The 18 Hardest ACT English Questions Ever

The 18 Hardest ACT English Questions Ever SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips If you’ve been hard at work studying for the ACT, you’ve mastered the basics of the test. But are you ready to tackle the hardest grammar, punctuation, syntax, and writing logic questions that ACT English will throw at you? Read this article to try your hand at 18 of the toughest, most confusing challenges ACT English poses. Then check out the detailed explanations of what makes each question tick, how to solve it and others like it, and what to watch out for when faced with similar questions on the real test. Why Should You Care About the Hardest ACT English Questions? Of course it is good to be able to answer all the questions you'll see on the ACT. But, how deeply you should be concerned about acing the hardest questions depends on what yourtarget score is. Are you trying to get as close to aperfect ACT score as possible?Getting above a 33 on ACT English leaves almost no room for error, so if you’re aiming for the highest scores, these are the questions you need to be able toanswer correctly. If you’re lessconcerned with getting the best possible score, then it’s good to know what the toughest questions look like because your strategy may be to skip some of them. What Makes ACT EnglishQuestions Hard? Surprisingly, questions aren’t hard because they test new or more complex material.Instead, what makes the hardest questions so challenging is that often, they ask you to do several types of thinking at the same time. Often, questions propose counterfactual ideas, where you have to keep in mind both the original and a completely different version of the text. For example, a regular reading comprehension question would ask what the main point of a passage is. Meanwhile, a difficult reading comprehension question would first present a scenario where the passage was altered in some way, and then ask how its main point would change as a result. (See Question 8 below for how this works in practice.) Also possible are questions that test several different grammar, punctuation, and style issues at once. For instance, each suggested answer choice for a hard grammar-based question could be completely plausible rather than obviously wrong. You would have to comb the sentence for meaning and style, not just grammatical information, in order to answer correctly. (Question 5 does this particular trick.) Finally, questions can add a layer of complexity byswitching from a detail-oriented to a big-picture focus. You could be asked to correctly complete a sentence in a passage - and then realize that your answer changes depending on how you interpret that passage! (Question 7 is an example ofthis.) Complexity is created when many simple things are layered on top of each other. Spoiler Warning! Before I show you the actual hardest questions, I think it's only fair to warn you. These questions are all fromthe official ACT practice tests(the PDF tests, not the online oneon the ACT website)! If you’re the type of person who will see them once and remember them forever, maybe wait to read the rest of the article till after you’ve taken the practice tests in test-day conditions. The Hardest ACT English Questions Since ACT English is an entirely passage-based section, all of these questions come from long passages, which I mostly haven’t included. Try to answer each question in about 35 seconds – that’s how long you’ll have on the test. Once you're done, check out theanswer and explanation that follows each question. Question 1 The county cleared this path and paved it with packed gravel, so they would have a peaceful place to hike and bike. Which of the following alternatives to the underlined portion would NOT be acceptable? path, paving path and then paved path before paving path paved The Challenge This question is hard for two reasons. First, because your brain is trained to assume that most answers are wrong, so this reverse question format - where most of the answers are correct - is challenging. And second,because each suggested option tests your knowledge of a different piece of grammar. Answer: D Explanation To find the unacceptable alternative, let’s first figure out the meaningof the original sentence. Two things happened: first the county cleared the path, and then the county paved it. So any answer choices that express this sequence of events would fit the sentence, and thus not be the "wrong" answer that we are looking for here. Answers A, B, and C all express the same idea in slightly different ways,creating perfectly grammatical phrases. Now let’s see what happens when we plug in answer J. We get this weird sentence: â€Å"The county cleared this path paved it with packed gravel†¦Ã¢â‚¬  This is clearly arun-on sentence, so answer J is our odd man out. Question 2 The first train took twenty-six minutes to complete the route, which ran from City Hall to West 145th Street in under a half an hour. NO CHANGE in the completion of its route. in twenty-six minutes. DELETE the underlined portion and end the sentence with a period. The Challenge Redundancy is sometimes tricky to spot. Especially when, like here, the repeating thing is a concept rather than a word used more than once, and is placed far away in the sentence from whatever it’s