“The Most Effective ACT Strategies Ever Published”
Second Edition
By Mike Barrett and Patrick Barrett
Dedication
This book, like all of our books, is dedicated to students who want to improve their odds of success in college and beyond, and to the adults who mentor them through this critical time in their lives. We thank our family, friends, clients, and readers all over the world for the support and feedback that made this second edition of the ACT Prep Black Book
possible.
We count ourselves very lucky that our Black Books have allowed us to connect with people in ways we never imagined when we started writing them. We put a lot of ourselves into this book, and we hope you find it helpful.
Table of Contents
THE ACT PREP BLACK BOOK
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PLEASE READ THIS FIRST!!!! (GETTING THE MOST OUT OF THE ACT PREP BLACK BOOK, SECOND EDITION)
A NOTE TO CONCERNED PARENTS
PART 1: SECRETS OF THE ACT
WHAT YOU MUST UNDERSTAND ABOUT THE ACT
THE ACT’S BIGGEST WEAKNESS
PART 2: WHEN TO USE OFFICIAL ACT, INC., MATERIALS, AND WHEN NOT TO USING THE OFFICIAL ACT PREP GUIDE (THE “RED BOOK”)
“BUT WHAT IF I RUN OUT OF PRACTICE MATERIALS?!”
PART 3: GOALS AND TRAINING
“HOW WELL CAN I DO ON THE ACT?”
HOW TO TRAIN FOR THE ACT MASTERING THE IDEAS IN THIS BOOK UNDERSTAND YOUR MISTAKES
PART 4: TIME MANAGEMENT
THE GENERAL GAME PLAN FOR ATTACKING A SECTION OF THE ACT ON TEST DAY TIMING ISSUES
PART 5: KEY TECHNIQUES FOR THE WHOLE ACT ALWAYS CONSIDER EVERY ANSWER CHOICE!
THE VERTICAL SCAN: A KEY TACTIC FOR TRAINED TEST-TAKERS
PART 6: READING TEST TRAINING AND WALKTHROUGHS
ACT READING
READING QUESTION WALKTHROUGHS
PART 7: MATH TEST TRAINING AND WALKTHROUGHS
ACT MATH
MATH QUESTION WALKTHROUGHS
PART 8: SCIENCE TEST TRAINING AND WALKTHROUGHS
ACT SCIENCE
SCIENCE QUESTION WALKTHROUGHS
PART 9: ENGLISH TEST TRAINING AND WALKTHROUGHS
ACT ENGLISH
ENGLISH QUESTION WALKTHROUGHS
PART 10: WRITING TEST TRAINING (THE ACT ESSAY)
ACT WRITING TEST (THE ACT ESSAY)
PART 11: CLOSING THOUGHTS
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS YOU HAVE TO PRACTICE
WHEN THINGS GO WRONG
SHOOTING FOR A 36
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All you need to prepare for the ACT is this Black Book, and ACT Practice Tests #1-3 (which are available in the ACT, Inc. publication The Official ACT Prep Guide, also called the Red Book). But if you’d like more from me including sample videos and updates related to test preparation, admissions, and the college experience please connect with me on the following channels:
ACTprepVideos.com
This is where you can sign up for my e-mail newsletter and check out sample videos of question walkthroughs to see how I think through real ACT practice questions in real time.
YouTube.com/TestingIsEasy
This is my YouTube channel, where you can find sample videos from my online video courses, as well as videos about other aspects of test prep and admissions.
Facebook.com/TestingIsEasy
This is my Facebook page, the primary place where I keep in touch with my students, and also a place to share updates, interesting articles, commentary, and the occasional gif of a goat riding a dirt bike through a mall This feed is also posted on Instagram.com/TestingIsEasy and Twitter.com/TestingIsEasy, if you prefer to follow it there.
TestingIsEasy.com
This is my main website and blog where you can find videos and articles about many different aspects of test preparation and college admissions.
And look for more soon—including a podcast where I answer your questions . . .
PLEASE Read This First!!!!
(Getting
As you’ve probably noticed, this book is pretty long. It had to be, in order for us to include everything we wanted to say about the ACT. The good news is that you don’t need to read every page in this Black Book in order to raise your score significantly but there’s a part of this book that
IF AMERICAN ENGLISH ISN’T YOUR FIRST LANGUAGE . . . PARTING ADVICE
the Most out of The ACT Prep Black Book, Second Edition) Hi!
addresses any problem an ACT-taker is likely to have. Everything from time management to testing anxiety to language barriers and more is covered, not to mention detailed strategies for every section of the test and full walkthroughs for three official full-length ACT tests from ACT, Inc., so you can model the ideal test-taking thought process directly. This lets you focus your energies on your problem areas And if you want a detailed and thorough understanding of every aspect of the test, then, by all means, enjoy all 630 pages :)
One way or another, the goal is to show you how the ACT actually works, and how you can strategically exploit the limitations of the test in order to raise your score as much as possible in as little time as possible Toward that end, we’ve drawn on our decades of experience with standardized testing and feedback from clients, readers, and students all over the world to present this edition of the Black Book. We hope you like it.
