I may be long past my college admissions days, but I still have hurdles to leap and hoops to jump through (yep, sorry to break it to you, but life doesn’t get any easier after high school. Well, after college anyway. Those four years post-high school were pretty great). I was watching a motivational video […]
ACT English and SAT Writing Tips: Diction Errors
Mark Twain once quipped, “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.” I doubt that he was thinking about standardized English and Writing tests when he uttered those words, but they are conveniently applicable to ACT and SAT diction errors. Failing to catch diction […]
ACT and SAT Reading Tips: Questions About the Author’s Attitude
“Don’t give me that attitude, young lady!” my mom used to yell when I rolled my eyes at something she said. The something she said was usually a jab aimed at my hair. She hated my bangs even though they added a full five inches to my height. It was the late 80s, and big bangs […]
ACT and SAT Tips: Ten Minute Test Prep
If you’re like most high school students, there isn’t a lot of downtime in your day, let alone time to study for something other than your normal homework. Yet the ACT and SAT loom in your future, and you keep hearing about how you need to start studying for them months—maybe even years—in advance. How […]
ACT and SAT Reading Tips: Paired Passages with Opposing Viewpoints
Each ACT and SAT Reading section includes a set of paired passages, which discuss a related topic, with 10 or 11 accompanying questions. Most of these paired sets have passages with opposing viewpoints. One author may support animal cloning while the other opposes it. Or one passage cites obesity as the reason for apathy, while the […]
Sophomore Study Tips for the ACT and SAT
It’s never too early to start studying for the SAT and ACT! Just ask my 7 year old twins about their daily SAT routine. Just kidding. Sort of. There may or may not be a five question quiz about the author’s attitude and main idea after every bedtime story in my house. But anyway, sophomores […]
How to Create an ACT or SAT Study Bible
Countless studies have been dedicated to the practice of note-taking, and experts agree: taking notes and reviewing them frequently helps students transfer new information from their short-term memories to their long-term memories. And while students instinctively take notes in biology class and during their history lectures, they often show up to our ACT classes without […]
ACT and SAT Reading Tips: U-Turn Words
In ACT and SAT reading passages, pivotal words are those that guide a reader through an author’s ideas. They are “direction” words, telling you you which way to go in your thought process. Spotting these words throughout a passage can help you determine the author’s attitude and opinion concerning the main idea, which will ultimately […]
ACT and SAT Reading Tips: True-to-a-Point Answers
True to a Point Answers are usually the most difficult wrong answers to eliminate, mainly because they start out with correct information. Careless or hurried test takers might not notice, though, that at some point the answer choice becomes blatantly wrong. Today we will look at how these answers are designed to trick unsuspecting students. […]
ACT and SAT Reading Tips: Multiple Viewpoints
As if ACT and SAT reading passages are not difficult enough, the test makers like to select passages that contain multiple viewpoints to confuse the average high school reader. The more opinions a passage contains, the more likely students are going to misinterpret the author’s viewpoint, which is often the main idea. So how do […]