Princeton Review ACT English Prep: 4 Practice Tests + Review (2022)

Name: Princeton Review ACT English Prep: 4 Practice Tests + Review (2022)
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The Princeton Review Publishing Team
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Copyright © 2022 by TPR Education IP Holdings, LLC.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Some of the content in ACT English Prep has previously appeared in English & Reading
Workout for the ACT, published as a trade paperback by Random House, an imprint and
division of Penguin Random House LLC, in 2019. Additionally, some content has previously
appeared in SAT Prep, published as a trade paperback by Random House, an imprint and
division of Penguin Random House LLC, in 2020.

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ISBN 9780525570332
Ebook ISBN 9780525570370
ACT is a registered trademark of ACT, Inc.
The Princeton Review is not affiliated with Princeton University.
The material in this book is up-to-date at the time of publication. However, changes may have
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Acknowledgments
Deepest gratitude to Sara Kuperstein, who was the primary author of
this title.
A big thank you as well to Nicole Cosme, whose contributions helped
make this title possible.
Thank you to Jess Thomas and Gabby Budzon for their contributions
to this title.
Thank you to Jennifer Chapman, Sarah Litt, and Emma Parker for
their time and attention to each page.
Special thanks to Adam Robinson, who conceived of and perfected
the Joe Bloggs approach to standardized tests, and many of the other
successful techniques used by The Princeton Review.
Amy Minster
Content Director
High School Programs

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Contents
Get More (Free) Content
Part I: Orientation
1 Introduction to the English Test
Welcome
Fun Facts About the ACT
Strategies
2 How to Approach the ACT Online Test
Part II: English Basics
3 The ACT English Test
Fun Facts About the English Test
How to Crack the English Test
Part III: Maximum Impact Topics
4 Punctuation
5 Purpose Questions
6 Concision
7 Transitions
Part IV: Advanced Topics
8 Tricky Verbs and Pronouns
9 Sentence Structure
10 Modifiers

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full title of the book
ISBN
page number
Need to report a technical issue?
Contact TPRStudentTech@review.com and provide:
your full name
email address used to register the book
full book title and ISBN
Operating system (Mac/PC) and browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari,
etc.)
Once you’ve registered, you can…
Find any late-breaking information released about the ACT
Take a full-length practice ACT
Get valuable advice about the college application process,
including tips for writing a great essay and where to apply for
financial aid
If you’re still choosing between colleges, use our searchable
rankings of The Best 388 Colleges to find out more information
about your dream school

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WELCOME
The ACT can be an important part of college admissions. Many schools
require or recommend their applicants submit either SAT or ACT scores. It’s
worth keeping in mind, though, that the importance of these tests will vary
among the many colleges and universities in the United States. If you haven’t
already, make sure to research whether the ACT is required or recommended
for admission to the schools you plan to apply to.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, many schools went test-optional to account
for the numerous students whose SAT and ACT tests were canceled. Some of
those schools have returned to requiring test scores, while others have not yet
but still may. For the most up-to-date information on the schools you are
interested in, check out their admissions websites.
For more on admissions, see The Princeton
Review’s The Best 388 Colleges or visit our
website, PrincetonReview.com.
Even if ACT scores are optional, you may still want to submit them if you
think your great ACT scores will boost your chances of acceptance.
Furthermore, ACT scores are often used for scholarships, so it can be worth
putting time into preparing for the test if you can save a good amount on your
college education in return.
When colleges require standardized test scores, they will accept either SAT
or ACT scores. The expert advice of The Princeton Review is to take
whichever test you do better on and focus your efforts on preparing for that
one.

