http://sat.collegeboard.org/practice/answered-question-of-the-day
Merry Christmas. It looks like a lot of you got up early to see what Santa brought.
This is a very common issue that is tested on both the SAT and ACT: subject/predicate (noun/verb) agreement. When you are looking for errors and a verb is underlined, go back and find the subject. Make sure that they are both singular or both plural. The SAT and ACT test writers love to put a lot of “stuff,” like they did in this sentence, after the subject and put the predicate later so that you’ve lost track of the subject. That intervening “stuff” will cause you to lose track of the whether the subject is singular or plural and you’ll easily make a mistake. Festival is singular; so, we need a singular verb making C the right answer: Festival has introduced not have.
There is a list of these common mistakes in my SAT and ACT course. You need to review your grammar using my list or one similar to it. They can alert you to the things that will trap you on the test.
Well, I wonder what the ACT folks have in store for us this fine Christmas morning…
Oh good, this question is based on a science passage we saw a few days ago. Again, don’t ever worry about whether you are an ecologist or even had an environmental science class–just read the figure, diagram, chart or graph. The science information you need to answer questions on the ACT is almost always on the test. (I’ve seen two questions that weren’t answered by the passage in the last 12 years or I would have said always!)
The figure shows the pine trees decrease/disappear and the oak-hickory forest takes over. That makes it clear that the pine trees decrease and the oak-hickory increases, answer C. Speed things up when you see these two-part answers: increase/decrease followed by increase/decrease. First, eliminate the increase answers in this case for the pine trees, then worry about the second half of the questions.
If my explanations for the SAT and ACT Question of the Day are helpful, please tell your friends and spread the word.
Hope you are enjoying your holiday.
The Wizard
