summer vacation reading comprehension

happy sunday morning orafternoon ladies and gentlemen, and welcome tokaplan's online prep live event where we discussthe english and reading tests of the act. my name is boris, i've beena teacher for a long time. but today is nota one person show. i'm just the faceyou see on camera, but you are in amazinghands this afternoon. we have a great digitalteam behind the scenes

making sure everything works. several of my longtime friendsand fellow act experts-- ac and rob and heatherand crystal and crystal are all behind thescenes making sure you have an amazing time today. so thank you guysso much for coming. it is an absolutetreat to have you here. it's going to have been anamazing treat when this is all over, so we're very,very excited to see you.

now in this firsthour we're going to review the englishtest of the act. and you know what that means--that means it's grammar time. whoo! who is excited to learngrammar for an hour. yes! all right, i'm going totell it like it is here in this session. all right, we knowthat grammar is not

the most highly soughtafter topic of education for most high school students. in fact, let us knowin the chat if you ever had an experience like minewhere you have summer vacation, summer vacation ends, anew school year begins. and gradually, gradually overthe first month of school it dawns on your englishteacher that nobody knows anything about grammar. so one day theenglish teacher snaps,

throws up his or herhands and says, what? how do none of you knowanything about grammar? well that's all right then. and then they getreally serious. and they're like,well, i guess i'll just have to teach it to you. and then you embark on thisimpromptu grammar unit. everybody survives it somehow. and then fast forward a year--new class, new english teacher.

what? and then the cycle just repeats. and i'm glad that some of youare really excited for grammar. so it looks like gracesays, "yay, grammar" in capital letters. josh is pumped. for a harlan, grammar is life. so i'm really, really gladto see the excitement here. and for those ofyou who are maybe

less excited aboutgrammar, i'm going to do my best to makethis really hands on, really practical. i'm going to trynot to use jargon. i'm going to try not to useany fancy grammar terminology. instead i'm justgoing to give you some really hands-on rulesto remember so that you can get your grammar right. because the truth ofthe matter is that

even if it's not a great thing,whether you agree with it or not, people aregoing to judge you in life by how well you write. when you're writingpapers for college, your professors willjudge you on your grammar. when you're writing coverletters to get a job, your potential employeris going to be judging you by your grammar. so it's not justthe act, this is

something that mattersfar beyond the test that you're going tobe taking in june. so what you learn in thishour is really, really going to help you, not justfor the test, but much, much farther beyond that. and it may seemnegative when you think that people willjudge you on your grammar, but the flip side to thatis that if you do it right, everybody thinks you're smarter.

and that's definitelya cool thing. ok, so a quick notebefore we get started. we are, of course, going tobegin with a little overview of the english test. and this is the firsttest of the act. so you'll see it right upfirst every single time, and you're going to havea variety of passages with a variety of styles. please note, though,on the english test,

the style of the passageis not significant. you're going to be able to usethe same strategies to approach every passage. so it doesn't matter if it's anacademic passage or someone's passage about what they didon their summer trip to italy. you're going to be testedon the same concepts. and as long as youknow those concepts you're going to do a great job. there will be questions that askyou about underlined portions,

and there will bequestions that ask you about the entirepassage as a whole. just to set some expectations. i've got an hour with youthis sunday afternoon, so i'm not goingto be able to cover every single type of questionthat you could possibly see on the act english test. of course, that takesmore than an hour. but you should definitelycheck out act's resources

at actstudent.org for some morepractice on the english section if after today you dowant to practice all the different question types. today we're going to focus onpunctuation and then grammar and usage. in your own preparationfor the test, you'll also want to do somelearning on sentence structure, and you'll also wantto practice some of the rhetorical questionsthat assess your ability

to pick the rightstrategy for the passage-- to organize it in the right wayand to use the proper style. so again, we're not going tocover everything in the hour, but after the houris up you're going to have a much better handleon a lot of punctuation and grammar concepts thatwill be assessed on the act. ok, quick note about the timing. all right the act englishtest has 75 questions and you have to answer all75 questions in 45 minutes.

so you've got to beaccurate and fast. now i know that may seema little bit nerve racking for now, but the goodnews is that once you learn how to be accurate,speed, for the most part, comes for free. so if you know theconcepts you're going to find that you'rea lot faster at getting through the questionseven if you haven't really been trying to be fast.

so my suggestion right now isdon't worry about the speed, don't worry about your timing. just focus on masteringthe grammar concepts as thoroughly aspossible and the timing won't be as big ofan issue on test day. all right, well let's justgo ahead and get started. that's all the ramblingi want to do here. let's start right inwith commas-- everybody's favorite piece of punctuation.

let us know in thatchat real quick. in general, how doyou feel about commas? how comfortable are youthat-- or how confident are you that you canalways use the right comma in the right place? or make the right call to usea comma or not to use a comma? i'm going to be honest with you. for me personally, commaswere the scariest thing until i really satdown and tried to prep.

because with commas it feelslike they're so slippery. you know, you're making a pause. do i need a comma or not? it feels vague. what i want to bring you todayis some really good news. commas are used for four things. four. so if you're ever not surewhether to use a comma-- and again, this isisn't just the act,

but when you're writinga college essay, when you're writing a coverletter-- all right, whenever you need to use a comma,which you'll be using a lot, just check you'rein with yourself, is it one of these four things? and then if it is one of thosethings, great, use the comma. it's not one of these fourthings then don't the comma. and that can make thisvery fuzzy process of choosing commas muchmore concrete and hands-on.

so here we go. number one-- commas are usedto separate things in a list. here's an example-- my mostinteresting classes this year are physics, calc,and us history. so we have a list of things,and each item in the list is separated by commas. please note, a list meansthree or more things. if you only have two things inthe list, don't use a comma. but when there's three ormore like there are here,

use a comma toseparate the things. that's thing numberone about commas. on to thing number two. you also use commaswith the conjunction to separate independent clauses. now i promised you iwasn't going to use jargon, so there's a bit of it herethat we've got to get past. so independent clauseis just a fancy term for a complete sentence.

so if you have two completesentences, and you're like, you know what? i'd rather these twocomplete sentences were just combined into one sentence. if you have that situation, youcan connect those two sentences with a comma and a conjunction. so tell me, please,in the chat what's a conjunction thatyou could use along a the comma to hold twocomplete sentences together?

conjunction's one ofthose words that is best learned by example because youalready know what they are. you already know whatthe conjunctions are. yeah, so we got wordlike "and" and "but." these words with a comma canhold two complete sentences together, like this. i work on mondays, and i havesoccer practice on tuesdays. check out this comma andthis "and" holding two complete sentences together.

either the left or theright side of the sentence could have been a completesentence by itself, but instead it's onesentence with both of them, and it's connected witha comma and an "and." all right, so we've gottwo things for commas. number one, lists. number two, holdingcomplete sentences together with a conjunction. number three-- you can addparenthetical information

to a sentence by surroundingit with commas, like this. azara, much to her delight, thatthe hours she spent studying were worth the effort. that's right, azara,you tell them. all right, so in thiscase i've highlighted two commas and a little phrasethat's inside the commas. check out what happensif i block this out. boop. so now it's gone.

and the sentencesays azara found that the hours she spentstudying were worth the effort. oh, hey. the sentence checks out. it's totally fine. so if you have a phrase thatyou could just pluck out of the sentence and thesentence would still work, then that little phrase needsto be inserted into the sentence by commas.

i like to think of itas a comma sandwich. so this phrase here,much to her delight, is sandwichedbetween two commas. and that is how you bringparenthetical information into a sentence. and i saw by theway a few of you are fanboys of theacronym fanboys, as kevin has put into the chat. if you've never heardof this, don't worry.

i'll show you right now. fanboys-- we got "for", "and","nor", "but", "or", "yet", "so". so these are the sevenmost common conjunctions that, along with a comma, canhold two complete sentences together. so that's threethings with commas. we got one more-- we canhave an intro phrase. if you've got some kindof an introductory phrase

you can set it off from the restof the sentence with a comma, like here. after school, mindy hasto go straight to work. look at thishighlighted portion. mindy has to gostraight to work. that could work on its ownas a complete sentence. we added some extrainformation to the sentence, though, with this introductoryphrase-- "after school." so when you have anintroductory phrase

like that you setit off with a comma. and folks, if youmaster this concept, this set of concepts righthere, then you're good to go. you can now write andnever have to worry about commas ever again in yourlife on the act or anywhere. and i'm going totell you a secret. i teach this stuff for a living. when i write my ownstuff for anything, whether it's anemail to a student

or a forum post on a board gameforum, if i have to use a comma and i'm not sure i gothrough this checklist. i'm like, ok boris. all right. so is it a list? are you holding twocomplete sentences together? is it parenthetical information? or is it an intro phrase? i go through thelist of four things,

and then when i'm donewith that checklist i know whether i needto use a comma or not. so whenever you see commason the act english test, if you're just not sure,go through this checklist and you're going to be sure bythe time you're done with it. ok, let's take alook at a question together now wherewe have a chance to see how the act could assessyour understanding of commas and also how you canget that question right.