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Since you bought this book, we assume you’ve already made the decision to
boost your ACT score. This book provides a strategic and efficient way to
improve your scores, specifically on the English test. For a more thorough
review of content and exhaustive practice, we recommend ACT Prep and our
ACT Practice Questions book
FUN FACTS ABOUT THE ACT
The ACT is nothing like the tests you take in school. In your English class,
you may learn grammar, but do you have to fix underlined portions of
sentences? You do plenty of your own writing, but do you have to fix other
people’s writing?
All of the content review and strategies we teach in the following lessons are
based on the specific structure and format of the ACT. Before you can beat a
test, you have to know how it’s built.
Structure
The ACT is made up of four multiple-choice tests and an optional Writing
test.
The five tests are always given in the same order.
English: 45 minutes, 75 questions
Math: 60 minutes, 60 questions
Reading: 35 minutes, 40 questions
Science: 35 minutes, 40 questions
Writing: 40 minutes, 1 Essay
See The Princeton Review’s companion books,
ACT Reading Prep, ACT Math Prep, and ACT

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Science Prep.
Scoring
When students and schools talk about ACT scores, they mean the composite
score, a range of 1–36. The composite is an average of the four multiple-
choice tests, each scored on the same 1–36 scale. If you take the Writing test,
you’ll also receive an additional Writing score on a scale of 2–12. The
Writing score is an average of four 2–12 subscores: Ideas and Analysis,
Development and Support, Organization, and Language Use and
Conventions. Neither the Writing test score nor the combined English plus
Writing English Language Arts score affects the composite. Be sure to check
ACT’s website to determine whether your target schools want you to take the
ACT Writing test.
Students also receive subscores in addition to their (1–36) composite ACT
score. These indicators are designed to measure student performance and
predict career readiness, as well as competency in STEM (Science,
Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) and English Language Arts. ACT
believes that these additional scores will give students better insight into their
strengths and how those strengths can be harnessed for success in college and
beyond. In addition to the 1–36 score for each of the tests and their composite
score, students now see score breakdowns in the following categories:
STEM score: This score represents students’ overall performance on the
math and science sections of the ACT. The goal of this score is to help
students better understand their strengths in math and science and how
they might use those strengths to guide their academic and career goals.
Progress Toward Career Readiness Indicator: This is meant to help
students understand the extent to which they are prepared for a future
career. It can also help teachers guide their students toward numerous
career pathways.

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English Language Arts score: This score measures achievement in the
English, Reading, and Writing portions of the exam (for students who
take all three of those sections), and it allows students to see how their
performance compares with others.
Text Complexity Progress Indicator: This is intended to help students
determine how well they understand the kinds of complex texts they
might encounter in college and whether they need to improve. This score
is based on a student’s performance on all of the writing passages.
There is also a section on the score report that breaks down each section into
categories and tells you both how many questions there were in each category
and how many of them you answered correctly. Some of these categories can
be useful in helping you know what you need to study: for example, if you
missed a lot of questions in the “Geometry” category, you should brush up
your geometry skills. But if you did poorly in the “Integration of Knowledge
and Ideas” category, it’s not quite as obvious what you need to study. Don’t
worry about these scores, though—they’re there because they align with
federal academic standards and school districts that use the ACT for
standardized testing for all juniors want those scores, but colleges don’t
typically look at them for admissions purposes.
It’s All About the Composite
Whether you look at your score online or wait to get it in the mail, the biggest
number on the page is always the composite. While admissions offices will
certainly see the individual scores of all five tests (and their sub-scores),
schools will use the composite to evaluate your application, and that’s why
it’s the only one that matters in the end.
The composite is an average: let the full weight of that sink in. Do you need
to bring up all four scores equally to raise your composite? Do you need to be
a superstar on all four tests? Should you focus more on your weaknesses than
your strengths? No, no, and absolutely not. The best way to improve your

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composite is not to shore up your weaknesses but exploit your strengths as
much as possible.
To improve your ACT score, use your strengths to lift the composite score
as high as possible.
You don’t need to be a rock star on all four tests. Identify two, maybe three
tests, and focus on raising those scores as much as you can to raise your
composite. Work on your weakest scores to keep them from pulling you
down. Think of it this way: if you have only one hour to devote to practice
the week before the ACT, put that hour to your best subjects.
Single-Section Tests and Superscoring
The people who write the ACT have announced their intention to allow
students to take one, two, or three individual sections in a day, as opposed to
needing to take the entire test. You will need to have taken a full ACT before
using this option, and single-section tests will only be offered on the
computer.
Unfortunately, plans to offer single-section retesting were delayed by the
COVID-19 pandemic, and as of the publication of this book, a date for the
rollout has not been announced. We encourage you to check the ACT
website, www.act.org, for the most up-to-date information about the
availability of single-section retesting when it is eventually offered.
One piece of good news is that ACT has begun Superscoring. If you take the
ACT more than once, ACT will automatically take your highest English,
Math, Reading, and Science scores and average them together to calculate a
new “Superscore” composite.
Sounds great, right? We think it is—this gives you the opportunity to show
your best ACT score to schools. Colleges and universities still have the

