To Keep or to Delete on the ACT® English
Read time: 4 minutes Last updated: September 23rd, 2024
That is the question. Well, actually, it's three different kinds of questions. "Kept/deleted?" "Yes/No" and "The writer is considering making the following addition..." These kinds of questions show up in 3 different ways that follow virtually all the same logic to solve.
Consider this Example
"The Writer is considering adding the following sentence. Should the writer make the addition? "
"Victoria in Washington State, not Canada."
- A) YES
- B) YES
- C) NO
- D) NO
My family and I went on vacation this summer. Whenever my friends asked where I was going, I would tell them. But then every single time I had to clarify. [1]
[2] Victoria, Canada is a big island. When we arrived at our hotel, the weather was very rainy.
--For these, decide for yourself first.
If the writer doesn't add this answer choice, is the story better or worse, from a logical and contextual point of view? If you read a sentence before and a sentence after, you realize that without the sentence in question 1, the story doesn't really make sense.
The author never seems to establish where he or she is going. So if we don't add that sentence, the story doesn't make sense. We need to add this sentence. Yes.
Now let's look at the yeses.
- A) YES. The story is about Victoria, Canada so the addition adds an important clarification.
- B) YES. The sentence adds an important detail about where the story takes place.
The story isn't about Victoria, Canada, so A is wrong.
B makes a lot of sense! Let's pick that one!
Don't Do This
Students might think they're saving time by reading all four answer choices first, then going back to the text to read the context. There are a couple of problems with that approach.
First, it's hard to search for four possibly correct options, rather than reading what the text says then finding the answer choice that matches. Second, the ACT® can make almost any answer choice seem ok if your first source isn't the text.
The easier way to do this, in the case of yes/no questions, is to go to the text and decide for yourself first. That way, not only is it harder to trick you, you also save time by not looking at two answer choices that are wrong.
An Important Exception
If you decide that the correct answer choice is yes, then read the yeses but can't quite make either of them work, then, and only then, look at the nos. You'll rarely ever be wrong when you go back to the text and decide for yourself first. On the rare cases when you can't justify one of the yeses, then by all means go look at the nos.
Remember to use Process of Elimination (POE). It's a valuable strategy for these types of questions. Check out my guide on POE for some helpful tips.
More practice
The writer is considering deleting the following sentence. [2] Victoria, Canada is a big island. Should the writer make this deletion?
- A) YES, the information about Victoria has already been established.
- B) YES, the sentence provides an irrelevant detail
- C) NO, this detail is important for understanding the story.
- D) NO, the sentence helps us understand American geography.
Click for the Answer
Correct Answer: B
Explanation:
Go back and decide for yourself first. Once you have, then let's look at the yeses. It seems pretty obvious the detail about Victoria is extraneous. So, let's get rid of it.
The first yes reads as follows:
"Yes, the information about Victoria has already been established."
This answer choice may be true, but we have to provide the best answer on the test. So let's look at the other one.
"Yes, the sentence provides an irrelevant detail."
That sounds pretty perfect. Whether or not the information has been established isn't the most relevant thing to decide why this sentence should be deleted. So I'd choose the second yes.