If you’re currently studying for the ACT—whether you’re taking it on July 12, or on a later date—this post will help raise your score (and save your sanity)!
If my fifteen years in the test prep field have taught me anything, it’s that standardized tests are rarely the ONLY thing a student is working on at a given time. Even during the summer, you might currently be in the midst of an internship, traveling with family, or busy with basketball camp!
It’s not easy to keep all those plates spinning at once. And that’s where I come in: I work with students to help them raise their scores on the SAT and ACT in the most time- and energy-efficient ways possible. This gets them a “Yes” from their top-choice colleges….because saving time on your standardized test prep means you have time left over for your classes and passions—all of which matter a lot to college admissions, too!
So it’s with that eye towards efficiency that I want to share with you one of my favorite hacks for grabbing a few more points on the ACT English section. This strategy can be quickly learned and quickly applied on test day!
ARTICLE CONTENTS
1. Watch this article as a video
2. What are Add/Delete Questions?
3. The best strategy for Add/Delete Questions on the ACT English
4. How to pick the right reason for deleting a sentence
6. Conclusion
Video version of this article:
Sentence Addition and Deletion Qs: What Are They?
Many questions on the English section of the ACT don’t test you on grammar per se, or even ask you to form complete sentences. Instead, they focus more on the logical cohesion and structure of a passage as a whole. Those of us in the test prep field think of these as “Rhetorical Elements” as opposed to “Grammar” or “Standard English Conventions.”
One of the types of Rhetorical Elements questions most commonly found on the test is what I call an “Add/Delete” Question. (There used to be similar questions on the SAT, but with the move to the Digital SAT, Add/Delete Qs were removed.)
This kind of question can take one of two forms:
1. “The writer is considering ADDING the following sentence at the specified location. Should s/he or shouldn’t s/he, and why?”
or
2. “The writer is considering DELETING the underlined sentence/phrase. Should s/he or shouldn’t s/he, and why?”
But the thing is: both of these prompts are asking the SAME QUESTION, just in different ways. You could rephrase their main jist pretty simply: “Is the sentence we’re looking at RELEVANT to the rest of the paragraph?”
If the sentence IS relevant, you want it in the paragraph, so you either ADD it or DON’T DELETE it.
If the sentence is NOT relevant, however, then you do NOT want the sentence to stay in the paragraph, so you either DELETE it or simply DON’T ADD it in. With me so far?
How to Decide if You Should Add, Delete, or Keep a Sentence on the ACT English
“Sure, Kristina,” I can hear you saying. “But how do I figure out if a sentence is relevant?!” Well, that’s where my magic formula comes in.
Whenever you encounter an Add/Delete question on the ACT, you should follow these four steps to determine if the underlined sentence is relevant to the rest of the passage.
Step 1: Read the sentence that comes before it.
Step 2: Read the sentence in question.
Step 3: Read the sentence that comes after it.
Step 4: If the middle sentence sounds “fine” or if you don’t even notice it at all, it’s RELEVANT (as far as the ACT is concerned). If it sticks out like a sore thumb, it’s NOT RELEVANT.
But how do I know if it’s “fine”?: the “Beige Chair” trick
Imagine, if you will, a well-decorated main room in a stylish house or Airbnb or hotel lobby that you’ve visited in the past. If you think about the layout of that room, there’s probably a piece of furniture there that you never would have selected if it were going to be the only furnishing in a room. I call this the Beige Chair.
Who wakes up and says to themselves, “Know what I’m just psyched to add to my living room today?! A dull beige chair!” No one, that’s who. Yet beige is one of the most popular color choices for chair fabric. Every furniture store offers it. There was probably even a beige chair in the interior design of one of those beautiful spaces you were thinking of—you just didn’t notice it before. Yet that chair is key because it balances the room, offering the eye reprieve from the louder pieces of decor and furniture.
Not every single item in a room can be attention-grabbing and bold. It’d be way too overstimulating—a visual avalanche. So, in a way, the fact that you don’t even notice the beige chair means that it’s functioning how it’s supposed to! (And that it needs to stay in the room.)
