Two Top Grammar Errors on the ACT English

In my thirteen years of experience helping high schoolers dramatically improve their ACT scores, I've found that MANY of the points that students lose on this section stem from just two grammar mistakes. The good news is that this here post is going to help you avoid those pitfalls…so you can hang onto those precious points.

Structure of the ACT English Section

The ACT English section is fairly straightforward. It comprises five passages, each of them with fifteen accompanying questions.

All passages are approximately the same difficulty level, and the actual questions within the passage are randomized by difficulty. In other words, no passage is 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. There are more grammar questions, though.

ACT English Pitfall #1: thinking the subject is in a prepositional phrase

The ACT English gives subject-verb agreement a fair amount of attention. 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 duck quack,” you’d probably wince. It just sounds wrong. Clearly, when there’s a singular subject (i.e. “the duck”), it needs to be matched with a singular verb, which usually ends with an “s” (i.e. “quacks” and not “quack”).

That part’s easy. The hard part is correctly identifying the subject!

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?

Muddying the waters with a prepositional phrase.

Here's an example of a sentence the ACT might give you:

One of the pencils are blue.

In this sentence, many students will mistakenly think the subject is the word “pencils.” However, if we look closely, the word “pencils” 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 pencils are blue.

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 pencils is blue.

The reason this is tricky is that if we rely on our ears, we hear “pencils 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 is opposite in number to 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. 

printed document with red corrections

ACT English Pitfall #2: Using a comma to connect two complete clauses.

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.”

Lenny eats hamburgers.

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 Lenny eats hamburgers. Nope! As your ears/eyes are probably intuitively telling you, this clause could NOT be its own sentence.

There are several kosher 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.

Lenny is hungry, he eats two burgers.

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:

Lenny is hungry. He eats two burgers.

B) Combine them with a comma AND a FANBOYS (“For And Nor But Or Yet So”):

Lenny is hungry, so he eats two burgers.

C) Combine them with a semi-colon. However, in this case, be careful NOT to use a FANBOYS!

Lenny is hungry; he eats two burgers.

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 poor Lenny and his colossal hunger problem doesn’t really work, so let’s try a new example:

He wouldn’t find out until Friday why he didn’t get the job: he had written the wrong 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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They might seem small, but I promise you, these two grammar errors are among the ACT’s favorite tricks. If you can become a pro at spotting those two mistakes and consistently correcting 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—no more, no less.