duplicating. Answer: D Explanation You first have to realize that 26 minutes is the same thing as "under a than half hour."Once you see this, you know that the question is testing editing out repetition. The original (answer A) doesn’t work, since it’s repeating the route length already described in the beginning of the sentence.Answer C has the same problem – it’s repeating the route time exactly as already expressed.Answer B takes one type of redundancy and replaces it with another, since it’s just a variant of the words â€Å"to complete the route† already in the sentence. So, the only answer that fixes all the redundancies is D. Question 3 The fresco is a dynamic work because, by capturing the energy, humanity, and collective achievement of the Detroit workers, celebrates all working men and women. NO CHANGE that, while, that was, The Challenge By interrupting the sentence with a long aside, the question breaks your concentration and makes it hard to see that although â€Å"because† fits the meaning and logic of the sentence, it isn't grammatical. Answer: B Explanation If you realize that the sentence is being broken in half by a long descriptive phrase, then you can simply take it out! Without the phrase"by capturing the energy, humanity, and collective achievement of the Detroit workers," our sentence simply reads: The fresco is a dynamic work because celebrates all working men and women. That clearly doesn't work, so answer A is out. Now you can simply plug the other answers in to see which of them makes sense. C and D also create nonsense sentences. Answer B is the only choice that gives us a functional sentence with orwithoutthe long descriptive phrase. Question 4 We talked just as easily as we had in the past, when we would sit in the field behind Joan’s house atop the rabbit hutch and discuss our friends and our hopes for the future. NO CHANGE in the field atop the rabbit hutch behind Joan’s house atop the rabbit hutch in the field behind Joan’s house behind Joan’s house in the field atop the rabbit hutch The Challenge This question is all about figuring out how to fixmisplaced modifiers. It's hard because there’s a confusing jumble of three different prepositional phrases that you have to sort into the right order. Answer: C Explanation Let make a mental image of what’s happening, and then zoom out to do the correct placement of bodies. Imagine a movie camera literally zooming out from the conversation to show us where these two people are: There are two people. They are sitting on top of the rabbit hutch (basically a small shed). The hutch is in a field. The field is behind Joan’s house. OK, so now let’s go through the answers to see which describes that reality. The original text (answer A) says, basically: There are two people. They are sitting in a field. The field is behind Joan’s house. Either the field or Joan’s house is on top of the rabbit hutch. That makes no sense. Answer Bgoes: There are two people. They’re sitting in a field. The field is on top of the rabbit hutch†¦ ok, that’s also wrong. Answer Dhas: There are two people. They are sitting behind Joan’s house. They are in a field. The field is on top of the rabbit hutch. That’s the same problem again. Only answer Cfits our mental image of the scene. Don't picture the rabbits in your mental movie, though. Their cuteness is too distracting. Question 5 In some agricultural parts of Japan, for instance, these three stars are commonly referred to as Karasuki and represent a three-pronged plow. Given that all the choices are true, which one provides a detail that has the most direct connection to the information that follows in this sentence? NO CHANGE distant populated historic The Challenge Questions where there is no logically â€Å"wrong† answer are hard because you can’t easily eliminate answers by a quick glance. Here, you have to extract the correct information from the sentence and fit it to thevocabulary offered. Answer: A Explanation Since the question asks us to connect anadjective to what the sentence is about, let’s first figure out what is being described. The bits of information we have are: Something about stars A foreign word for the stars The stars look like a type of plow Now, let’s see whichword choice connects with one of these pieces of information. â€Å"Distant† means far away. Certainly the stars are far away, but in this sentence â€Å"distant† would modify â€Å"parts of Japan† and nothing in the sentence discusses geographic distances of any kind. â€Å"Populated† means inhabited, or where people live. That doesn’t go with anything else in the sentence. â€Å"Historic† means important because of past events that happened there. Again, this doesn’t connect with anything in the sentence. The original word â€Å"agricultural† means having to do with farming. And that goes directly with the fact that the stars represent a â€Å"three-pronged plow,† a type of farming implement. Question 6 Unbricking a kiln after a firing is like a person uncovering buried treasure. NO CHANGE someone a potter OMIT the underlined portion. The Challenge Illogical comparisons can be very tough to spot unless you are familiar with what to look for. Answer: D Explanation The basic rule is that you can only compare things that are alike in some way. For example, you can compare pears and plums (both fruits!), but you can’t compare a pear to a person eating a plum. One trick to spotting illogical comparison questions is to look for words like â€Å"than† or â€Å"is like† that signal that something is about to be compared to something else. This something else needs to immediately follow the words â€Å"than† or â€Å"is like.