JCC It's been a heluva long time since I took the ACT

Last night, just for fun, but also to goad my son into taking preparation seriously, I took an ACT English practice test and got 74 out of 75. I don't know what that scales to, but that seems pretty good, right? The sound you hear is me gloating to my son.

45 minutes of your life, wasted. I took the second English practice test.

Just so you know: I should probably be tutoring you for your ACT English test, not that any of you are still in high school. Hopefully not. If so, I'm going to be feeling very old.

Anyway, you know where to ask if you have any language questions, preferably English language questions, but also German. I'll be forwarding those to yankee8255, if he's not too busy sulking about Felix Baumgartner's aborted suicide mission.

 

Oh man, the ACT. That takes me back.

 

I don't even remember taking the ACT. I think I went to college though. I must have done something to gain admittance, most likely something legal.

 

I didn't take the ACT 'cause I didn't have to. All I remember about the SAT is that most of my classmates "studied" for it, I didn't and I still outscored most of them. Yay meaningless academic achievement.

 

Oh, good. I can tell my son not to take that one. I've urged him to focus exclusively on meaningful academic achievements.

 

You just can't get good lemons these days.

 

You really can't.

 

When I took my college entrance exams, I got 110 on the English part. You were allowed to miss 10 and still get 100. I didn't miss any, so I got the extra 10 points. My mom was an English teacher.

 

Never took the ACT, just the SAT. I used to be able to brag to people that I got a 1500 first try (780 verbal 720 math) but then they went and made it out of 2400.

 

never took the ACT

 

I only know one grammar rule, but luckily the ACT English practice test I took tested that one rule over and over. Here's the rule:

Use a semicolon to glue independent clauses together.

There. Now you will get at 35 on the ACT english test too.

 

I think if one wants to do well on those things it's important to study in general not just for the test. I didn't study for the SATs at all but I got a 730 on the reading and a 650 on the writing (because I ran out of time and didn't finish the essay). I love to read and I write a decent amount so it came easily to me either way. But I got a 490 on the math, which is pretty lame. At the time I took the SAT I hadn't even been in a math class for about a year, and math is something I generally have to work harder on, so of course I didn't do as well. Studying for the test isn't really important.