5 Astuces ACT English qui fonctionnent vraiment

Last year, a student named Priya came to me frustrated. She'd spent months memorizing grammar rules from an old textbook. Every practice test, she'd score in the low 20s on the English section. "I know every rule," she said. "But the test keeps tricking me."

She was half right. The rules weren't the problem. Her approach was.

The ACT English section isn't a grammar exam. It's a conciseness and clarity test dressed in grammar clothing. The questions measure your ability to edit someone else's writing — to make it clearer, tighter, and more logical. That's a very different skill from reciting comma rules.

Here are five ACT English preparation tips that helped Priya jump to a 32. They'll work for you too.

Tip 1: Cut the Fat — Always

The single most reliable rule on the ACT English section is this: shorter is usually better. When in doubt, the shortest grammatically correct answer is often right.

Look for redundancy first. The test loves to write sentences like:

• "The museum had a special exhibit that was unique and one of a kind."

"Unique" and "one of a kind" mean the same thing. The correct answer will delete one of them.

Then look for extra words that add no meaning. Words like "that," "which," "who is," and "being" are frequent targets. Consider:

• "The book that is on the table belongs to Maria."

The tighter version: "The book on the table belongs to Maria." Same information, fewer words.

Let me show you what I mean with a quick comparison.

Before you pick an answer, ask yourself: Can I say this in fewer words without changing the meaning? If yes, the shorter version wins.

Tip 2: Know When to Bend the Rules

The ACT has its own rulebook. Some things your high school teacher marked as wrong are actually fine on this test.

Here's the big one: Singular "they" is 100% acceptable.

I've seen prep books and teachers still teaching the outdated rule that "everyone" must be followed by "his or her." That's wrong advice for today's ACT. The test fully accepts singular "they" for a person whose gender is unknown or irrelevant.

Consider this sentence:

• "Each student forgot their book."

Is that wrong? Not on the ACT. It's perfectly standard modern English. The test makers updated their guidelines years ago.

The real grammar traps are different. Focus on:

• Subject‑verb agreement (tricky when words come between the subject and verb)
• Verb tense consistency (don't shift from past to present randomly)
• Pronoun case (I/me, she/her, who/whom — but only the obvious ones)

Tip 3: Punctuation Is About Logic, Not Feeling

Most students guess on punctuation questions. Don't. There's a clear system.

The ACT tests only a handful of punctuation marks heavily:

• Commas (separating items, after introductory phrases, before FANBOYS conjunctions)
• Semicolons (connecting two complete sentences)
• Colons (introducing a list or explanation — must follow a complete sentence)
• Dashes (like a strong comma or an informal colon)

Here's the trick most tutors miss: punctuation questions are almost always about sentence structure first. If you don't know whether two parts are complete sentences, no punctuation rule will save you.

Practice identifying complete sentences. A complete sentence needs a subject and a verb and must make sense alone. Get good at spotting fragments and run‑ons. Everything else flows from that.

Tip 4: Read the Whole Paragraph Before You Answer

This sounds simple, but it's surprisingly hard to do under time pressure. The ACT English section gives you 45 minutes for 75 questions. That's 36 seconds per question. Your instinct will be to read one sentence, spot the issue, and move on.

Resist that instinct for organization questions — the ones asking where a sentence should go, whether a sentence should be added or deleted, or what the best opening sentence is.

These questions reward context. If you only read the sentence in isolation, you'll miss the logical flow. Take an extra 10 seconds to scan the surrounding 3‑4 sentences. It's the difference between guessing and knowing.

Tip 5: Practice With the Clock — But Start Without It

Here's my favorite strategy: do your first few practice sessions untimed.

Get comfortable identifying errors and choosing the best revision. Speed is useless if you're fast at the wrong things. Once you're consistently identifying the right answer, then start timing yourself.

Then, when you do timed practice, use the 20‑minute checkpoint. After 20 minutes, you should have completed roughly 35 questions. If you're behind, skip the hardest question and move on. You can always come back.

The ACT scores every question equally. A hard vocabulary question is worth the same as an easy comma question. Don't waste three minutes on one question.

The Real Game

The ACT English section tests whether you can edit someone else's writing efficiently. That's a practical skill, not an academic one. The test rewards writers who are clear, concise, and logical — not students who memorized every grammar exception from 8th grade.

Priya learned that lesson. Once she stopped treating the section as a grammar obstacle course and started treating it as an editing problem, her score climbed. She stopped overthinking and started trusting the simplest answer.

You can do the same. Focus on clarity. Cut unnecessary words. Know what the ACT actually tests (and doesn't). And practice like it's a real editing job — because that's exactly what it is.

---

Ready to see where your English skills stand? Take our free English level test at English Measure. We'll assess your reading, writing, listening, and speaking — so you know exactly what to work on next.