† So, what’s being compared here? â€Å"Unbricking a kiln.† Even if you don’t know what that means, it’s clearly an action of some sort. The original text (answer A) compares this action to â€Å"a person.† An action is clearly not like a person, so that’s out.Once you realize this, you can see that answers B and C are also out, since all they do is replace the word â€Å"person† with alternate versions. Only answer D removes the illogical comparison, so that the sentence now compares â€Å"unbricking† to â€Å"uncovering† – two similar actions. Question 7 [1] Our son has started playing organized T-ball, a beginner’s version of baseball. [2] â€Å"Organized† is what parents call it, anyway. [3] Joe is seven, living in those two or three years when children can manage to throw a baseball a few feet but when what they’re really interested in are things closer at hand: bugs, butterflies, dirt (if they’re in the infield), grass (if they’re in the outfield). [4] Children of that age still think nothing of doing little dances in the outfield, often with their backs to home plate and, consequently, the batter. [5] It’s not as if the outfielders’ positions matter much, though- the ball never gets hit hard enough to reach there. The writer wishes to add the following sentence in order to emphasize the uncertainty already expressed about an idea in the paragraph: I still have doubts. The new sentence would best amplify and be placed after Sentence: 1. 2. 3. 4. The Challenge This question is hard because you have to recognizethe sarcasm in the sentence before you can figure out that the author doesn’t mean what is written literally. Answer: B Explanation This question is testing your ability to detectauthorial mood and voice. In this case, the sentence â€Å"I still have doubts.† has to back up something that the author disagrees with or doesn’t believe in.The best way to solve this is to go option by option to see which sentence is the one where skepticism is introduced. The first sentence (answer A) is completely factual. The author tells us about her son’s new activity, and explains that T-ball is a type of baseball. None of this is in dispute, so putting â€Å"I still have doubts† after this wouldn’t make sense. Sentence 3 is alsoquite fact-based. We learn the son’s age, and then get the author’s generalization about the inability of young kids to focus on the game. This is an opinion that the author clearly believes in, so putting â€Å"doubts† after this would be wrong. Sentence 4 continues the theme of distractibility, with a funny image of outfielders dancing around while the ball is in play. The author doesn’t doubt that this is the case – it’s clearly a description coming from personal experience. Sentence 2, on the other hand, is riddled with sarcasm and humor. We can tell because the word â€Å"organized† is now in quotation marks, separated out as being untrue. The phrase â€Å"what parents call it† signals that despite being called organized, T-ball is anything but. Finally, the adverb â€Å"anyway† signs the author’s shoulder shrug at the fact that other parents can see any organization on the field – a shrug that is followed by a bunch of evidence of how little attention the kids are paying to the game in progress. Right after sentence 2 is the perfect place to emphasize the author’s disagreement with the sentence â€Å"I still have my doubts.† Baseballs, tennis balls, a stuffed animal - just your basic T-ball chaos. Question 8 Banneker lived and worked on the family farm. After his father died in 1759, Banneker took over the responsibility of the farm and the care of his mother and younger sisters. In addition, he pursued scientific studies and taught himself to play the flute and violin. If the writer were to delete the last part of the preceding sentence (ending the sentence with a period after the word studies), the paragraph would primarily lose: support for the essay’s point about Banneker’s love of learning. a direct link to the previous paragraph. a humorous description of Banneker’s other interests. an extensive digression about music The Challenge The trick here is that it’s difficult to mentally process counterfactual information, like the question expects you to. The fact that answers B and C also sound plausible is an added challenge. Answer: A Explanation This question is checking to see how well you understand sentence-levelauthorial intention – why a writer includes or leaves out particular supporting details or examples. Another way to reframe this question is to ask: what purpose does the phrase â€Å"and taught himself to play the flute and violin† play in this passage?From reading it, we can see that it points to Banneker being interested in things other than just the farm and science.Now, let’s go through the answers to see which fits this description of the phrase. Answer D says that the section is an â€Å"extensive† discussion of music. Music is mentioned in the phrase, but only briefly and without any specific details. This answer is clearly wrong. It’s tempting to pick option