so look at this one with me. our hometown newspaper's editor,comma, and resident visionary daniel rivera arguesthat a free press is now more important than ever. so on test day, the strategictest taker looks at this comma and says oh, hey. that's one of the four thingsthat you can do with a comma. you can stick aconjunction after it and connect two completesentences together.

so tell me, please, in the chat. is this a correct use of thecomma and the conjunction "and"? do we have a completesentence to the left and a completesentence to the right so that we hold themtogether with a comma and the conjunction? wesley says boris,you're a great help. thanks, wesley.

i appreciate the kind words. i'm glad i couldhelp you already. and yeah, this is absolutelynot a correct use, because what we have tothe right of the word "and" is resident visionarydaniel rivera, comma, argues that a free press is nowmore important than ever. that's definitely nota complete sentence. so this is not the right time touse a comma and the word "and". at this point on test day,you can go ahead and get rid

of choice a, becausewhenever there is any mistake no change is wrong. and you should alsoget rid of any choice that makes the same mistake. so choice b for boris, mypersonal favorite choice on the act, is alsowrong because it also has a comma with an and. now, at this point i wouldintroduce you to a cool feature that you have intoday's session.

if you ever want to submitan answer to us on a question don't do so in the chat,please, because there are many, many of us here,and we don't want the chat to fill with cs and ds. what you can doinstead is tab over and mark your answerin the poll that you will see in the poll tab. and it looks likeright now we have a pretty close split betweenchoices voting in the poll.

so i just want to let youknow i didn't give you some kind of softballquestion here. this is a legitimatelydifficult question, so it really does agood job assessing your understanding of commas. and here the differencebetween c and d is where the comma is placed. either it's placedbefore daniel rivera or it's placedafter daniel rivera.

and in this case wedefinitely want the comma before daniel, because when weput the comma before daniel, what that essentiallydoes is it turns daniel rivera,this person's name, into a kind of bit ofparenthetical information. so if we were to blockthis out and just say our hometown newspaper'seditor and resident visionary argues thata free press is now more important than ever,that's totally fine.

so the name needs to havethe commas surrounding it and this point. we're going to go ahead,circle d for domination, and then move on with the test. folks, nice workon that question. and if you missedit, don't be mad. be excited that yougot a chance to make a mistake because mistakes arehow you learn, and learning is good.

that's it for commas. we will, of course, do somemore questions later today that continue to practicecommas, but first let's continue our blitzthrough grammar land and check outparentheses and dashes. so parentheses, kind oflike a comma sandwich, can be used to putparenthetical information into a sentence like this. in addition to servingas class treasurer--

during her junior year-- martewas also a national merit scholar. the key withparenthesis is you have to be able to takethe parenthetical out of the sentence and thesentence should still hold up. so if i were to takethis parenthetical out it would say that inaddition to serving as class treasurer,comma, marty was also national merit scholar.

so we know that that series ofparentheses is used properly. the next thing i'd like toreview with you are dashes. there's two main uses of dashes. to tell us in thechat, what is one of the reasons why you woulduse a dash in your writing? so there's two. yes. one of them is in anabrupt change in thought. so if you want tojust tack something

onto the end of a sentencea dash is perfect for this. i thought aboutrunning a marathon. after one week ofpractice i decided to enter a 10k race instead. well the person's saying-- thissentence is clearly not me, because for me it wouldhave been like i thought about running at all, butafter thinking about it for two seconds i decidedto sit on the couch instead. either way, you can usea dash to abruptly change

the direction of your thought. dashes can also be usedlike a comma sandwich or like a parentheses toinsert extra information into the sentence. so you might be wondering, ok,in this case i love comedies-- even the most predictableones-- because they always make me laugh. how is this use of dashesdifferent from parentheses? how is it different from commas?

the answer is thatgrammatically, it's not. it's the exact same thing. you could have putcommas around it and you could have putparentheses around it and that would have stillbeen grammatically correct. so stylistically whenyou would use dashes is when you want to emphasizesomething as opposed to de-emphasize something. and on the act you're notgoing to be assessed for this.

you're not going to havea case where it's like, should this be emphasized orshould it be in parentheses? so don't worry aboutthat for your exam. just know that thisis one of the ways, along with a comma sandwichor with parentheses, that you can add extrainformation into a sentence. and again, keydefinition here is you should be ableto take it out and the sentenceshould still work.

i love comedies becausethey always make me laugh. perfect. so that means that thisis an appropriate use of dashes in the sentence. ok, that was a quick lookat parentheses and dashes. a lot of you guysalready know how to use dashes, which is awesome. so let's try apractice question. the last obstacle onthe agility course

was the one that scaredantonia the most. (vocalizing) dun, dun dun. but she didn't letthat fear show. that's right, antonia. you tell him. now, we got to make surethat you not only tell him, but you tell himgrammatically accurately. we have a period and then asentence after the period. tell me in the chat, isthis a complete sentence?

ride on folks,that is absolutely not a complete sentence. what happened in contrast toher not letting the fear show? this is not a complete thought. there's a subject,there's a verb, but there's nocomplete thought here. you can't just havea "but" hanging on to the beginning ofa sentence like that. so we're going tohave to change this.

we're going to make surethat whatever choice we pick does not havethat incomplete sentence. so when you're takingthe act, you definitely want to get rid of f.because any time there's any kind of a mistake with theunderlined portion no change is the wrong answer. and you can alsoget rid of choice h because h also hasa period, and it puts "she didn't" in parenthesesand it ends the sentence with

a but, so that's definitelynot going to work. we have to choosebetween g and j. and it looks like from the pollabout three quarters of you are picking choice g. this isthe choice that has the dash. so on test day when you'redoing a question like this or when you're writinga college essay and you're thinkingabout using a dash, or when a friend givesyou a college application essay that they wrote andyou see a dash in there

and you're like,mmm, should i tell my friend this is amistake or is this correct? you ask yourself, is it anabrupt change in thought, or is it inserting extrainformation into the sentence? well with dashes, the nice thingabout the two uses of dashes is that you use a differentnumber of dashes with each one. so let me take aquick look back here. in the first use of dashesyou only have one dash. that's the break in thought.

in the second use of dasheswhere you're emphasizing something you use two dashes. so when you lookat choice g there's only dash in the sentence. so you ask yourself, isthat a break in thought? and the answer, as manyof you agree, is yes. that is the break in thought. so one thought is she was reallyscared of the last obstacle. totally different thought--she didn't let that fear show.

do have an abrupt change inthought, so using a dash here is totally appropriate. so it could havealso used a comma. would have been fine. grammatically, a commahere is as good as a dash. but the dash is ok. so we can grab g, for goshtootin', and then we can move on with the test. and there's a reallygreat question

in the chat-- ofcourse i won't be able to answer all thequestions in the chat, but there are somethat are just so good i feel like i have to answer. because there's not just youwho asked it, but lots of people are wondering it. a lot of you, i'dbet, are thinking what allie is thinking,which is so wait, no change will neverbe the right answer?

great question. no change is one ofthe four choices. so it'll be the correct answer,statistically, 1/4 of the time. of course on anyone test it might be more than a fourth or alittle less than a fourth or even a lot more than a fourthor a lot less than a fourth. when you haverandom things you're going to haveoutliers all the time. but it's basicallynot a special choice.

it will be right as common or asuncommonly as any other choice that you may see. very good question. all right, our cruisecontinues to semi-colons. this is going to be a littlecheesy, but i have to do this. anybody else justlove semi-colons? i do. anybody joining me inhashtag semi-colon love? i don't know if i'm justa little crazy on that,

but i just think they're great. they're so elegant. they're just like-- theygot that curl of the comma, but they have like thehard point of the period. they're flexible and dynamic. anyway, i love semi-colons. semi-colons havebasically one major use. one major use. and that is to join twocomplete sentences together.

so basically, you've gottwo complete sentences, you want to join them together,pop a semi-colon right in there. it's going to get the jobdone because semi-colons are awesome. like here-- fall ismy favorite season. complete sentence. watching the leaves changeand going to football games makes me happy.

i want to stick themboth into one sentence. semi-colons like,[inaudible] no problem. i'll do it. so there it is. semi-colon holding twocomplete sentences together and we're good to go. this is the mainuse of semi-colons. now you might alsoencounter, in your life or on the act thesecondary use, which

is that if you havea complicated list, like a list of lists,like a list-ception, then you use semi-colonsto separate all the items. and i want to showyou why that is. so check out thisscintillating story. when my friends cameover for breakfast i served eggs, bacon, and toast;cereal, grits, and oatmeal; and strawberries,mangoes, and apples. apparently i was trying tofeed my friends to death.