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option of whether or not to accept the Superscore, but for the schools that let
you Superscore, this is all positive for you.
Single-section testing is great, but research your goal schools’ testing
policies before relying on it!
Of course, you might have grabbed this book because you’ve already decided
to focus on improving a single test for your superscore. So let’s move on so
we can dive in to the good stuff!
English Scores
Your English score can be one of the easiest to improve. The Reading and
Science tests, for example, require skills that can be improved on, but the
content you’ll see in the passages is unpredictable, making it seem more
difficult to prepare for those tests. The English test is much more rules-based,
like the Math test. For most of the English content, if you know the rules, you
can get the questions right every time, no matter what the topic of the passage
is.
Time
Time is your enemy on the ACT. You have just over half a minute per
question on the English test—and that’s including the time it takes to read the
passage. The Princeton Review’s strategies are all designed to help you
conquer this time crunch. In the chapters that follow, you’ll learn how to use
your time wisely.
STRATEGIES
You will raise your ACT score not by working harder but by working
smarter, and a smart test-taker is a strategic test-taker. You will target
specific content to review, you will apply an effective and efficient approach,

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and you will employ the common sense that frequently deserts many of us
when we pick up a #2 pencil.
Each test on the ACT demands a different approach, and even the most
universal strategies vary in their applications. In the chapters that follow,
we’ll discuss these terms in greater detail, customized for English.
Check out these helpful Princeton Review signature
strategies.
Personal Order of Difficulty (POOD)
On other sections of the ACT, we advise students to do easier passages and
easier questions first, saving the harder ones for later. Since each question is
worth one point, you will get more points by doing the quicker, easier
questions instead of the harder, more time-consuming questions. On the
English test, however, this strategy isn’t as effective. All five passages tend to
be of a similar level of difficulty, so there isn’t much of a reason to do them
out of order. Additionally, it’s not a good idea to save the harder questions
for the end of the passage. Here’s why: the English portion is testing you on
writing skills, and part of that is the flow of ideas. Many of the harder
questions require you to understand the main idea of a paragraph or passage.
If you save them for last, you will have to go back and reread, and this will
end up taking even more time. In addition, with 75 questions to answer in
only 45 minutes, you don’t want to waste time flipping back and forth. So
what’s a smart test-taker to do? Read and answer the questions in order so
that when you come across questions that involve the author’s main points
and sequence of ideas, you’ll have the context needed to answer them
correctly.

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Let’s plan out a strategy to help you do this. First, let’s distinguish between
hard versus easy questions and time-consuming versus fast questions. The
ACT English test has what we call Proofreader questions and Editor
questions.
Proofreader questions don’t actually ask a question—they just ask you to
check, and possibly correct, the punctuation or grammar of an underlined
portion of the text. These questions can be easy or hard, but they can always
be done quickly, especially once you’ve learned the rules.
Editor questions take up more space on the page. They ask a question, and
their answer choices are often much longer. Although these questions can
also be easier or harder, no matter what, they will be more time-consuming.
Our best advice is to know the rules for the most commonly tested
Proofreader topics so you can quickly get those questions right. Use the
practice tests in this book to determine how rushed you feel on the English
test. If, on a practice test, you have trouble getting to all the questions, try
skipping some Editor questions as you go. (Skipping means you quickly
bubble in your Letter of the Day and don’t waste any time on the question.)
This can allow you to finish the section and get to all of the quick Proofreader
questions, thus earning you more points. Make a quick decision about
whether each question should be done Now or Never.
The Best Way to Bubble In
Work a page at a time, circling your answers right on the
booklet. Transfer a page’s worth of answers to the answer
sheet at one time. It’s better to stay focused on working
questions rather than disrupt your concentration to find where
you left off on the answer sheet. You’ll be more accurate at
both tasks. Do not wait until the end, however, to transfer all