C, since the phrase does deal with â€Å"other interests† – that’s what we noted in our own description – but there is nothing â€Å"humorous† about it. So, answer D is out. Answer B is also tempting – much of the longer passage dealt with Banneker’s various talents and skills. But we have an even better option to go with in this case. Answer A describes exactly what the phrase that question suggests cutting out does: it shows that Banneker loved to learn about all sorts of things. Question 9 The two principal types of kayaks are: the easily maneuverable white-water kayak and the largest sea kayak. NO CHANGE very biggest more large larger The Challenge You have to know that you are only comparing two things, so you can’t use thesuperlative form of the adjective. Answer:D Explanation When we compare a specific quality of several things, we can change the form of the adjective we use to show which object has more of that quality. For example, three tiny things can be ranked in size order: Small Smaller (the comparative form of the adjective â€Å"small†) Smallest (the superlative form of the adjective â€Å"small†) The rule is that if three or more things are being compared, then one of them can be labeled with the "-est"form of the adjective.But if only two things are being compared, then only the "-er"form of the adjective can be used. In this case, we are comparing two things: we are ranking the â€Å"white-water kayak† and the â€Å"sea kayak† in size order.Since there are only two things, we can’t use either â€Å"largest† or â€Å"biggest† to describe the sea kayak, so answers Aand Bare out. Some adjectives need the words â€Å"more† and â€Å"most† to indicate comparison. For example, you can’t say â€Å"this actor is woodener than that one,† you have to say â€Å"this actor is more wooden than that one.†But in this case, â€Å"large† does easily take the "-er"form, so answer Cis out, and answer Dis the right one. Question 10 Radioactive pools of toxic waste are okay for others to live in; even acid cannot kill them. NO CHANGE are all right for others to live in; are home to still others; suit others to a tee; The Challenge It can be hard toavoid overly colloquial speech and to modulate language level correctly. Answer: C Explanation Using words that are appropriately formal and avoiding diction that’s too slangy or casual is an important skill on the ACT. In this case, there is nothing grammatically wrong with the underlined phrase,but the sentence is clearly a piece of scientific writing, so this language is just too casual for this context.That means we have to find a version of the phrase that means the same thing, but uses more elevated language. The word â€Å"okay† in particular jumps out as being inappropriate here (so answer Ais wrong).Answer Bproposes changing â€Å"okay† to â€Å"all right† – this doesn’t really raise our diction in any way, so this answer is out.Answer Dreplaces the phrase with theidiomatic phrase â€Å"suit to a tee,† but this kind of folksy expression is still not the right fit. The most neutral and least casually inflected option is answer C, which creates themost compact and formal version of this description. Question 11 As the dancers step to the music, they were also stepping in time to a sound that embodies their unique history and suggests the influence of outside cultures on their music. NO CHANGE are also stepping have also stepped will also step The Challenge Some questions aboutmatching verb tenses are tricky because of the context of the sentence. Here, the words â€Å"time† and â€Å"history† can lead you down the wrong path, as can answer choice C. Answer:B Explanation Usually, verbs in the same sentence should be in the same tense: present, past, or future. Sometimes, though, when a sentence explains a shift in time, verb tenses shift along with it. For example: I think (now, so present tense) in the future we will be (later, so future tense) wearing utilitarian jumpsuits. In this question, the sentence seems to point to something about the dancing taking place in the past, as we connect the dancers dancing now to a â€Å"history.† But you have to realize that the dancing itselfis only happening in the present. This means that both forms of the verb â€Å"step† have to be in the present tense. The original verb (answer A) is in the past tense, whileAnswerDoffers us the future tense - both wrong. Answer Cis tempting because the helping verb â€Å"have† seems to be in the present tense. However, the full verb isâ€Å"have stepped† which is a past tense that'sused for actions that started in the past and are still ongoing. That’s not the case here, so answer Cis out. Answer Bsolves the problem by matching the present tense of the first verb, â€Å"step† with the present continuous â€Å"are stepping.† Question 12 To add to the confusion, every New Year’s Day a person according to this Korean counting system, becomes a year older, regardless of his or her actual birthday. NO CHANGE person, person; person who, The Challenge The many different commas in the sentence can easily throw you off track. You have to seethat the phrase â€Å"according to this Korean counting system† needs to be set off with commas. Answer: B Explanation This sentence is such a confusing jumble of phrases that it’s hard to make heads or tails of what goes with what and which punctuation is appropriate. First, let’s take the sentence apart and connect the pieces that actually go together. â€Å"To add to the confusion,† – prepositional phrase â€Å"every New Year’s Day† – prepositional phrase â€Å"a person† – subject â€Å"according to this Korean counting system,† – verb phrase â€Å"becomes a year older,† – verb â€Å"regardless of his or her actual birthday.