so here if we justused a comma, then it wouldn't be clearwhere one list was ending-- one listitem was ending and the next listitem was starting. so you have to use a supercomma to separate the items in the list in that case. this is a rare useof semi-colons, but it can come up. so just so you know, here it is.

now apostrophes, of course,are used for two things. number one, you can showpossession with apostrophes. number two, you can also useapostrophes for contractions. so here's an exampleof possession. after skylar took the act,he went to his friend's house to celebrate. real quick question. according to this sentencehow many friends of skylar's owned the house in whichhe was celebrating--

or she was celebrating. skylar's a flexible name. how many friendsowned the house? it was one. in english, theapostrophe placement indicates how manythings are in possession. so here when we put theapostrophe before the s, that means it's just onefriend who owns the house. and if we had put theapostrophe after the s,

it would be many friendswho all jointly share in the ownership of the house. so watch for thatwhen you're writing. again, not just on the act,but in any of your essays. if you have to put anapostrophe and ask yourself how many things aredoing the owning? and you either put theapostrophe to the left of the s if it's just one likehere or after the s if it's many people owning.

and now i want to show you byexample one of the toughest apostrophe question. it's the one thatuses-- beg your pardon, this is actually somethingwe'll see later on. we'll see later on a questionthat has the word "it's" in it. so if you'rewondering wait, boris. how do we deal withthe word "it's"? with the i-t apostrophes, don't worry. we're going tosee that later on.

here we'll take a lookat a different question. some people prefer bright yellowmustard on their hot dogs; others, comma, prefer ketchup,relish, onions, or even chili. i'm going to let you try thisquestion entirely on your own. tab over to the polland vote for the choice that you think eitherkeeps the semi-colon and does everythingcorrectly or gets rid of the semicolon becausesemi-colons are inappropriate here.

go for it and vote now. i'll check back in withyou in about 10 seconds. the overwhelming majority arefor choice c on this question-- about 85% of you. and then most of the restof you preferred choice a. which means thatas a group, we all agreed the semi-colonwas correct here. if you didn't knowthat, though, or if you thought the semi-colonwas wrong here,

here's how you cantell for sure when you're looking at a sentence. look before the semicolon. some people prefer bright yellowmustard on their hot dogs. that's a true statement. i could just walk over to myfriend bob and be like hey bob, did you know? some people prefer bright yellowmustard on their hot dogs? it would be a totallycomplete sentence.

works fine on its own. to the right of the semicolonwe have others prefer ketchup, relish, onions, or even chili. that is also acomplete sentence. so we do have twocomplete sentences, and they are being heldtogether by a semicolon, which is a semicolon's job. semicolons-- likei live for this. semicolons wake up everymorning and they're like man,

i really hope i findtwo complete sentences to hold together. this is perfect timeto use a semicolon. that means b and d whichget rid of the semicolon, they're throwing out thebaby with the bathwater. that's not a good thing. we got to keep thesemicolon in there. the question, ofcourse, is do we need this comma after "others"?

and the answer to that is no. you'd never writea sentence that said, "others, comma,prefer ketchup." that doesn't make any sense. you don't need a commabetween a subject and a verb. that wasn't one of our4 comma checklist items. so we're just going tokeep the sentence as it is and get rid of the comma. we'll grab c for champions hereand then move on with the test.

folks, nice work. i saw [inaudible] saying inthe chat whoop, got it right. awesome. got to give yourself some creditwhen you get questions right. don't just think like oh,you know i just got it right. whatever. take it for granted. because if you getsomething right that means you're closer to getting a goodscore and that's awesome news.

and then when you make mistakes,learn from those mistakes. you should celebrateyour victories and your defeats whateveryou're practicing for this or any exam you ever take. all right, now we're going toget to a more mysterious bit of punctuation-- the colon. so you'll see that there areseveral uses of colon here, but they all haveone thing in common. the first examplei'm going to show you

is where the colonintroduces a list. i love all thetest-themed sentences here getting us in the mood. before driving tothe test center, i checked that i packedwhat i needed-- colon. extra pencils, a pencilsharpener, my calculator, a snack, and everythingelse on my list. so here the colonintroduces a list. check out this example now.

here the colon introduces whatit was that i was wondering. as i stood in frontof the painting i wondered who decideswhat qualifies as art? so now the colon introduceswhat i was wondering. and this third example i'mintroducing a quotation. as martin luther king said,"injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." tell me in thechat if you noticed what do all three of theseexamples have in common?

i know you're seeing onthe screen right now a lot of grammar terminology,lots of different examples. it may seem like there'sa bunch of stuff you have to memorize about colons. what's the one threadthat's common to all of these examples? you might remember isaid in the first case the colon introduces a list. in the second case thatsaid the colon introduces

what i was wondering. the third case i said the colonintroduces what someone said. ah, colons are used tointroduce something. so when you have somethingspecial in your sentence and you want to rollout the red cape and give it aproper introduction that's when you use a cold. and as [inaudible] said exactly. introduces somethingbefore listing.

and [inaudible] saysintroduces something. yes, you guys nailed it. that's exactly it. so for colons, if you'veever been confused about them before hopefully aftertoday you won't be, and you'll be able toimpress your english teachers by some proper colon usage. whenever you want to introducesomething-- set apart from the rest of thesentence and give it

an introduction-- here isthe thing-- you use a colon. to help cementthis concept let's check out a question together. and in this questionour job's going to be to decide is itcorrect to use the colon here or should we get rid of it? the influence ofclassical mythology in the naming of certainchemical elements can be seen in the names ofthemselves-- colon-- tantalum,

niobium, cadmium, and mercury. as a strategic testtaker you're going to spot colon right off the bat. and you're going to be like,oh, i remember what boris said. boris said colonsintroduce something. so as a strategic testtaker all you got to do now is ask yourself is thiscolon introducing something? tell me in the chatwhat you think. do we have something beingintroduced by this colon?

yes, this is actually themost classic use of colons because here we'reintroducing a list. so to get back to allie'squestion from before, is no change just never goingto be the right answer, no. finally no change steps forward,does his or her act duty, we're going topick f for fabulous and then we're going tomove on with the test. and what's really cool isyou can pick f instantly because none of the otherchoices have a colon.

if a choice fixes somethingthat wasn't broken you know it's going tobe wrong, and so that way you can have confidencepicking the one choice that you need to on the test. and i saw before i evenasked anything, 95% of you were going forchoice f. and that tells me you guys have got thisdown with the dreaded colon punctuation. nice job.

all right, so there area few additional topics the act will assess you on. and i want to beclear, just like i said in the very beginning,in one hour i would be lying to you if i claimed that icould teach you everything that was going to be assessed onthe act and everything that mattered for yourcollege writing, for your writing to applyfor jobs, and so on. we can't do it in one hour.

but what we can do is at leastmention some of the things that we didn't discusstoday that will be assessed. so periods, questionmarks, exclamation points are fair game on your test. and, in general, whatever yousee punctuation underlined of any kind, whetherit's punctuation that we've reviewedtoday in this half hour that we've had so far, oranother piece of punctuation like a period, immediately askyourself is it used correctly?

because if it is that meansthat any choice that changes it is wrong. and it is not, that meansthat any choice that doesn't change it is wrong. so you get a really, reallybig leg up on a question from simply determiningwhether a piece of underlined punctuationis used correctly. so here-- oh yeah, and hereare the notes on the screen. so if there's no otherissues and the punctuation

is used correctlymake no change. if the punctuation isused incorrectly then make sure that thechoice that you pick fixes the mistake withoutintroducing any new mistakes. i'm going to pausehere if anyone wants to take a screenshotof this slide or if you want to take apicture of it with your phone, because it has kind oflike a nice takeaway away from the section thatwe've been reviewing so far.

feel free to do so now. i'm also going togive you a second to digest some of themass amounts of content that we've just hit youin the head with a hammer. we're going to shiftgears in a moment and review verbs and pronouns. so it's a slightlydifferent kind of thinking than what we'vedone so far for punctuation. so here is yourdigesting moment.

and now we areready to continue. let's rock this thing. so verb tenses. i know that a lot of folksare afraid of verb tenses, especially when you getto the wacky verb tenses like the present perfect orthe past perfect, and so on. my suggestion is focuson the present, the past, and the future. so present means thisthing has already

happened-- this thingis happening right now. past means it hasalready happened. and future meansit's going to happen. so when you're takingthe test or when you're doing your ownwriting the place to start is to ask a verysimple question. it's happening right now? did it already happen? or is it going tohappen in the future?

