Class today- Friday, November 8th

As I try to hit you over the head daily with the relevance of grammar and mechanics in your communicative lives, today we are going to revisit the critical need of knowing this "stuff" RIGHT NOW!

Of course, you have to be proficient in English grammar and mechanics for an English class and your other classes where you write and speak... but there is also a 'little' HIGH STAKES test called the ACT that surprisingly ALSO finds this "stuff" important. Who knew?

Today, we will be going through three English sample passages. Timed. On the actual ACT you will have 75 questions in 45 minutes. This means 25 questions in 15 minutes OR 10 questions every 6 minutes OR 1 question every 36 seconds.

These passages have 15 questions. You will have 9 minutes to complete.
You will take the second passage test. Write down the answers first. Do not click on the screen. After the 9 minutes is up, I will provide the answers so we can see how you did in addition of handling the time.

Then, you will take the first passage test. You will also be timed. However, when you are done with this test you will go back over the questions and write down what is the GRAMMAR or MECHANICS issue that makes your response CORRECT. After you have done this, we will go through the correct answers and see if your reasoning is solid.

You will then take the third passage test. It will be timed, as well.

Passage 2:
http://www.actstudent.org/sampletest/english/eng_02.html

Passage 1:
 http://www.actstudent.org/sampletest/english/eng_01.html

Passage 3:
http://www.actstudent.org/sampletest/english/eng_03.html

If time allows, we will take a sample reading passage, so you will see the importance of being able to determine the main idea and supporting points of any text... notice I said that YOU can determine it on your own... not have someone else (me) point it out for you!

READING
35 minutes to read 4 passages and respond to 40 questions.
This is approximately just under 9 minutes per section.
You will need to spend about 3 minutes reading the passage and about 35 seconds per question to answer.

Passage 1:
http://www.actstudent.org/sampletest/reading/read_01.html

Passage 2:
http://www.actstudent.org/sampletest/reading/read_02.html