Discussion Groups / ESL Teaching / February 2005

I think you should get a purpose-written text for the actual test that
you are preparing for. I think Princeton Review, Kaplan, Barron's,
Peterson's, ARCE, Heinle & Heinle and a few other less-well-known
test-prep publishers put out materials for the ACT.

Go to a nice, big bookstore, sit down with the latest editions, and
pick the one that you think best suits you. Test-prep is a notoriously
sleazy field, so don't buy anything yet. Write down the authors and
titles, and then hit a big library in your area. An important point,
feel free to check major university library catalogues on-line (because
real librarians build those collections), but do not just search the
Internet for books. In the shady world of test prep, writers often just
change the title and the cover, flip a few sections around, and hey,
presto! it's an all-new, gotta-have book. If the same writer has
"written" fifteen or twenty titles on six or seven different tests in
the last three years or so, don't buy their books, no matter how
attractive you find them. Look for continuity: the same writer working
in the field for 10 years or so, working on the same test. You'll find
precious few of those people, if any, but if you hit pay dirt, buy the
latest book they've written.

Once you have the book in hand, do the sections for each part of trhe
test but ignore the full-length "practice tests" in it that claim to
"thoroughly simulate" the actual test. Spend money on buying the real
previous versions of the test (these are often called "past papers" in
the jargon of the field).

I would stay away from any book that claims it thoroughly preps you for
the test and then has a coupon in the back directing you to its prep
classes. Princeton Review, in general, follows this strategy, and I
have found their books eminently readable and entertaining, but when it
comes to really squeezing out your best test performance out of a
conscientious reader who does all the exercises in them, well, the
books don't cut the mustard.

Do not pay some so-called expert to prep you for the test, except as a
last resort. Do not take a class for hundreds of dollars before you
make an honest attempt to pick out a good test-prep book, closely read
it and do all the exercises in it.

Do NOT, for the love of Mike, pick out a quickie-prep book like "Pass
the ACT In Just Six Hours of Cramming!" They are inevitably lousy.

What else? A standardized test is a standardized test is a standardized
test. A certain cynicism is on order when preparing for one of them.
You may, in methodically destroying one of them, find a certain
intellectual freedom in the process that will change your life.