and i want to show you how evena fairly difficult question-- you can make sense ofit simply by answering that very simple thing. did it already happen, isit happening right now, or is it going to happen? take a look at thiscomplicated example. austrian sculptortheodor friedl has been commissioned tocreate a number of figures for the opening in 1877 ofthe vienna stock exchange.

now hang on a minute. all right, sotheodore here, who's just too good to spellhis name with an e, he's like no, no es for me. we're just going to end ona hard r. all right, when did this commissioning happen? did it alreadyhappen in the past? is it happening right now? or is it going to happen atsome point in the future?

so if you look at therest of the sentence, we have a date here-- 1877. that's definitely in the past. so this has already happened. it's in the past and weneed some past tense. so please tab over to thepoll, and i see a lot of folks have already voted. but consider-- given thatthis already happened tab over the poll and votefor the choice that

gives us the simple past tense. just indicate thatthis has already taken place, it's donewith, its history, and all of a sudden-- initially we hadabout 50/50 voting for a and d, but once we made the simplerealization that this already happened in the past almosteverybody jumped ship and went straight to choice c. here we have a simple pasttense, he was commissioned, and we can grab it and move on.

notice that "hasbeen commissioned", even if you don't know thathas been is an ongoing tense, you can look at the verb"has" and see that that's a present tense verb. you know, like friedl hasa lot of paintings, right? that's present tense. we don't want presenttense for something that happened in 1877. so even if you don'tsee the whole picture

you can often lookat the helping verbs and figure out which onegive you what you want and which one is taking youin a place on the timeline-- the past, present,or the future-- that you don't want to be in. that's a quicklook at a question that's very, very tough. because most of the votes inthe poll initially were wrong, and that's awesome.

because once you look at thedate, realize it's past tense, you're going to get thisquestion, no problem. the other thing toconsider with verbs is not just the tense butwhether they match the subject. and because we areenglish speakers-- this is a little bit of aninteresting thing for us compared to speakersof other languages. because in otherlanguages verb conjugation is very, very complicated.

if you've taken french,spanish, latin, german, you know that it's difficultto conjugate the right verb in the right way. but in englishit's fairly simple. everybody knows i am playinggolf, you are playing golf, they are playing golf. basic conjugation isfairly straightforward, so when things get difficultis not when you just have to conjugate a verb.

but rather when youhave to figure out what the heck is the subjectof this verb to begin with? look at this example. according to geologists, afossil fuel deposit of truly game-changing -- whether a giantpocket of natural gas trapped within a shale formation or anenormous reservoir of crude oil deep beneath the ocean waveshave become increasingly difficult to discover,if any still exist. so right here the only thingunderlined is the verb "have".

everybody knows-- i have, youhave, they have, et cetera. but the tricky thingabout this question is not conjugating the verb butrealizing what is the subject? so you tell me inthe subject, what is "it" in this sentencethat has become increasingly difficult to discover? and i see somecomments in the chat. anastasia says,this is so easy now. isaiah says boris, why doyou make it so much easier?

i do my best tomake it seem easy, because once you practiceit it will be easy. that's one of the great thingsabout preparing for this test. things become easy and theydon't just help you on the act, they help you in allyour writing, which is a very useful life skill. so here the subjectis the verb-- or is not [inaudible] theverb-- is the noun "deposit". it's the deposit of trulygame-changing size that,

as a result of certain things,is increasingly difficult to discover. so please tab over to the polland vote for the answer choice that provides the right verbfor the subject, "deposits." nice. so here we all know, ofcourse, that if i was just going to say afossil fuel deposit has become increasinglydifficult to discover that would be incorrect.

it's a fossil fuel deposithas become increasingly difficult to discover. and because there'sa lot of information between the subjectand the verb it can be difficult tochoose the right verb. so the take awayfrom this question is when you're writing asentence with a lot of facts between the subjectand the verb, temporarily ignore allthat stuff in the middle

when you're choosing your verb. look backwards in thesentence and say ok, if i got rid of everything butthe subject what would be left? and once you know thesubject, because you are an englishspeaker, in english it is generally thengoing to be pretty easy to pick the rightconjugation for the verb. i saw about 90% of youpicked choice h on this one once we went through thelogic and that's fantastic.

so folks, thank you somuch for your hard work and for your incredibleengagement in the poll. we're going to grab hfor hopscotch and then [? skiddoodle. ?] all right,the last topic that we're going to reviewtogether before we do some mixed practice onall the topics is pronouns. so with pronounsthere's a couple things you have to watch for. a pronoun is a wordlike he, she, it, they,

and so on that standsin for something else in another sentenceor in the current sentence. so when you pick apronoun of course you have to match the nounthat the pronoun is replacing. so if we have a singleman it's correct to use "he" and "himself". but if we have a group ofpeople then, of course, he and himself is not goingto be correct anymore. when you use pronounslike who and whom and that

and which you might have todo some thinking to make sure you pick the right one. in fact, let us know inthe chat if you have ever had any trouble pickingbetween who and whom. this, i noticed, is the banefor a lot of my students. and for me,personally-- i'm going to share a secret, anembarrassing secret from my past-- whenever i wouldtake a test-- whether there was a test like the act or agrammar test in school and who

and whom was being tested,i would always pick "whom". because i'm like well,that's the fancy one. that's the one that like liftsup its pinky as its drinking a glass of water. i bet that's the one to use. and, of course, that'snot always the case. of course, sometimes you doneed to use the word "who". so after today i hope i canmake this really, really clear so that you're notgoing to have to guess.

you're not going to have to pickwhom just because "whom" sounds like something that people whowear top hats and monocles say, but because you actually knowthat that's the right word to use. here's a really simple testthat you can do to decide. ask yourself is theperson doing something, or is the person havingsomething done to them? that's it. is the person doingsomething or is the person

having something done to them? so if you look atthis first sentence, i would be happy to write tothe person who interviewed you. well, the person isdoing something, right? they interviewed you. so when the person is doingsomething you use "who". if the person ishaving something done to them, likethis case, to whom should i address this letter?

again, you ask yourself-- isthis person doing something and they're havingsomething done to them. they're having a letteraddressed to them so you use "whom". i'll make a quick note here. when you would rewrite thesentence and say "they", that's who. when you would rewrite thesentence and say "them", that's whom.

because "they" do something. they interview you,they plow the fields. them-- when you use that word--something's being done to them. the letter is addressed to them. i want to give thispackage to them. then you use whom. so hopefully aftertoday you won't have any more problems with this. you can just ask yourselfthis very simple test-- is

the person doingsomething-- who-- or is the person havingsomething done to them-- whom. and i saw, actually,april anticipated me. very nice, april. april said who equalsyou, whom equals his, that's exactly right. so you can always tellbased on which other pronoun you would use whetherwho or whom is correct. and lastly, who and whom--just to be very clear--

they're for people. who and whom are for people. if you use a pronounfor an object that is not a human being,such as strawberries, then you use "that" and "which". so just to be very clear--if you're ever taking the act and this comes up, or ifyou're writing a college essay and this comes up, oryou're taking a grammar test in english classesand it comes up,

"who" and "whom" are peopleonly, no matter how tempting it can be. and "that" and "which"are for objects only. all right, i see santiagosays oh no, i understand!! double exclamation mark. thank you, that's awesome. oh, i'm so glad to hear it. we have a light bulb moment. that is fantastic.

so now let's goahead and try one practice question onpronouns, and then we'll do some mixed practice toround out today's session. so check it out. obsessed with birdsof prey, the mayor believed that a new falconrycenter just outside of town would boost both tourism andits chances for re-election. ok, so we havethe pronoun "its". now whenever you see a pronoununderlined, ask yourself--

what is the pronounstanding in for? so tell me, please,in the chat-- what is the pronoun"its" standing in for? a big clue in thissentence is the phrase that comes after it--chances for re-election. i'm guessing that thefalconry center is not up for re-electionunless the mayor has been doing a really bad job. chances are it is the mayor whois trying to improve chances

for re-election. and a lot of you agree withme on this, which is awesome. so now please tab overto the poll and vote for the choice that makessense when you know that the pronoun that isstanding in for the mayor, and not for the falconrycenter, not for tourism, not for the town, notfor anything else. right, we got to go forchoice c here, "his". the mayor is aperson, so we're going

to use a personalpronoun, "his", that is c. now there is alittle distraction in this question whichis the presence of both "it's" and "its"without an apostrophe. so i want toaddress this for you because i know i mentionedit earlier as a special case where apostrophes can bedifficult. it's means it is. so let's knock another itemoff of your grammar death bane

list. all right, this willnever trouble you again. if you're ever justterrified about choosing between it's an apostropheor its without one, just remember this rule. it's means it is. so if you're ever notsure whether it's should have an apostrophe, then justplug "it is" into the sentence and see if it makes any sense.

