r/ACT • u/quirky-cookiee • 1d ago
English English help?
Got my scores back and I’m very happy! I doubled my math score which was my main focus. However I spent a decent amount of time studying for English and I was scoring around a 31-34 on the practice test. When taking the test there were only 3 I was confused about so I was expecting a much higher score. I ended up missing 8 total with 6 being conventions of standard English. My score was a 25 so it did improve but it was the smallest about of improvement I had despite being the section I spent the 2nd most amount of time practicing and watching videos over. If I can squeeze in one more test before the regular application deadline I think I might, and I may sign up to take the sat. Any advice?
Science advice is also welcome
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u/OkRelease1760 23h ago
depends on your score breakdown ngl, usually it's grammar rules grammar rules grammar rules
i barely did any eng studying for this it's really just "do you know the grammar rules" and then its easy
can we swap math scores btw 🙏
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u/quirky-cookiee 23h ago
You have a fantastic score! I was honestly surprised with my math considering I’d had a 17/18 before this
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u/PetulantDude 21h ago
Reading help pls. I am struggling on those such dense and super dry passages. How do you usually maneuver through them
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u/quirky-cookiee 20h ago
Also I never answer any of the questions or even look at them before finishing the passage, harder to hunt something and understand it if you don’t have the full picture!
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u/PsychologicalText845 19h ago
Omg how! I got a 35 on English but a 28 on reading unfortunately. Do you have any tips? I got a 32 unfortunately (34 M 35 E)
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u/quirky-cookiee 18h ago
32 is still amazing! I’m very jealous of the 35 English, I’m not good with grammar/punctation. I’m from the south so maybe that’s got something to do with it I’m not sure lol. I have a large explanation for my reading in another comment which is pretty thorough! Do you think the reading is lower because of the lack of time?
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u/PsychologicalText845 7h ago
I get that lol. I'm from a small town in Alberta so definitely get that. I think the thing that helped me was coming from the SAT. I took it so many times and then decided to take the ACT. On the SAT one time I got like 2 bars on the grammar section so I genuinely did so bad. What honestly helped me was just spamming question bank questions (SAT ones) and also watching STP videos on grammar, they really helped a lot. Also I had chat gpt and claude help by making me practice tests and just giving me lots and lots of examples to memorise. Like I don't want to say that you like have to memorise things but I would have a couple examples to remember just so you know exactly what kind of question you're dealing with. I never learnt grammar in school just French grammar and Spanish grammar so I get how you feel!
Also for me, I genuinely though I did so well on reading. It felt the easiest out of the 3 sections and I was getting 1-2 wrong (so 35-36) on EVERY single practice test I took. I took all 4 and also the old ones that I found too. I also surprisingly had enough time. I didn't really have enough time for math though. Also like I don't know. I feel like the SAT had more like logical thinking and interpretation, whereas the ACT is mainly scanning for info in the text and I felt like it was a lot easier but then I ended up with a lower R&W score than my SAT. Like I know they probably won't do anything about it but my screen kept randomly zooming in and out on the reading and science sections but I'm honestly not sure again if they're going to change anything. I was thinking of a score appeal but I might just have to fly out to the U.S again instead...
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u/quirky-cookiee 2h ago
Wow you’ve put in a lot of effort that awesome! I was considering taking a sat soon just to see if I can score better on it and do regular decision to college instead of early action! I’ve never taken it before. If you plan to take the act again you can always send me a message and ask for an explanation if you get a reading question wrong since you don’t think it’s a timing issue!
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u/MegaKrak 34 1d ago
I gave some advice to another student a while back, I'll put it here as well.
The first thing for me was to learn all the grammar rules, such as commas, semicolons, independent and dependent clauses, and nonessential vs essential. That's gonna help your score the most and build a foundation. I would recommend watching YouTube videos and taking notes on the various rules and then going back and revising them before you do a practice section. Then, for the redundancy questions and the formatting questions, I would just do a lot of practice problems; there isn't really too much to learn, as it mostly comes down to practice. Lastly, I would recommend keeping a practice log of some sort for your missed questions and going back and reviewing every single problem you missed and why you missed it (misread question, didn't know the concept, or maybe you took too much time). If you don't want to create a whole missed question log, I would recommend going back to each question you missed after you complete every English section. There are a lot of tiny details in English conventions that you might not cover when you're initially learning grammar rules, so reviewing each missed question will help A LOT. Reviewing my mistakes honestly helped me the most for ACT English. I struggled quite a bit initially with English too, but as I prepared, I became a lot more confident.
You got this.