Pathway Prep

3 Steps For Learning The ACT (And Everything)

By Alex Pint

School is a strange time. Of course, this is clearest in hindsight.

I was homeschooled until high school. When I got to high school, I figured this was “the real world”. Every class had clear goals, objectives, and rules. If you did your homework, you won a good grade. If you didn’t, you earned a bad grade. It was so simple, and for a Level 4 thinker, the path to success couldn’t be clearer. Do your work (well) and reap the reward!

Life after school is a different story, but that’s an article for a different time.

For me, the most comforting aspect of school was the clear definition of success and failure.  You are in Algebra 2. You will learn these 10-15 objectives. There will be lectures, homework assignments, and tests. If you follow the lectures, you will be able to do the homework assignments. If you can do the homework assignments, you will likely do well on the tests. If you struggle with any part of that, you can ask your teacher or classmates for help. Rinse and repeat.

For many students, this is the only type of learning they know. Unfortunately, this is unhelpful when it comes to the ACT or any standardized test. Sure, score ranges define success and failure, but how do you get there? There isn’t a simple set of lectures and assignments to build an understanding of the test. Here is a snip from the ACT website introducing the Math test:

Oh, all we do is go back and re-learn every math class leading up to senior year? Good luck! Cue the growing number of students who buy into the good student, bad test-taker mentality. Spoiler alert: it’s a myth. My friend Alec from Transform Tutoring has a great article on this if you want to read further.

So here’s the problem: a standardized test with broad and ambiguous rules. And here’s the solution: professional test prep. With college admission prices rising, awarded scholarship dollars are also rising. Thus, the impact of testing is larger than ever, despite many opinions to the contrary. Test scores are still an important factor in determining merit-based scholarship aid, even with the recent, much-publicized trend of colleges adopting test-optional admission criteria. (Hint: the criteria may not be as “test-optional” as colleges claim.) I’ve also seen strong arguments questioning if test results lead to college-preparedness and criticizing the positive correlation between family income and test results, but let’s leave those aside for now. Here’s the bottom line: the test is still a thing and we have to deal with it.

I believe in the value of professional test prep or I wouldn’t be doing this for a living. Yet if test prep stops at the test itself, it’s easy to miss the point. The true value lies in the confidence gained from going through the process. The confidence comes from students taking responsibility for their performance. I make this point clear in Day 1 of prep. The process is simple, but not easy. It takes what it takes. If students don’t buy into it, it will be hard to make meaningful progress. The responsibility is theirs.

This responsibility can be overwhelming, but it can also be incredibly fulfilling. If a student’s score increases, that is because they did it. And if they can do that, why couldn’t they become a Learner and do it in other areas of life? Hello, Level 6.

So how do we do this? I view learning this test (or anything) as a clear 3 step process.


Students can taste success through 1 or 2 of the steps, but they can hit their true potential by practicing all 3.

UNDERSTAND THE RULES

 

If we recall what a normal class is like, the rules for success are clearly defined. The ACT pretends its rules are the same, but a close look reveals some unstated rules below the surface. Take Reading for example.

Most English classes test reading comprehension through essays and class discussions. Through these, students practice subjectivity, judgment, and interpretation to develop critical thinking skills. These skills are essential to analyzing great works of literature at a deep level.

A multiple-choice, timed, standardized test can’t test that, though.  Different answer choices can’t be correct based on student interpretation. So, students aren’t allowed to use subjectivity. They can’t use those well-trained analytical skills to decide if an answer choice could be correct. They only need to find an answer choice that the passage supports. “Reading” is now a fancy word search.

The game isn’t harder than school; it’s different. If students get a bad Reading score, it’s not because they need to begin reading the New York Times. They only need to word search and eliminate answer choices.

This first step is nothing Earth-shattering. To improve at anything: the better you understand the subject, the easier it will be. Think about the underlying message, though. Telling students there are rules to learn puts the power back in their hands. It’s not that their schooling has failed them. It’s not that they don’t have the ability. It’s that they didn’t even know what game they were playing.

This shift in perspective can apply to any life challenge.