like if you pluggedit in here it would say it wouldboost both tourism and it is chancesfor re-election. that's definitelynot right, so we know that it's with anapostrophe is wrong. we also know that its withoutan apostrophe it is wrong. because, of course, itswithout an apostrophe means belonging to it, andthe mayor is not an "it". the mayor is a person, so weneed to have a personal pronoun

and that is why both its isare wrong in this question. all right folks. so i'm happy to see how many ofyou are commenting in the chat to see that thismakes sense now. grammar is notnecessarily something that has to be scary forthe rest of your life. maybe even the mostabstruse grammar will forever be beyond all ofus, but some of the basics, some of the things that you'llbe assessed on on the act

that you'll be judged on whenyou write college papers, when you apply to collegesand write up admissions essays, some of that stuffyou can totally master. if you get pastthe jargon and just think of it in hands-on terms,like what's this used for? what's this used for? what's this piece ofpunctuation trying to do? how do i make the rightchoice about these verbs? you're going to be ableto make the right calls

in your sentences. and again, that's not just goingto help you get some questions right on the act. it's going to helpyou in all the writing that you do beyondthis point which is why we're so happy that yougave an hour of your sunday afternoon to come join us todayfor this english test section. all right folks, we gotto do some mixed practice. and what i meanby mixed practice

is that i'm not going totell you what concept is being tested in the question. so previously itwas like all right, we did pronouns, nowa pronoun question. of course it's more challengingwhen it's all jumbled up and you got to read eachquestion on its own merits and see what's the issue there. so what i'm goingto do is i'm going to read a sentenceto you, and i'm

going to let you tabover to the poll. and i'm going to give you about15 seconds to select a choice. after time is upwe're going to-- i'm going to take alook at your results and then we're going to seewhat were some of the choices that people really liked. were they right orwere they wrong? and then i'll review thequestion accordingly. so again, don't feel badif you make a mistake.

if you pick the wronganswer, whatever. you're to learnfrom that mistake and your writing will improvefrom that point forward. so always vote in thepoll even if you're sure or if you're not,and they're going to review it and learn togetherfor our last 12 minutes. let's go ahead and start. nevertheless, many organicmolecules necessary for life, such as the genetic code-carrierdna and every kind of protein,

contain nitrogen asa building block. all right, pleasetab over to the poll. evaluate this underlinedportion and vote for the choice that you would pick if thisquestion came up on your act. good luck. folks, i am so amazed by yourengagement in this lesson. i know it's agrammar lesson, and i know no one came in here--or very few people came in here thinkinglike, yay, grammar,

but you guys are really engaged,and that's so fantastic to me. so thank you so much for that. most of you voted forchoice f, no change. however, a lot of folks thoughtthat j had the right of it. so how do we know forsure that it's f and not j if we're writing this passagefor our high school science class? so we look at thiscomma in protein, and we're going to gothrough our checklist.

we're going to go through thecomma checklist of four things and see which of thesefour, if any, applies. because if noneof them do then we don't want the comma,which is what j does. so let's see. we ask ourselves, is itsetting off items in a list? no. is it holding two completesentences together? is it setting off anintroductory phrase?

what's the last one? oh yeah, the comma sandwich. is this be used to adda parenthetical bit of information to the sentence? and the answer to that is yes. let's check it out. this whole sentence--and i'm going to really do somefine mouse control to get the commaafter life, as well--

that whole little phrase, if i'mgoing to block it out, it says, "nevertheless, many organicmolecules necessary to life contain nitrogen asa building block." now that's totallyfine, which means that everything that'scurrently blocked off is a parenthetical statement. and when you insert aparenthetical statement into a sentence you have tohave a comma to the left of it and a comma to the right.

so we can't get rid of thecomma after protein-- or yeah. we can't get rid ofthe comma after protein because that comma is neededto maintain the integrity of the comma sandwich. otherwise you'd be like eatinga burger with your hands on top of thatmeat and that would be kind of gross and messy. we're going to grab fhere and then move on. but i'm not just excitedfor the 80% of you

who chose f. i'm reallyexcited for the 15% who chose j and the 5% who choseanother choice, because now i hope you can see how you canclearly make the right judgment if you're writing thisin an essay for class. all right, let'slook at number nine. again, i'm going to read it,give you about 10 seconds to pick a choice, and thenwe're going to review it. "one interestingcontributor is lightning it pries apart nitrogen'stough internal bond."

all right, please tab over tothe poll and fix this sentence, or pick a if you think itdoes not need any fixing. what we have right nowis two complete sentences held together by space. now a space cannot hold twocomplete sentences together, so we have one interestingcontributor is lightning-- that's a complete sentence--it pries apart nitrogen's tough internal bond-- that'sa complete sentence. and right now they'rebeing held together

with a space between the word"lightning" and the word "it". spaces cannot hold twocomplete sentences together. we've got to have something. so 100% of yourfinding right now here is c. choice c addsa comma and it adds a connecting word, "which". so which is a pronoun. it stands in for lightning,and so we're going to go. we have a comma anda connecting word.

we're holding two completesentences together. we grab this choiceand then we move on. all right, let's takea look at number 10. i'm going to read theprevious sentence for this one as well, because boththe previous sentence and the one that comesafter it are important. "most of thesemicroorganisms live in the roots of soybeansand other legumes, where the organisms canconvert nitrogen to ammonia

in return for nutrients. it can then turn this ammoniainto other nitrogen compounds within their rootsand elsewhere." all right, pleasetab over to the poll and vote for the choicethat correctly changes the underlined portion,or f if you don't think it needs to be changed. this one has the pronoun "it". so when you see "it"underlined you ask yourself

what does "it" stand for? and the interestingthing in this case is that "it" could standin for a lot of things-- it could stand for nutrients,it could stand for ammonia, it could stand for nitrogen,it could stand for organisms, it could stand forlegumes, or, i guess, just this whole thing-- youm soybeans and other legumes. it could even standfor microorganisms. there's a lot of stuff thatthat pronoun could stand for.

whenever you'rewriting a sentence and you've got a pronoun thata person reading your writing wouldn't know what itstands for because there's just so many options they canpick-- they walk down the snack aisle and there's regularoreos, thin oreos, double stuff oreos, thin double stuff oreos,mint doubled stuffed thin extra chocolate oreos, they're like,ah, i don't know what to pick. if it's like that thenwhat you have to do is just say the whole noun.

you can't use a pronoun therebecause your reader is not going to know, and here theonly choice that's possible is j. j is the onlychoice that actually says what the subject is. the legumes can thenturn this ammonia into other nitrogen compounds. if we use any pronoun whetherit's it, they, or those, the person readingthis isn't going to know what it stands for andthey're going to be confused.

and a confusedreader is a reader who's not going to beimpressed by our writing. all right folks,thank you so much for your hard work in this hour. it has been an absolutetreat to work with you, and i just want to say thankyou so much for all your kind words that you've beengiving in the chat. and more so than just makingme feel good because you guys enjoyed the session andlearned something from it.

i'm really glad that you came. i'm really glad thatyou participated and you used the chat,you used the poll, and i'm glad that you learned. that you were willingto make mistakes, get some things wrong, but thenstill have a positive attitude, a good spirit about things andlearn so that going forward when you see these questions onthe act you can get them right. when you writeessays for college,

you can make the collegeadmissions officers have a good impression of you. and it's just going tomatter so much when you're writing everything forcollege and for employment because people judge youon your writing skills. and now, from spending justa quick hour of your sunday, you managed to make yourwriting skills stronger. so i thank you so muchfor that, because that is what excites me as a teacher.

now, the show's not over. we're going to give youa quick break to recoup, and in the next five minutes, onthe top of the hour, my friend and fellow long timeact kaplan expert ac is going to come oncamera, and she'll take you through the insand outs of the reading test of the act. once again, thank you somuch for joining us today. i do hope you stick aroundfor ac, she is amazing.

she's one of my favoriteteachers of all-time, and i wish you all the best inyour preparation for the act and everything beyond. take care everybody. [music playing] hi everyone, i hope youare having an amazing day and that you had a reallygreat time with borris and with the act english test. did you love borrisand his lesson?

wasn't he absolutely the best? he's just myfavorite person, one of my favorite people in theentire world and i love him. so my name is ac, and i'mgoing to be teaching you from san diego today. it is time for us tolearn some strategies for acing the readingtest, which i am super excited to work with you on. so you also have act expertsheather, rob, kristin, and beth

helping you behind the scenes. before we get started, justa really quick reminder that you can adjust thevideo resolution of the class by clicking on the gearicon at the bottom right of the video display. secondly, you can always feelfree to answer my questions in the chat that you see. but if we areworking on a question and you think youknow the right answer,

you're going to want totoggle to the poll and slap the answer in the poll sothere aren't spoilers in chat for everyone else. ok? so let's get started. here's what we're goingto start empowering you to do in today's lesson. so tell me this--how many of you are struggling at least a littlebit with the reading test?