Likewise, “Beige Chairs” are essential to ALL writing—including the written passages of the ACT English section.
Sometimes there’s a sentence that’s not thrilling, but that nonetheless moves the passage or the paragraph along. It provides a bit of new information without being “WOW!” in style or content. This is what I call a “Beige Chair” sentence.
So if you go through the four steps of an Add/Delete Question that I laid out, and you don’t NOTICE anything at all…that means the sentence that the test is asking about is a boring “beige chair” sentence that’s doing its job…and it STAYS.
on the other hand, Irrelevant Sentences Are Like a bright purple fountain.
The inverse situation is when you read the three sentences together (the sentence BEFORE, the sentence in question, and the sentence AFTER)…and your reaction is confusion. You’re furrowing your brow and tilting your head like a puzzled dog as you think something along the lines of “Huh?! But what does that have to do with anything else?”
If this is your reaction to a sentence, you do NOT want to keep it. That’s like a bright purple fountain in the middle of someone’s family room. IT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE! Time to toss it out!
How to Pick the Right Reason for Erasing or Not Adding a Sentence
The Add/Delete Question also asks you to identify why a given sentence should be deleted. And there’s only ever one reason to get rid of a sentence on the ACT: because the sentence was off-topic.
Now, the test may phrase this reason in a plethora of different ways: a sentence “blurred the focus,” it “didn’t address the subject,” “it strayed from the content,” etc.—but they all mean the same thing.
On the other hand, the correct reason for deleting/not adding a sentence is NEVER that the sentence got one small detail wrong. In other words, you don’t get rid of the bright purple fountain in the middle of the living room because the fountain should actually be bright pink. NO. You get rid of the bright purple fountain because there shouldn’t be a fountain AT ALL.
ACT Add/Delete Hack Example
Let’s put this strategy into practice now, shall we? Imagine I’m given an English section question that asks:
“The writer is considering DELETING the underlined sentence. Should the writer do this, and if so, why?”
Using the four-step process I spelled out above, I’m going to read, all in a row, the sentence that comes BEFORE the underlined sentence, the underlined sentence itself, and the sentence AFTER. Then I’ll use my sense of whether the middle sentence is relevant to draw my conclusion about whether and why it stays.
Here’s an example of all three sentences together, where the middle one seems “fine” (i.e. is a “beige chair” sentence)…and therefore STAYS:
[1] Hermes is a deity, or god, in Ancient Greek religion and mythology. [2] He is considered the messenger of the gods and the protector of human travelers, thieves, merchants, and speakers. [3] Known for his quickness, Hermes is able to move freely between the mortal and divine worlds, aided by his winged sandals.
On the other hand, here’s an example of three sentences together, where the middle one sticks out terribly and makes us cringe (i.e. stands out in the room like a “bright purple fountain”)…and therefore gets the axe:
[1] Hermes is a deity, or god, in Ancient Greek religion and mythology. [2] Aphrodite and Athena are also gods in the Ancient Greek pantheon. [3] Known for his quickness, Hermes is able to move freely between the mortal and divine worlds, aided by his winged sandals.
In this second sample passage, your answer should be “Yes” to deleting the sentence.
But don’t get muddled up in the next part and pick the wrong reason why!
Here’s an answer choice that provides the WRONG reason to delete (the “neon pink fountain” reason):
“Yes, because the sentence mentions Aphrodite and Athena, when it should have mentioned Zeus and Hera.”
NO! Don't let them confuse you with these details!
On the other hand, here’s an answer choice that provides an appropriate reason to delete:
“Yes, because this sentence blurs the focus of the paragraph, which is about Hermes.”
Ready to ace those add/Delete questions now?
Et voilà: with just a few minutes of reading—and the help of my decade and a half of experience—you’re now ready to pick up some extra points on the ACT English section!
And if you want MANY more strategies like these that will help you hit your target score in the less stressful and most efficient way possible, learn more about working with me. It’s my job to streamline your test prep and/or college apps so that the ONLY problem you face come senior spring is the one that many of my clients are currently facing—choosing among their MULTIPLE top-college acceptances!