† – prepositional phrase Breaking everything down like this shows us that there is a descriptivephrase separating the sentence’s subject and verb, which are: "a person becomes a year older." This means that this separating phrase needs to be set off from the rest of the sentence by commas, so answers A and C are out.Answer D gives us the comma, but it also introduces a dependent clause subject (â€Å"who†). We only have one verb, so we don’t need two subjects, so this answer is wrong. Only B fixes the actual problem, adding a comma to set off the modifier. What if you were born on New Year's Day? Do you get to celebrate twice? No? OK, fine - how about just two slices of cake then? Question 13 Wearing Jeans in School In 1970, the school board in Pittsfield, New Hampshire, approved a dress code that prohibited students from wearing certain types of clothing. The school board members believed that wearing â€Å"play clothes† to school made the students lax and indifferent toward their school work, while more formal attire established a positive educational climate. When twelve-year-old Kevin Bannister wore a pair of blue jeans to school, he was sent home for violating the dress code. Kevin and his parents believed that his constitutional rights had been violated. The United States District Court of New Hampshire agreed to hear Kevin’s case. His claim was based on the notion of personal liberty- the right of every individual to the control of his or her own person- protected by the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment. The court agreed with Kevin that a person’s right to wear clothing of his or her own choosing is, in fact, protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. The court noted, however, that restrictions may be justified in some circumstances, such as in the school setting. So did Kevin have a right to wear blue jeans to school? The court determined that the school board had failed to show that wearing jeans actually inhibited the educational process. Furthermore, the board offered no evidence to back up its claim that such clothing created a negative educational environment. Certainly the school board would be justified in prohibiting students from wearing clothing that was unsanitary, revealing, or obscene. The court remained unconvinced, therefore, that wearing jeans would actually impair the learning process of Kevin or of his fellow classmates. Kevin Bannister’s case was significant in that it was the first in the United States to address clothing prohibitions of a school dress code. His challenge initiated a review of students’ rights and administrative responsibility in public education. Suppose the writer’s goal had been to write a brief persuasive essay urging students to exercise their constitutional rights. Would this essay fulfill that goal? Yes, because the essay focuses on how Kevin encouraged other students to exercise their constitutional rights. Yes, because the essay focuses on various types of clothing historically worn by students as a freedom of expression. No, because the essay suggests that the right to wear blue jeans was not a substantial constitutional right in the 1970s. No, because the essay objectively reports on one case of a student exercising a particular constitutional right. The Challenge After spending time examining this passage on a sentence level for all the other questions associated with it, it's pretty challenging tohave to zoom out and think about what is actually being said here. Plus, the answers all hit plausible notes. Answer: D Explanation You’re being tested on how well you understand overallauthorial intention – what the purpose and point of a given piece of writing are. So what features would an essay urging people to act have in it? It might be organized around a bit of activism. It might tell the story of some protest or challenge to the order of the day. It would have a clear point of view of who/what is right and who/what is wrong in a given situation or problem. It would most likely either start or end with a directive to go out there and do something. Does this passage do those things?It does tell the story of a legal challenge to established order.But it doesn’t do any of those other things. And, even if you can’t immediately picture what an essay urging action would sound like, you can check out the descriptions of this passage in the answers to see whether any of them actually fit what you just read. Answer A is wrong because there is no mention of Kevin interacting with other students in any way. Answer B is wrong because aside from jeans, there is no mention made of any other self-expressive clothing choices made by students. Answer C is tempting because it agrees that the essay is not urging anyone to do anything, but the answer also says that the passage picks a side in the fight over whether jeans are a constitutional right. But the essay does no such thing, so this answer is out. Answer D is the only one that actually describes