how many of youfeel like, hmm, i feel like i could use somepoints on the act reading test? you are definitely not alone,as you can probably see. a lot of studentsget a little bit buried in all ofthat words and ideas, or they're trying tomemorize everything that they read so that theycan answer the questions from their memory. well, the great newsfor you is that you

don't have to do that any more. today we're going towork on building a map. we're going to builda passage roadmap so that we know exactly where togo to find the answers that you need. i also want to be able todistinguish the central ideas of the passage. [inaudible], youwant to distinguish [inaudible] detail that are morethere to be a supporting role.

and finally, wewant to use clues from the passage, ortextual references, as we can call them, so wecan understand the big picture of the passageinstead of getting lost in all of the words. so before we do that, though,let's talk about the test itself. and i see a couplepeople saying i can never get through the passage.

timing is very[? aggressive ?], and that's what we're going to talkabout on the next page. sometimes it mightfeel like i don't know, anyone can get through allthese passages in time, but i promise you, ipromise you that you can. and elizabeth has a great time. i think some of youprobably feel the same. elizabeth is saying, ican't read fast enough. i will tell you that it'sactually not about the speed

that you read. a lot of students ask me teacherac, how can i read faster? or how can i go faster? and it's not about speedreading on the act. it is about beingstrategic and knowing what you need to look forin order to get the points you need. so let's talk aboutthe test itself first. what we're goingto see on test day

are passages that coverall kinds of topics-- social studies, humanities,natural science, literary narratives. now that's a whole lotof topics, some of which you may not love. but here is thegood news-- you are going to be able to use theexact same reading techniques for every kind of passage. with the reading test it'snot about how much you

know about the specific topic. the package could beabout puppies or bacon or some obscure author orgen x. but you don't need any outside knowledge at all. you just need strategicreading skills. so you can write thesedown if you want. you have to beable to figure out what the author's main ideais, where the details are and what they mean, you haveto be able to draw conclusions

or inferences from whatyou're told in the passage, and analyze the voiceand tone of the author and know what the author isdoing in making his point. now those are the skillsthat you need in order to do well on this test. what else makes thereading test difficult? we just talked abouta couple minutes ago, besides just the reading itself. what is one of the thingsthat intimidates us

about the readingtest on test day? it is going to be timing. if we had all dayto take the act it would be a much,much different story. but we don't, solet's take a look at the timing of this test. all right, the readingtest is your third test, right after english,math, and then the break. so you have toread four passages

and do 40 questionsin 35 minutes. if we break this down, youhave just over 8 minutes to spend on each passage andthe 10 questions associated with the passage. anyone feeling a littlescared out there? anyone feeling like they'rea little bit nervous? not sure how to do it its? do not worry. it is 100% possible toget through everything

and get a really highscore in the process. i promise, and i wouldnever lie to you. it will adjust for priorunderstanding of strategies and then practicing, practicing,and practicing some more. so let's get startedwith the strategies. all right, first let'stalk about creating a roadmap for your passage. i want you to think about whywe need a roadmap for a passage. and to do that, letme ask you a question.

let's say you're drivingfrom your house to the mall. we're going to go with themall because i don't really know where teenagers hangout these days any more, but we'll say the mall. let's say the mallis 10 miles away and you have to make 11turns from your house to get to the mall. would you rather memorizeall of the directions and keep them in yourhead, or would you rather

have a map to guide you? would you rather have tomemorize all of the directions and just keep them inyour head and worry about making mistakes,or would you rather just and then you're like, the lesswork i have to do, the better. definitely you'dwant to have a map. yeah. you don't want tomake a wrong turn, you want to end up inthe boonies somewhere

and not know how to get back. you want to get lost. and then, honestly, whytake the time to memorize it when it takes somuch energy and you might remember things wrong? yeah, [inaudible] havea map to guide you. so these are the exactreasons that we're going to make a mapfor every passage that you read so that you don'tget lost in all of the words.

no getting lost. now i want you to rememberthat there are two parts to every good road map. the first part isactive reading, and the second part is goingto be effective note taking. henry, siri alwaystells me where to go, so i am glad that we'reboth siri buddies, because i cannotlive without her. all right, so the firstthing i want to start with

is going to be active reading. the first thingyou want to do is note the topic of the passage. to figure out thetopic ask yourself, what is the author'sspecific subject matter? in other words, what is thegeneral subject of the passage? so go ahead and give mean example of a topic. jump into the chat,any topic at all. make it one or twowords, but just

give me anything in the worldyou could possibly ever write a passage about, and whatwould be an example of a topic. so that's the firstthing you're going to want to do when youlook at any passage, even if the passage topic isnot as interesting as yours. so-- well, [? taya ?], i'mgoing to go ahead and give you a shout out right here as well. so now you can get a shoutout from all the teachers. yeah, so i see pizza and dogsand horses are pomeranians.

star wars-- awesome topics. so my favorite topic in theworld might just be bacon. and if we're going toget really specific, we'll call it meatball bacon. so let's just pretend we havea passage about meatball bacon. the second thing you'regoing to want to identify is the purpose of the passage. and to do this, ask yourselfwhat the author's agenda is. you going to want to ask whatthe author is trying to do.

is the author trying toconvince you of something? or is he trying to argueagainst somebody else? was he just tellingyou something and remaining neutral? so think about it likeok, let's go shopping. let's imagine all of usare going shopping together one day. some days if we go shoppingwe will have a purpose, like i have to buy a prom dress.

that's going to thestore with a purpose. other times justwindow shopping, right? you have no agenda. you're like, let's just seewhat's was going on, and maybe i'll buy something,maybe i won't. so you could consider thatjust being at neutral. you don't have apurpose, you're just going to wander into thestores to see what's cracking. so on the reading test,always take a close look

to see if the author istrying to express an opinion or if he's just telling youfacts with no personal opinion. so if we go back toour topic of bacon, a neutral purposewould be something like to explain wherebacon comes from. right? where does bacon come from? that could be thepurpose, and it's just going to be a pretty dryscientific, scholastic last

article about where bacon comesfrom with no opinions in it at all. whereas an opinionatedpurpose would be something like to argue that bacon is thesingle thing in the world that can make you the happiest ok? and when we can-- bacon--we can replace it with tofu if you're a vegetarian. whatever it is. the point is the arguerwould have an opinion

and say bacon is the thingthat makes you the happiest, and i want to prove that to you. so keep that in mind. make sure that you knowwhat the author is doing. ok, thank you. i'm seeing a lot ofscientific help in the chat here that bacon comes from pigs. wonderful. finally, you will want tothink what the main idea is.

you're going to wantto ask yourself, how can i summarize theentire passage in one sentence from the viewpointof the author? but don't overcomplicatethis part. if your purpose was to arguethat bacon is the biggest single source ofhappiness in the world, then your main idea wouldseriously just be bacon is the biggest single sourceof happiness in the world. so now that we understandhow to read actively instead

of passively by thinkingabout these three points-- and don't forgetabout your main idea-- let's move on to the secondpart of making a good road map, which is going tobe effective note taking. all rights. on test day you're goingto see a little intro to the passage like theone you see on the board. do not skip this intro,because it usually gives you really helpful information aboutthe passage and about the topic

so that you can saveyourself some time. in this case, the introtells us right away that we have an essay onhandedness in vertebrates. so in your minds youwould think ok, the topic is in backboned animalsbeing left or right handed. one thing for you tonote on test day-- don't write down whatyou see on the right of this vertical line. i'm just showing you whatthe internal monologue

of an expert acttest taker would be. what you willwrite down test day is something i'll showyou in just a minute. but anything you see to theright of this vertical line, just know these are the kindsof things i [? want to ?] be keeping in my head as i read. and i have seen a couplecomments come through so far that are like, who hastime to do all of this stuff? i promise you do.

you've gotta trust, right? you got to trust in me. i promise you do, and i'mgoing to show you how. all right, let's lookat the passage now. and i want to show youhow to read strategically and thoughtfullyinstead of just reading for the sake of reading. so one thing i'mgoing to do is just cover up this partof the package,

because i just want to takea look at the first sentence. the first sentence startswith the words, "in the past." and they tell us thatscientific consensus was that theseparation of functions within the brain,each hemisphere is responsible for certaintasks but communicating with each other for others,with a uniquely human trait. let me ask you about this. let me ask you about thewords, "in the past."

if i told you in the past iused to hate disney movies. in the past i used tohate disney movies. what could you inferabout now or the future, even though i didn'treally tell you? because of the context keywords,"in the past", followed by the independent clause, "iused to hate disney movies", what can you infer? "in the past i used tohate disney moveis", what we can infernow is that i don't

hate disney movies anymore. and that is a fact. in actuality, ilove disney movies. yep. [inaudible], it's changed. i now love disney movies. it's a fact, because i dosing disney movies to my dogs. great, zachary. that i have changedmy mind, alexander.