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the answers from that test onto your answer sheet. Go a page
at a time.
Letter of the Day (LOTD)
Just because you don’t work a question doesn’t mean you don’t answer it.
There is no penalty for wrong answers on the ACT, so you should never
leave any blanks on your answer sheet. When you guess on Never questions,
pick your favorite two-letter combo of answers and stick with it. For
example, always choose A/F or C/H. If you’re consistent, you’re statistically
more likely to pick up more points.
Note: If you are taking the ACT on a computer, all of the questions will have
answer choices A, B, C, D (or A, B, C, D, E on the Math test). On the paper-
and-pencil ACT, every other question will have answer choices F, G, H, J (or
F, G, H, J, K on the Math test).
Process of Elimination (POE)
Because the ACT is a multiple-choice test, using Process of Elimination, or
POE, is hugely helpful. You do not always need to know the right answer, as
long as you know that the other options are not correct. This is especially
important on the English test. When you read an underlined portion that you
know is incorrect, you may be tempted to correct it yourself. However, try to
avoid this strategy. The ACT may not correct the sentence in the same way
you want to correct it, and worse yet, there may be answers that do make
your preferred correction but make other mistakes that you might not notice.
It’s always best to use POE with the answers that are there, rather than to
come up with your own corrections. Furthermore, sometimes you may not
notice that a sentence has an error. The answer choices can help you realize
what rule the question is testing and whether it actually does have a mistake.
Do not wait to look at the answers until you are ready to pick one—look at
them right away. You’ll find that this actually saves you time and improves
your accuracy.

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Proven Techniques
Familiarize yourself with these Princeton Review
techniques before you dive into the practice drills.
Pacing
The ACT may be designed for you to run out of time, but you shouldn’t rush
through it as fast as possible. All you’ll do is make careless errors on easy
questions you should get right and spend way too much time on difficult ones
you’re unlikely to get right.
To hit your target score, you have to know how many raw points you need.
(Your raw score is simply the number of questions you answered correctly in
that section of the ACT.) Your goals and strategies depend on the test and
your own individual strengths.
On each test of the ACT, the number of correct answers converts to a scaled
score of 1–36. ACT works hard to adjust the scale of each test at each
administration as necessary to make all scaled scores comparable, smoothing
out any differences in level of difficulty across test dates. There is thus no
truth to any one test date being “easier” than the others, but you can expect to
see slight variations in the scale from test to test.
This is the scale from the 2021-2022 free test ACT makes available at
www.act.org. We’re going to use it to explain how to pick a target score and
pace yourself.
English Pacing
Scale Score Raw Score
36 72-75

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4 4-5
3 3
2 2
1 0-1
For English, there is no order of difficulty of the passages or the questions.
The most important thing is to finish, finding all the Now questions you can
throughout the whole test and skipping over (LOTD) the Never questions as
you go.
If you have not already, research some schools you may apply to and find out
their average ACT scores. Use that to determine your target composite score.
Then, determine your target score for each section. If you are stronger in one
area, aim to score above your goal composite in that area. This will balance
out a weaker area that may be below your goal composite.
Whatever your goal for English is, the chart on the previous page shows you
the approximate number of questions you need for your target score. In
theory, you could just do that number of questions, get them all right, and be
good to go! However, that obviously isn’t the safest or most realistic
approach. We recommend that you aim to attempt about 10% more questions
than the number of questions that you would need to get right for your target
score, as a buffer. As an example, if you are aiming for a 25, we would
recommend that you attempt 62–64 questions. This means you would be
skipping 11–13 questions, which is about 2–3 per passage. By skipping a
couple of the more time-consuming Editor questions on each passage (and
using LOTD!), you give yourself a bit more time to ensure you get the 56-57
questions you need correct. Be careful, though—this only works if you have
the tools you need to get the other questions right. Learn the rules before
attempting this strategy.
Of course, if you are aiming to score above a 30, you will have to attempt
(and get right!) almost all of the questions. This book will provide all you

