Aaron of Prepped and Polished gives you three tips for acing the ACT Science section.
Today, we’re gonna be talking about the three tips for acing the ACT science section. Now, if you’re prepping for the ACT, you probably know that the last section of the test, the science section tends to be the test section that not many students are always prepared for, and that can come from a number of reasons.
First of all, it’s the last section of the test if you’re not taking the writing section, and you will have just done, in standard time, 45 minutes for English, 60 minutes for Math, a break, 35 minutes for Reading, and then now another 35 minutes for Science. A lot of times students become very tired at this point and can get mixed results from the Science section. In addition, it’s not that the Science section is specifically about science. It’s about how we interpret certain information that just happens to be labeled as science.
Tip 1: Recognition of the passages and question
First one is just a simple recognition of the passages and question/answer types. You need to know how many passages there are, what types of passages there are, what kind of questions can you expect to see? And also the type of answers. By doing this, by recognizing and applying this knowledge, you shouldn’t be surprised when a certain question pops up on any type of passage.
In addition, I would say, if you can recognize that, “Oh, this type of passage seems to show us an experiment,” whereas, “Hmm, this entire passage is written out. There’s no graphs, there’s no tables. How should I be approaching this?” By asking these questions along the path of the test, you’re actually able to prepare yourself more so than someone who’s just blindly going through it. In addition to the types of passages that you see, the question types and corresponding answers are just as important. When looking at the question, is it telling me where I need to pay attention to? Is it telling me to look at experiment one, at table three, or scientist B’s ideas? These questions are either gonna direct us to the answer where I need to find it, or the answer choices might be indicative of where we need to look.
Tip 2 Time management
Another aspect, or a tip to consider is your time management. As I mentioned before, standard time for the science section on the ACT is 35 minutes. You have six passages, doing quick math, that’s less than six minutes per passage. That is not a lot of time to be answering somewhere between six and seven questions per passage. So, what we need to figure out and what I tell every student that I work with, is what works best for you? What is your time that you need for each passage type, for each question type? If it’s a question about biology versus physics, or chemistry, or earth science, how do we approach that? Are you comfortable with unknown material? Are you more in tuned with graphs than tables, or charts, or figure analysis?
It’s really good to know how much time there is and how much time you need either for each passage or for certain questions, or just general time management skills to get through the test unscathed.
Tip 3: Outside knowledge questions
A third tip that would also suggest is, be aware that they’re going to be what we call outside knowledge questions. Now, this is gonna be a handful of questions, there are six passages. So, worst-case scenario would be six questions in total that are outside knowledge. This is based on certain chemistry, biology, physics, earth science, astronomy, rules and principles that can crop up throughout the test, such as knowing the boiling and melting points of water, the sizes of the planets in our solar system, whether something is basic or acidic, and how to interpret a base or acidic pH scale.
Similarly, you might need to know a little bit about genetics or about dominant and recessive traits. Certain terminology such as control experiment, or dealing with homogeneous or heterozygous pairings. It’s important to be prepared that you might have to know some things before entering into this section.
What was your biggest takeaway from this podcast about Three Tips for Acing the ACT Science Section. Do you have any questions for Aaron and Alexis Avila?
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