A Preview Of The Top 75 ACT English List
I’m putting together the top 75 list for ACT English with the help of Dave Lynch…and it’s crazy just how frequently the most common items appear. The most frequent (“redundancy”) appeared more than 6 times per test in our sample. Just over halfway through the list (at #38, “introductory phrase”), you find terms that still appeared at least twice per test. In fact, you won’t find one that didn’t appear at least once per test until you get to the 60th item (“period/semicolon pair”).
As a comparison, there are not even 10 question types that appear twice per test on the math side of the ACT. The 38th item (“shaded area”) is a type that appears less than once per test.
The items on the ACT English section don’t just appear more frequently – they are also much easier to learn. For example, the fifth term on the English list is ‘comma splice’. This is easy to explain, a comma splice attempts to connect two complete sentences with a comma1. But the fifth item on the top 75 math list is much more complex: ‘exponents’. This could refer to a simple rule, like adding the exponents when the bases are the same and you’re multiplying, or it could refer to a very difficult question that requires you to change the bases of both exponents and then do some algebra2.
It’s the difference between seeing the ‘low fuel’ light on your car’s panel and hearing a funny sound from your car’s engine. In the first case, you know exactly what the problem is and exactly how to fix it. In the second case, you have to diagnose the problem, see how much it might cost (money in the case of your car, time in the case of your student), assess whether it’s worth it, then proceed (or not) with the repair.
Anyway, stay tuned for the full list – I should post it within the next week or two.
Nothing like a grammar joke to spice things up.
The next two aren’t any easier: slope and average.
Great work, thanks.
I would argue that the "easy" check engine light RWE items on both the ACT and SAT are not necessarily hard concepts in and of them selves (a comma splice is easy to explain and typical examples are easy to see) but they are hard test questions. An easy concept can be very difficult to get right if it is surrounded by a moat and encapsulated in a labyrinth.
Example: The rules of commas in relation to descriptive nouns and appositives are easy to explain and demonstrate. But students are often tripped up when the "noun" is 8 words long, and their prior tendency was to sprinkle commas in whenever they needed to take a breath. It is difficult (but not impossible) to hide an exponent, but it is easy to hide a list item (when the list item is, eg, an entire independent clause).
Otherwise students would not commonly score about the same on English/writing as they do on math after a few tutoring sessions; they'd perfect the English/writing/RW in a few sessions.