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need, no matter what your target score is. You might be weaker in English or
have a limited amount of time and simply want to master the biggest topics.
Conversely, you might already do well on the English test, in which case, you
may want to improve on some of the harder or more obscure topics. This
book will provide you with the tools to accomplish any of these goals.
Be Flexible
The worst mistake a test-taker can make is to waste good time on bad
questions. You read a question, don’t understand it, so you read it again. And
again. If you stare at it really hard, you know you’re going to just see it. And
you can’t move on, because really, after spending all that time, it would be a
waste not to keep at it, right? Actually, that way of thinking couldn’t be more
wrong.
You can’t let one tough question drag you down. Instead, the best way to
improve your ACT score is to follow our advice.
1. Use the techniques and strategies in the lessons to work efficiently and
accurately through all your Now questions.
2. Know your Never questions, and use your LOTD.
3. Know when to move on. Use POE and guess from what’s left.
Now, let’s move on to the lessons and learn the best way to approach the
content.

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WHAT IS THE ACT ONLINE TEST?
The ACT Online Test is the ACT that you take on a computer, rather than
with a pencil and paper. Despite the name, you can’t take the ACT from the
comfort of your own home; instead, you’ll have to go to a testing center
(possibly your high school) and take the test on one of the center’s
computers.
The ACT Online Test has the same overall structure, timing, and number of
questions as the pencil-and-paper ACT. The scoring, score range, and scoring
method are also the same. If the ACT Online Test is basically the same as the
pencil-and-paper ACT, who would take the ACT Online Test?
At the time of this book’s printing, the option to take
the ACT online at a testing center was postponed.
ACT also plans to offer at-home online testing,
although an exact rollout date has not yet been
announced. For up-to-date news on both options,
check the ACT website.
WHO TAKES THE ACT ONLINE TEST?
ACT has been offering versions of the ACT on computer since about 2016.
The first students to take the ACT on the computer were students taking the
test at school. Schools and school districts decided whether to give the test on
the computer.
As of September 2018, all students taking the ACT outside of the United
States take the test on a computer (except for those students with
accommodations requiring the use of a traditional pencil-and-paper test).
ACT has indicated that eventually students in the United States will have the
option of taking the ACT Online Test instead of the traditional pencil-and-
paper version. Students choosing this option will get their scores in about two
to three business days (e.g., take the test on Saturday, have your score the

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next Wednesday). However, at the time of this printing, no specific timeline
was available.
Single-Section Retesting
If you are happy with the score you receive from a single test administration,
you will still have the option to send just that score to colleges. If your score
in one section is not as high as you’d like, you will eventually have a chance
to correct that. Students who have already taken the full ACT may choose to
take one, two, or three sections again using Single-Section Retesting. ACT
will then produce a “superscore” consisting of your best results in all tests
(English, Math, Reading, Science, and Writing (if you took it)). Note that not
all colleges accept a superscored ACT, so do your research before taking
advantage of this option.
Single-Section Retesting is an incredible option for
students. However, colleges still have the option to
accept or not accept these new scores. Research
your target schools early so you know your options!
ACT ONLINE TEST FEATURES
So, besides the obvious fact that it’s taken on a computer, what are the
differences between taking the ACT on the computer and taking it on paper?
Let’s start with what you can’t do on the ACT Online Test. You can’t “write”
on the screen in a freehand way. You’re limited in how you’re able to mark
the answer choices, and each question appears on its own screen (so you
can’t see multiple questions at one glance). You will also be given a small
“whiteboard” and dry erase pen with which to make notes and do work.
So, what features does the ACT Online Test have?
Timer
You can hide the timer by clicking on it.
There is a 5-minute warning toward the end of each test. There is no
audible signal at the 5-minute warning, only a small indicator in the

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