What’s in this Black Book
Our discussion of the ACT will include the following main parts: A Note to Concerned Parents
Part 1: Secrets of the ACT
Part 2: When to Use Official ACT, Inc , Materials, and When not To
Part 3: Goals and Training
Part 4: Time Management
Part 5: Key Techniques for the Whole ACT
Part 6: Reading Test Training and Walkthroughs
Part 7: Math Test Training and Walkthroughs
Part 8: Science Test Training and Walkthroughs
Part 9: English Test Training and Walkthroughs
Part 10: Writing Test Training
Part 11: Closing Thoughts
As you can see, Parts 1-5 cover ideas that are more general and foundational, while Parts 6-10 cover training for specific sections of the ACT. Part 11 addresses ideas and situations that would be harder to cover without the background provided in the rest of this Black Book, such as how to prepare if your goal is to make a perfect score, what to do when a question seems like it doesn’t follow the rules you’ve learned, and how to modify your training if you’re not a native speaker of English.
You may be tempted to skip or skim the earlier parts of this book, and dive straight into the parts that you think are most relevant to your needs as you currently understand them. Of course, it’s your right to do that if you feel like it, but I’d strongly recommend that you read Parts 1-5 instead of skipping them (after all, that’s why we wrote them :) ). They lay an important foundation that will help you understand why the strategies
in the rest of the ACT Prep Black Book work, which will help you apply them more effectively and consistently as you learn them
The parts of this Black Book that cover section-specific training for the ACT will start out by describing the following key information: the big secret behind the relevant section of the ACT
the necessary background information (such as math formulas, grammar rules, or aspects of experimental design)
unwritten, ACT-specific rules and patterns
a step-by-step process for attacking questions in the section any other relevant notes or special techniques
After that, each section will demonstrate all of the above training in action against real ACT questions published by ACT, Inc., in The Official ACT Prep Guide (which I’ll affectionately refer to as the “Red Book,” because it’s red, and it’s a book). That way, you’ll be able to see my techniques in action against three full official tests, which will help you master the strategies you’ll learn in this Black Book.
(As we’ll see in “Part 2: When to Use Official ACT, Inc , Materials, and When not To,” you’ll need a copy of the Red Book in order to get the full benefit from the question walkthroughs in this Black Book, because we’re not allowed to re-print ACT questions from the Red Book And see “(But Wait which Red Book!?)” for more on the differences among the several versions of the Red Book currently available.)
Two Notes On The Walkthroughs
One of the most valuable things about this book is that it contains more than 600 detailed walkthroughs of real ACT test questions from ACT, Inc (you’ll learn more about why that’s so important in Parts 1 and 2 of this Black Book). Here are two important ideas to help you get the most out of these walkthroughs.
Read the Entire Walkthrough!
If you’re going to look up a walkthrough in this book for a particular real ACT question, be sure to read the whole thing, including any introductory text explaining the key concepts involved in the question, and any notes at the end of the walkthrough! If you just read part of the walkthrough, you may not notice many of the key details of the question that will actually be useful to you on test day.
My Walkthroughs are More Thorough Than You’ll Need to be on Test Day!
My walkthroughs often go into a lot of detail, but that doesn’t mean that applying these techniques on test day should take you a long time! Remember that the point of my walkthrough is to show you everything of importance that’s going on in the question, so you can understand how the ACT really works—but even though the description of a particular question might go on for pages, we could often have chosen the correct
answer in 10 seconds or less on test day, and pretty much always in 30 seconds or less, if our only goal were to answer the question and not thoroughly dissect it as part of our training.
Remember that, on test day, you don’t have to explain to someone every single aspect of what’s going on in each question the way we do in this book; you just have to find the right answer in the way that’s quickest and most comfortable for you. In the Math walkthroughs, for example, we might look at 2 or 3 different ways to answer one question but you won’t need to find multiple solutions to these questions on test day. We’re just looking at a lot of different ways to show you that multiple approaches can be successful, so you can find which one works best for you My purpose in this Black Book is to communicate the ideal thought process when encountering a new ACT question, so I often need to go into some detail, and focus on aspects of a question that may not seem important to an untrained test-taker. In time, you’ll find that a lot of the thoughts I spell out on the page in a walkthrough become second-nature
Buy the full pdf, or epub here
ACT Prep Black Book: The Most Effective ACT Strategies Ever Published
https://ebookhht gumroad com/l/zssyb
