So you have to use a little more logic and identify the subject with your brain, not just your ears.
Common ACT English mistake #2: connecting two complete clauses with a comma.
So before we get into why this is wrong, let’s first revisit what a “clause” is to begin with. It’s just a grouping of words that contains both a subject and a verb.
Some clauses can stand on their own. I call these “independent clauses” or “complete clauses.”
Alfie eats burritos.
Then again, some clauses CANNOT stand on their own. They become fragments when you remove the second clause. I refer to these as either “dependent clauses” or “incomplete clauses.”
While Alfie eats burritos. Nope! As your ears/eyes are probably intuitively telling you that this clause could NOT be its own sentence.
There are several acceptable ways to combine two complete clauses, as well as several acceptable ways to combine an independent/complete clause with a dependent/incomplete clause. However, here’s what can NEVER happen, and what the ACT loves to try to trick you with:
You CANNOT join a complete clause with another complete clause with only a comma! That mistake, known as a “comma splice,” gets you thrown immediately into Grammar Jail.
Alfie is hungry, he eats two burritos.
No. No! Noooooo. You’ve just created a run-on sentence. Please don’t commit this grammar crime!
So, how do you go about fixing this one? There are several ways, luckily, and the ACT isn’t picky.
A) Make them 2 separate sentences:
Alfie is hungry. He eats two burritos.
B) Combine them with a comma AND a FANBOYS (“For And Nor But Or Yet So”):
Alfie is hungry, so he eats two burritos.
C) Combine them with a semi-colon. However, in this case, be careful NOT to use a FANBOYS!
Alfie is hungry; he eats two burritos.
D) Combine them with a colon. This one is a bit trickier to use, though still perfectly acceptable if you do it correctly. It ONLY works if the second clause answers or clarifies a question the first clause prompts.
In this case, our friend Alfie and his hunger problem doesn’t really work, so let’s try a new example:
He wouldn’t find out until Thursday why he didn’t get the job: he had written the incorrect company name in his cover letter.
When we read that, our response after the first sentence is “Oooooh! Tell me! WHY didn’t he get the job?” That’s why we use a colon. The second part answers the question we’re all asking after reading the first complete clause.
Make sense?
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Conclusion
They might seem small, but I promise you, these two grammar errors are among the ACT’s top tricks to pull on students. Not YOU, though—not any longer! Now that you’ve learned to identify those two mistakes and consistently correct them, that’s a 5-6 point increase right there. Pretty good bang for your buck.
And speaking of good bang for your buck: if you want more all-killer-no-filler guidance on the ACT English section, check out my Cram Plan on the subject. This PDF leads you through exactly what you need to know for this part of the ACT—as quickly as possible, too.
