This past spring, I took the American College Testing test. This college acceptance test is different than the CLT, so I wanted to write about the ACT in this post.
How does the test look?
The ACT has four sections: English, Reading, Math, and Science. All of the sections except math are passage-based, which means there are about 7-15 questions that all relate to a specific passage. In scoring, each section is scored on a scale of 1-36, and then those numbers are scored to give a composite score on the same scale.
English
The English test had 75 questions and was 45 minutes long. There were 5 passages, with 15 questions per passage. This part of the exam tests the student’s ability to use proper grammar and understand sentence and paragraph construction. The cross sections for scoring were Production of Writing, Knowledge of Language, and Conventions of Standard English.
Math
The math test was 60 minutes long and had a total of 60 questions. The questions had a general increase in complexity throughout the section. A calculator is allowed for all math questions, but all of them can theoretically be solved without one. Trigonometry is included but the student never has to simplify past fractions. The cross sections were Preparing for Higher Math (which included Number and Quantity, Algebra, Functions, Geometry, and Statistics and Probability), Integrating Essential Skills, and Modeling.
Reading
The reading portion had 40 questions for the student to answer in 35 minutes. There were four passages with ten questions each. The reading test measures the student’s reading comprehension and ability to connect ideas within passages. The cross sections were Key Ideas and Details, Craft and Structure, and Integration of Knowledge and Ideas, and Understanding Complex Texts.
Science
The last section was the science section, which was set up in a similar way to the reading section. There were 40 minutes to answer 35 questions. The section had 4 passages with 10 questions each. These questions mostly tested the student’s ability to interpret graphs and very basic science knowledge. However, it does not matter what level of science you are in because none of the questions really required background knowledge. The cross sections were Interpretation of Data, Scientific Investigation, and Evaluation of Models, Inferences, and Experimental Results. The scores for math and science are also averaged to give a STEM score.
I hope this post was helpful in explaining the ACT and in the future, I hope to write a comparison between the ACT and CLT!
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