Struggling to maintain successful relationships? Maybe there are some rules about relationship building you could learn. Struggling to find happiness? Maybe you need to first define what happiness means for you and do some research on the topic.

The applications are endless.

LEARN BY TESTING

 

ACT strategies always sound simple until students try them on their own. Simple does not always mean easy.

Learning by testing has several benefits, but I’ll get the obvious ones out of the way first. It helps students grow familiar with the structure of the test. It also helps them with their timing and pacing throughout the test. The largest benefit, though, is that it cements the strategies in long-term memory. 

As discussed in the book Make It Stick, generating a solution to a problem before knowing what to do helps it stick.  Re-reading and rote memorization feel good and are fast, but the benefits don’t last. In contrast, generation is painful but makes the content harder to forget.

This is a lesson that would have helped me early in my engineering career. When constant testing is no longer required, it’s tempting to try and learn everything through rote practice and muscle memory. Learning does happen to a certain extent, but it’s never as strong or long-lasting as self-testing. Even though all careers have rules, many of them are unwritten or ill-defined. This makes self-testing too challenging for most.

Wouldn’t it be cool if these companies defined clear rules (Step 1) and tests to reinforce them (Step 2)? Maybe a project for future me…

Reflect and develop instincts

 

Steps 1 and 2 are fantastic when used together and will get students off to a great start. But if students don’t reflect on their test results, progress will stall. By reflection, I don’t mean  “oh, the correct answer is C – great, moving on!”

What I mean is:

  • What strategies apply to this question? What concepts apply? How can I tell based on context within the questions or the answer choices?
  • How do I solve the problem? Why is the right answer right? Why are the wrong answers wrong?
  • Why did I get it wrong? Was it a knowledge error? Was it a misreading error? Was it a test-taking error? How will I change my approach so I avoid the error next time?

By diving deep, students learn new concepts and get feedback on their mistakes. Too many students take the test once, get a score, but have no specific idea of what they’re missing. Don’t assume that you can fix your 2/8 score on Math functions by spending two weeks watching YouTube videos. How do you know that you didn’t misread those questions? How will you recognize function questions on the next test?

A coach provides specific, detailed feedback to identify direct causes for mistakes. This feedback improves the efficiency and effectiveness of prep. It also allows students to develop instincts about the test. Many questions on the ACT don’t repeat on future tests in the exact same form. By working on instincts, students are well-prepared for whatever may come on the next test. Many also begin to see how these go beyond the ACT and seep into other areas of life as well. Improving your attention to detail now will pay immense dividends in the future.

This step is the one I work on the most with students. Through no fault of their own, many have not developed this skill set. In school, they fill out study guides and the test is exactly like the study guide. They are often not used to other types of tests that rely on deep knowledge and instincts. Since many college tests are like that, I do believe the ACT is important for high schoolers to conquer. It may be the first taste of what comes after high school. Students can either learn what to do now or be in for a rude awakening once freshman year of college begins.

Calm down, dude, it’s just a test

 

Yeah, I know. This is a silly, unfair, arbitrary test that doesn’t apply to the real world. Sure –  if that’s your view, I agree with you.

As Hamlet suggests:

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

It is most dangerous when we apply that cynicism to our abilities. Henry Ford’s words ring true:

Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right.

With the right perspective, it’s impossible to conclude that this test is meaningless. It can be so much more than that. The same applies to life too. Think your job is meaningless? Congratulations, you’re right. And guess what: when there’s no silly score, it’s much harder to get that feedback crucial for improving.  If we don’t start to learn this process on a test where there are right and wrong answers, what will happen in the future? When we leave the sweet, comfortable shelter school provided for the first 20+ years of our lives? How will we ever learn to apply this process to the fuzzy, ambiguous tasks we run into daily in the real world?

That transition from the neat boxes of school to the blurred lines of beyond threw me for a loop. By teaching my students the process, I hope they learn how to break anything and everything down into those 3 steps. Maybe then they will be better prepared for the ambiguity of life after school than I was. Even when unstructured, unclear tasks arise, we will be able to apply the process. Everything is conquerable, we just have to get down to work.