wonderful answers. so, true story. and that's exactly what weneed about strategic reading. so here they say, inthe past, scientists thought that this hemispherething only applied to humans. so what's your prediction forwhat the scientists now think? in the past scientists thethought that this hemisphere thing only applied to humans. so what's our prediction forwhat the scientists now think?

yeah, they thinkit's not just humans. so on test day, the expertreader, or the expert test taker, will look aheadto where the author might be going with all of this. they're going to sayok, if in the past they thought that only humanshad the separated brain thing going on, i'm guessingthat they now suspect that other animals do, too. and looking aheadis super empowering,

and i want to empower you asmuch as we can on test day so that you don't feel likeyou're lost or confused, but that you feel like youhave control over the passage. a great test taker willlook ahead and think, where is this logically going? instead of being like,boo, i don't know anything about hemispheres andvertebrate animals and i'm going tocry because i'm sad. we're going to takecontrol of the passage.

now i love that you singto your dog, gabriella. that made me super happy. i think that made my day. i'm going to give you30 seconds to read the rest of theparagraph, and then i'm going to ask you what the bigideas are that you got out of your reading. so take 30 seconds to readthe rest of this paragraph and think about whatyour big ideas might be.

ok, we had quite a fewdetails in this paragraph, but what were some of thebig ideas that you saw? if you were going to takesome notes here and look at what you saw in the passage? great, so carly's saying that90% of humans are right handed. that's a really good notefor you to have taken away, carly, because that'san emphasis that they're going to give us here. so lot of humansare right handed,

which means that theirmotor functions are controlled on their left side. then we see that there issome kind of genetic cause for this brain separation. this last sentenceis super important because it poses arhetorical question about whether allanimals might have the same phenomenon happening. so in your notes you'dwant to jot down something

like this-- humans are largelyleft brain, right handed. could others be, too? that is the big pictureof the paragraph. so yeah, great commentfrom [? wade ?]. one may ask whether animalshave separation as well, just like humans. great job on that. now i'll give you 30 secondsto read the next paragraph all by herself anddo the same thing.

jot down notes from theparagraphs that are not just [inaudible] aboutdetail, but are the main idea of the paragraph. and don't forget, by theway, since you don't have these passages in front of you. in your notes make sure tolabel these notes paragraph one, humans are left brainand right handed. maybe animals are, too. for the nextparagraph you look at,

make sure that noteit as paragraph two. all right, here it is. so happy to see some of yousaying i get the concept now, because it's soimportant for us to be able to see the big picture. and [? chai ?], it isbetter to take notes even if it takes up time. i'm not going tobe able to answer all of the questions thatcome through and chat,

but some of them arereally important. and i think that alot of you probably have the same questions. you're right. but in taking more timeto write stuff down, isn't that going to slow down? you're going to see a lotof time in the questions, if you take the time up front todo the right work for the act. so go ahead and tellme the big picture

of this entire paragraphin paragraph number two. and [inaudible] sayingwith the monkey mimicry. yeah, the big pictureof this entire paragraph is that it's giving us onetheory about other apes. so we think to ourselves,well, one thing is that captive animalsare mimicking us, and that's whythey're right handed. but that wouldn't be genetic. so file that one awayfor future reference.

so what the expert reader isdoing here is putting the words and putting the idea thatshe reads into her words, and then tying itback to paragraph one when we were talkingabout the genetic causes of this hemisphere separation. so in our notes, we wouldwrite something like ok, captive gorillas and chimpsare mostly right handed. so maybe they're mimicking us. and we see the evidencefor it, as well,

at the end of the paragraph. when we look atapes in the wild, they're not reallyleft or right handed. great. now i want us to begood, predictive readers. thinking to other academicarticles that you read, what often happens when you'represented with one person's point of view? a lot of the timewhen you're given one

person's point of view, whatdo you get after or soon after? so it's like, here'swhat charlie thinks. and now yes, you are givingsomeone else's point of view. now you're being a reallygood, predictive and strategic readers. this is what we wantedto accomplish today, and you're doing great. so look at the next paragraph. it starts out with--such good answers.

[? chaya ?], caitlyn, i love it. so if you take a look at thenext paragraph-- it starts out with, "other scientistsargue", so you nailed it. you have a lot morecontrol during this test than you think. so take 30 seconds to read andmake a map for this paragraph, and i'll be asking you what thebig idea of this paragraph was. go for it. all right, what do you have inyour notes for this paragraph?

it's a little bitshorter, but remember, if the previous passage, orwith the previous paragraph was about this onetheory-- ellie, awesome. this is another view. some people say something else. ian. awesome answers here. so here's a different theory. other scientists don'tlike the small sample

size of the wildape data, and they think that the hemisphere andhandedness thing goes back to forever. so that would be genetic. and in thinking this way, you'renoticing how the two theories are in opposition. and then if you're asked aboutthe first or second theory in a question you'regoing to know exactly where to find the answer.

you're not going to have to goback through the entire passage and read or skimit all over again, because you will knowexactly where to research. and that is one of the mostpowerful tools of the act once you can get reallygood and adapt that. so in our notes wecan just jot down no, since the theory disagreeswith the previous paragraph, and then super quicksummary of what the second theorybelieves, which

is that this wholehandedness/hemisphere thing goes back to forever. take 30 seconds nowto keep road mapping and being awesome withyour strategic reading with this fourth paragraph. now i'm just going toask you the same thing. you're getting better andbetter as we go along. so look for just the mainideas of this fourth paragraph and don't forget tolabel it in your notes.

now, which hypothesis arewe testing when it says, "to test this hypothesis?" let me highlight this for you. which hypothesis arewe testing when it says to test this hypothesis. and yet, [inaudible]road mapping is the same asannotating, more or less. you're just pulling outthe big ideas, but not every single detailof the passage.

so we have theory numberone or theory number two. we are testing the second theorysince that's the paragraph that we are transitioning from. so we want to test thetheory that the hemisphere and handedness goesback to forever. so according tothe author, we have to look at animals thatdon't show handedness. they give us examples of fish,reptiles, toads, and birds. and what they foundis that they all

tend to favor their right side. so again, in thinkingthis way, you're just putting the detailinto really simple terms so that you can seethe big picture. and that's exactly what ournotes should do, as well. they should showyou the big picture. where we see that we'vegot fish, reptiles, toads, and birds, and they allfavor the right side. but we want to drawstructural connections here.

we don't want to justread this paragraph and say, ok, to testthis hypothesis, scientists would needto evaluate animals. we want to ask yourselfgood questions? to test what hypothesis? what paragraph is thisparagraph responding to? the more you can become investedin a structure of passages-- and i know we talked aboutthis with queen kristin last week in this stem class,as well-- the more power

you will have over thereading portions of the act. all right, now let'stackle the last paragraph, and then we can get some points. i know you're excitedto get to the questions, so take 30 seconds. i know this is alonger paragraph. i'm just going to push you alittle bit here because i only have half an hour left with you. you're going to get better atreading for the big picture,

so to try to capture the maintakeaways from this paragraph in 30 seconds without rushing. let's see if you can do it. all right, i said i was goingto push you a little bit just to make sure thatyou weren't getting bogged down in the details. but in this paragraphwe see that support is getting stronger for leftbrain, right human phenomenon for all vertebrates.

yeah, and kylie's talkingabout humans pushing left brain dominance and all that stuff. exactly. great. [? sasha ?] isstarting to get it now. we do talk about genetics. i'm loving these answers thatare coming into the chat. this is wonderful. so we see thatsupport is getting stronger for this left brainright hand phenomenon, and then

we see a great keywordwhich is "however". ok, i'm going to highlightpart of it here for you. so, "however". and this word alertsus to pay attention because we're kind ofswitching gears to a contrast. so write this downin your notes, because even though you willnever see this package again on test day, you will definitelysee the word, "however", again. so we have a contractkey word in "however",

and what we shoulddo is pay attention because it means that we'reswitching gears to a contrast. and what we see is that humansare the most extreme example. then the authoroffers up a couple of reasons why it might beso pronounced in humans. so tell me s-- in thepaper, does the author say that the whole reasonhumans are so right handed is because of genetics? does the author comeout and say that?

does he say anythingsimilar to that? like the 100% of the reasonthat humans are so right handed we see that geneticsmay have started it all, but there were othernon-genetic factors that must have come into play. and that's what yourinternal monologue should be on test day. this whole paragraph'sfocus is on why it's so extreme in humans.

because this isthe last paragraph it's super important for youto try to sum up the main point and wrap it all up. so in our notes we can justwrite that for humans, it is genes and [? tools ?] leadingto the phenomenon of being left brained and right handed. and what i really loveis how so many of you were able to answer. is it 100% genetic?

