English

Some viewers see the paintings of abstract artist James Little as impersonal, discordant rainbows. Others see them as minimalistic distillations of emotion, in other words, they are (61) metaphors for Little’s feelings about social issues and historical events.

The winter night I attempted to see the famed Orion Nebula, I didn’t expect to succeed. I was an inexperienced astronomer peering through (45) light-polluted skies. But I was eager to test my new telescope’s capabilities, and the nebula being (46) one of the greatest sights in the night sky.

In Reynolds County, Missouri, a one-billion-gallon blast of water caused by (31) a breach of the Taum Sauk reservoir roared down Proffit Mountain into the east fork of the Black River on December 14, 2005.

At first glance a Renaissance fair, (16) looks a lot like a theme park. Crowds of people mill about, moseying they’re way past (17) costumed characters and colorful booths.

To the casual observer, the Kam Wah Chung & Co. building, located in the eastern Oregon community of John Day, that is, (1) simply a small, unassuming structure made of rock and wood. To those with an interest in history, however, it’s a unique building that preserves a part of the legacy of the Chinese community in the nineteenth-century American West. (2)

[1] "I have been taken prisoner for the liberties of my country, and never will prove a traitor to her interests." [A] Before entering a British-run prison during the American Revolution prisoner of war, James Forten, (61) said these words as a patriotic rejection of his British captor's offer to free him and educate him in England.

[1] Rome, founded on the banks of the Tiber River, boasts two ancient walls that, when they were built, surrounded the city. [A] Although both were built as walls intended to defend the city protectively (46) and stood ten meters tall they (47) were erected under different historical circumstances.

[1] The Bahamas, a series of semitropical islands off the southeast coast of the United States, which are (31) home to some of the most unusual geological formations in the world: underwater caves known as blue holes. [A] These vertical caves were formed over thousands of years, and their cold depths provide abundant clues to the islands’ past.

[1] Seeing remnants (16) of outdoor advertisements from a bygone era (17), they are called “ghost signs.” I search for them on city streets, in town squares, and along country roads. Some are weather-beaten billboards; others are faded murals painted years ago on the sides of old buildings. Whatever words remain (18) Fruiterer . . . Apothecary . . . Gramophones . . . Pan-Handle Coffee — are often barely legible, pale fragments of yesterday’s consumer culture should (19) strike me as silly or sad. After all, there they are: advertising products and businesses (20) that no longer exist.

Cynthia Moss has been studying elephants, since 1972 (1) when she started the now-famous (2) Amboseli Elephant Research Project in Amboseli National Park in Kenya. An author, lecturer, filmmaker, and a fierce advocate for elephants - which face a daunting array of threats to their survival, from droughts to human encroachment (3) Moss is widely considered an expert on the social behavior of these creatures. (4)

There are certain words and phrases in the English language that are often misused and that often show up on the ACT English Test. This is a list of commonly misused words here, along with definitions and examples of the proper use of the words.

Sentence structure is the grammatical arrangement of words and phrases in sentences. It is important that a sentence be arranged so that the idea is expressed completely and clearly.

Grammar is the study and application of combining words to form sentences. A well-formed sentence contains a subject and a verb and expresses a complete thought. The ACT English Test includes questions that will test your ability to identify and correct poorly written sentences.

Punctuation means standard marks and signs in writing and printing to separate words into sentences, clauses, and phrases in order to clarify meaning. A properly punctuated sentence will help the reader understand the organization of the writer’s ideas.

The ACT English test is designed to measure your ability to accomplish the wide variety of decisions involved in revising and editing a given piece of writing. An important part of revision and editing decisions is a good understanding of the conventions of standard written English.

An idiom is an expression, which consists of at least two words that naturally seem to go together. It is something that native speakers of a language can usually quickly recognize, but is often challenging for those learning English as a secondary language, or for those who grew up speaking an English dialect that frequently breaks conventional idiom rules.

The English test is a 75-question, 45-minute test that consists of five essays, or passages, each followed by a set of multiple choice test questions. Some questions refer to underlined portions of the passage and offer several alternatives to the underlined portion. You decide which choice is most appropriate in the context of the passage.

The ACT English Test consists of several short essays with underlined sections.You have to determine whether there is a grammatical error in each underlined portion, and select the best answer choice.