this essay: it’s a simple, chronological, fact-based, neutral account of one court case. Question 14 Some sixty years later, an elderly Frances Griffiths publicly admitted that her and her cousin had staged the photographs as a practical joke. NO CHANGE her cousin and herself she and her cousin her cousin and her The Challenge The question is asking you to correct what is a prettycommon mistake in spoken English, where we don’t pay careful attention to pronoun forms when we use compound nouns. Ifyou're used to hearing people speak this way, you might be caught off guard here. Answer: C Explanation One trick to use, when you’re looking a compound noun (two nouns or pronouns connected with the word "and"), is to take the noun away, leave the pronoun, andsee whether the sentence still works. Here, we would get: "Frances Griffiths admitted that her had staged the photographs,† which is clearly wrong.This means answers A and D are out – both use the â€Å"her† form of the pronoun. Using the trick with answer B, we would get: â€Å"Frances Griffithsadmitted that herself had staged the photographs,† which also doesn’t work. The only answer that works is C, which uses the subject form of the pronoun: â€Å"she.† Question 15 One significant aspect of this relationship was: that Susan was perhaps the only reader of Emily’s poems-in-progress. NO CHANGE was that Susan was, that Susan was that Susan, The Challenge The difficulty here is that there are two types of punctuation rules being tested at the same time. Answer:B Explanation This question is testing how well you know how to punctuate a modifying clause (basically, a part of a sentence that explains the rest of the sentence). The rule is that if the modifying phrase is necessary for the sentence to make sense, then it doesn't need any commas around it. In this case,the modifying clause explains the relationship between the two women-â€Å"that Susan was perhaps the only reader of Emily’s poems-in-progress." Without it, the sentence wouldn't work at all: One significant aspect of this relationship was. This tells us that the correct answer is the one that leaves out any punctuation -answer B. Question 16 A lot of people hate to ride the New York City subways, but I love them because I like to get places fast. A musician balancing a cello case, two Buddhist monks in saffron robes, and a group of stockbrokers in crisp, charcoal gray suits get on at Wall Street. A passenger placidly sews while the subway train flings and jolts. A teenager who’s holding a shoebox containing a kitten as tiny as a gingersnap smiles as a line of girls in frilly white communion dresses file by. About three and a half million people a day ride the subways, and I think maybe I’ve met them all. At this point, the writer wants to provide one reason why she likes to ride the subways. Which choice is most relevant to the information provided in this first paragraph? NO CHANGE I never know what I’ll see there. they are so much cheaper than taxis. they are places of enormous quiet and calm. The Challenge This question challenges you to find the common theme of the paragraph and then circle back to apply it to this sentence. It's easy to get it wrong because eachof the answers is a completely plausible way to end the sentence - if you don't connect it to the rest of the passage. Answer: B Explanation Each answer option would create a totally different topic sentence for this paragraph. Yourjob is to use the paragraph to find clues for what a relevant topic sentence would be here The passage that follows the sentence is basically a long list of different people that the author has seen riding the subway: a musician, monks, stockbrokers, someone sewing, a teenager, and girls. Let’s see whether one of the answer choices sets up this list. Answers A and C are about the advantage of the subway as a mode of transportation. They’re true, but they aren’t what this paragraph is about. Answer D actually is about the environment inside the subway, but the paragraph describes a crazy mishmash of people and things, while â€Å"quiet and calm† are adjectives better suited to a library than public transit. Answer B is the only one that gives us an intro to what is to come in the rest of the paragraph. Then we all took off one shoe and got on the subway together! Question 17 The Navajo language is complex, with a structure and sounds that makes them unintelligible to anyone without extensive exposure to it. NO CHANGE makes it make it make them The Challenge Because this question is testing both subject/verb agreement and noun/pronoun agreement, it's easy to get tripped up by it. Answer:C Explanation We are asked here to figure out two things: whether the verb â€Å"make† should be singular or plural and whether the pronoun "them" should be singular or plural.Let’s take these one at a time. A verb has to match its subject. In other words,a singular subject takes a singular verb, while a plural subject makes the verb plural.In this case, to figure out the right form of the verb "make," you have to first determine what is doing the making. What is making Navajo language complex? The structure and sounds. So, since the subject is plural, the right verb is "make," eliminating answers A and B. Similarly, a pronoun has to match the noun that it's linkingback to. Here, you have to analyze: what is being made complex by the structure and sounds? The Navajo language. Since this noun is singular, the underlined pronoun should be too, making C the correct answer. Question 18 On each wing, all flighted birds have ten primary flight feathers, each one shaped slight different. NO CHANGE slight differently. slightly differently. slightly more different. The Challenge Here, you have to realize that you have to use anadverb to modify a verb and another adverb. Answer: C Explanation Choosing whether to usean adjective or an adverbdepends on what you want to that word to describe. The rule is: nouns can be modified by nouns or adjectives; butadjectives, adverbs, and verbs can only be modified by adverbs. In this case, it’s important to first figure out what function the underlined words are playing.The sentence is explaining that each feather has a different shape from those around it. That means that the verb â€Å"shaped† is being modified by the word explaining variations in form. Since it’s modifying the verb, it needs to be an adverb, so it has to be â€Å"differently.† This means answers A and Dare out. But the sentence also points out that the feathers aren’t all that different from one another – their shapes have mild, not extreme variance.So the adverb â€Å"differently† is being modified by the word expressing the degree of difference. Since it’s modifying an adverb, it has to be â€Å"slightly,† so answer Cis correct. Flight feathers in action. How to Tacklethe Hardest ACT English Questions Now that you've seen what the ACT English section is ready to dish out, how can you get ready to meet its most difficult challenges? TakeComplexity Step By Step. Most of the hardest questions are difficult because they layerseveral rules, ideas, or concepts into one pile. Whenever this happens, your best bet is to untangle each part of the question and solve it on its own. Not only are you less likely to make mistakes if you work in simple steps, but often, solving one part of the question will lead you to find the right answer for the other parts as well. Use the Process of Elimination. Another useful technique is to cross out the answers you know are wrong. After you've done this, look at what's different about the remaining answer choices. Often, you will realize what the question is testing by looking at these left-over answers and comparing the changes they suggest with the original text. Balance Your Time Wisely. Earlier in this article, I told you that you would have only about 35 seconds to solve each ACT English question. But that's only if you spend the same amount of time on each of the questions in this section of the test. A better approach is to do a first pass through the section to solve the easiest questions as quickly as you can while still being precise. Then, you will have more time left to devote to the questions that need extra attention and care. Trust Your Gut.If all else fails, trycovering up all the answer choices (including the underlined originaltext), and read the restof the passage. See ifyou can form your own opinion about: the logical progression of the passage structure the way the different sentences, or the different parts of one sentence, relate to one another how you wouldfill inthe blank space yourself Then, try to find the answer choice that most closely matches your own thoughts, rather than being distractedby the answer choices. The Bottom Line The most challenging questions on ACT English are difficult because they: Check your understanding of more than one grammar, editing, or punctuation skill at the same time. Have several answer choices that seem correct on first glance. Force you to flip between detail-oriented, sentence or phrase-level observation and passage-wide comprehension. Present counterfactual information. Some ways to tackle these hardest questions on the test are: Simplify multi-layered questions by solving each component by itself. Use the process of elimination to cross out obviously wrong answers, and then figure out what the question is testing by comparing the remaining answers to one another. Balance your time wisely to have more time to spend on the most difficult questions. Trycovering up the answer choices and rewriting the underlined piece of the passage yourself. What’s Next? Shooting for the top score on the ACT? Check out our article on 9 strategies to a perfect score on ACT English, our guide togetting a perfect ACT score, and a discussion of how many questions you can miss and still score a 36. Need to study more for ACT English? Check out our guides forthe best way to prepare for ACT Englishandboosting your overall ACT score in 10 days. Wondering how you’ll stack up when you take the test? We’ve gotan explanation ofwhat a good/bad/excellent ACT score looks like, and advice onfinding a target score. Want to improve your ACT score by 4 points? Check out our best-in-class online ACT prep classes. We guarantee your money back if you don't improve your ACT score by 4 points or more. Our classes are entirely online, and they're taught by ACT experts. If you liked this article, you'll love our classes. Along with expert-led classes, you'll get personalized homework with thousands of practice problems organized by individual skills so you learn most effectively. 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