because that's going tobe part of our main idea. it is not just genetic, andit's not just non-genetic. it's sort of like, why am igoing to eat bacon for dinner? it's not just becauseit's delicious, it's also because i'm hungry. there are severalfactors that are going to go into this decision. so the same thing is goingto be true in this passage. it's not just genetic,it's not just non-genetic.

it's actually quitecomplicated why we have this phenomenon of beingleft brained and right handed. so congratulations onmapping that passage with me. now again, how many of youare thinking oh my gosh, who has time for allof that on test day? i thought you just told us wehave only over eight minutes to do the passage andall the questions. and now my teacher ismaking me write down all this stuff on topof that and to take up

more of my eight minutes. so you can be honest it ifthat's what you're thinking, because i know that'show it can feel at first. but remember-- and it'sok, jeremy and gabriella, just remember with anythingelse that you do in life you are going tofeel slow at first. i loved how impatientwe all are to get better and fasterand all of this, because it means youhave a really drive.

but it's just somethingyou have to trust. and remember that the lastthing you want to do on test day is to try and memorizeeverything that you just read. so put this into an everydaycontext for your reading so it makes sense. when i first learned howto drive stick shift. anyone want to take a wildguess as to what happened? and you're probably not goingto get it right, detail-wise. the first five minutes ofme leaning how to drive

stick shift. what do you think happened? it was a nightmare. i actually drove myfriend's 1976 chevelle. i don't even know if youwhat that is, but i drove my friend's '76 chevelle intothe side of a bowling alley in lancaster, pennsylvania. so that wasn't fun, but ittook practice and patience, but now i can drivestick with no problem

and without eventhinking about it. so if you thinkabout that example, if you think about what a trainwreck i was on the first day, and now, years later, howmuch easier it is for me, this is what road mapping willfeel to you with practice. the reason we wantto distill a passage down to its mainpoint-- we can talk about that, as well--not just on the act, but when you got to college.

when you get to colleges. it's because youhave so much to read. you have to understandwhat you're reading for, otherwise you'll justdrown in an ocean of words. so as a bonus on the act, youwill get main idea and purpose questions pretty often. so if you predictit as you read, then you'll be so muchfaster with the questions than you would have ifyou forgot to identify

the main idea and purpose. so let's think aboutthe author's purpose in this package. was the author neutral ordid he have an opinion? was the author neutral,or did he have an opinion. wow with the puns in the chat. yes, i hit a strike wheni first started driving, and i did get spared. thank you so much, jonathan.

so, author neutral, ordid he have an opinion? he definitely hadan opinion, so he was trying to argue something. he was trying to argueat the end of the day that the whole left hemisphere,right handedness thing probably had both genetic andnon-genetic causes. so aria, laelle, ian-- i loveall of these in the chat. these are things thatwe want to focus on because we know that theact also focuses on it.

so, wanted to show, again,that the whole left hemisphere, right handedness thing had bothgenetic and non-genetic causes, and the whole thingwas just very involved. sometimes-- and we'll seethis in just a minute-- you will be asked about specificdetails from the passage. well, the passageisn't going anywhere. so if you get askedabout a specific detail and he didn't write thatdown in your passage road map since you're not supposedto write down small detail,

on test day, if you'relike, i don't remember reading about thedetail in the passage, you're just going to goright back to the passage. it's not going todisappear on you. don't feel bad. and since you have this sweetmap that we made together you don't re-read the wholepassage to find that detail. you just have to useyour map to locate where that detail would logically be.

ok, ready to get some points? give me a smileyface in the chat if you are ready to take ourroad maps for a test drive-- no pun intended. maybe pun intended. all right, love it. you are going to lovethis first question. and i want you totoggle over to the poll and answer it if you areable to find the answer.

but before we do, we're goingto take a look at the question. the main point ofthe passage is that. now what you'regoing to want to do on test day is remindyourselves and be like, yay, we just predictedwhat the main idea is. again, don't have todo any work at all. we just said that theauthor had an opinion. and his opinion,in fact, there were genetic and non-geneticfactors that

go into this wholehemisphere thing. so once you do this--and here i know you're like, but [inaudible]the answer choices, i can't see the answer choices. once you make a predictionthen you're going to be able to be like, boom. i think i know what the answeris inside of 20 seconds. so toggle over tothe poll and see if you can find theanswer choice that

matches what we picked. how fast was that, by the way? how fast was that toget to answer choice b? so many people votingfor b. and this is exactly what we said it was. so, for those of youwho were like who has time to do all ofthis stuff on test day, it's because we're goingto borrow the time that you normally would have spentwading through different answer

choices to be like i don't know. is it this one? or is it made thisother answer choice? but i kind of like threedifferent answer choices. we are going to take thattime that you would have spent and we're going to investit instead into the work that you do upfront. so now i hope that meansa lot more sense to you. some of you did vote foranswer choice d, which

says genetic factorsaccount for little, if any of thespecialization of the brain. this is actually the oppositeof what the passage says. genetic factors actuallycounts for a lot since the lastparagraph says it, but it doesn't account forall of it is what it says. don't misread. if you go back-- andi know some of you would like to seethe passage again.

so if you go back, you'llsee in this passage "genetics may have startedhumans on the path, but other factors musthave also been important." so we can't just belike ok, well then i guess genetics wasn't important. we just have to understandthat genetics was not the only thing. you are so welcome,miss caitlyn stuart. i love teaching reading, soi'm very happy that you are all

learning so much. now very different questionthan question number one. take a look atquestion number two, and it says, accordingto the passage why do some scientistsbelieve that apes are not truly right or left handed? and you may be like ohno, i don't remember this off the top of my head. don't forget what i told you.

you are not supposed to behording all of these details in your mind, because thepassage isn't going anywhere. so the only thing i wantyou to answer for me is, where do we research this? we're going to be talkingabout apes in this passage. what paragraph did wetalk about apes in? and if you took good notes--if you took good notes you'll be able to tell me. it is definitely goingto be paragraph two.

beacuse-- and if you takea look at paragraph two-- let's jump back to it-- love it. so we're talking aboutapes in paragraph two. and if you look at theend of the paragraph, we're going to see this theoryis supported by the facts. such good researching. [inaudible] this theory'ssupported by the fact that when similar studies areconducted on apes in the wild,

there seems to be noparticular preference for left or right hand dominance. so you remember how i said youdon't have to use your memory and you shouldn'tuse your memory? you'll still be able to getthe answer very quickly. so if you take a lookat the answers here, the only answer thatmatches what we just read in the paragraph, go aheadand toggle over to the poll and click for me theanswer choice that matches

what we exactly just said. why do some scientists believethat apes are naturally right or left handed? great, so we'vegot a little more going on between answerchoice g and answer choice h. you're probably dying toknow which one it's going to be. let me remind you rightbefore i show you the answer. what we read at theend-- the reason that sometimes somescientists don't

think that apes are reallyright or left handed is because of these studiesthat they did in the wild, where apes didn't showa preference for left and so what we see isthat answer choice h is going to be a match herebecause it's the one that is a paraphrase of what we saw. i do see the poll skewingmore towards h right before i revealed that answer. so what happened is once wewent back and researched it

and really carefully said ok,i trust that the right answer here is going to be a paraphraseof something in the passage, then we were able to feelmore confident about h. however, let me notlead you astray-- or let me not leave you inthe dark, i should rather say, and let's take a look at g. gsays that brain studies on apes have shown no specializationof the hemispheres. we did not talk about thisfact anywhere in the passage. so it will tell you is be verycareful about being able to-- i

know that you can use yourmemory to answer questions, but you can't use your memoryto answer questions accurately. what i want morethan anything is for you to get more and moreand more points on the act. so try to break yourself of thathabit, of thinking like i think i do remember seeing thatsomewhere in the passage, so i'm just going to pickit and hope i get lucky. let's stop trying toget lucky on test day, and instead just make surethat we get really [inaudible].

let's talk quickly aboutinference questions before we head toour next passage. now the thing withinferences is this. detail questions are askingyou about things that are explicitly in the passage. or rather, i should say, thereare some questions that ask you about details in the passage. but with inferences, you willhave to read between the lines and infer additionalfacts and opinions.

i'll give you an example. it will be a really easyexample that will show you exactly what an inference is. let's say that i toldyou that my birthday is in later than november 15th,but earlier than november 17th. it's later than november 15but earlier than november 17th. what can you infer[inaudible] about my birthday, even though i never told you? and this not like a plug forme to receive early birthday

presents because it'sstill six months away, but yes, my birthdayis november 16th, even though i didn'treally tell you. i didn't come rightout and tell you. i gave you enoughclues that you'll be able to figurethings out on your own. and that is what wemean when we talk about inferences on the act. so let's take a look at a verycommon inference question here,

and it says, "the author--"yay, november baby-- "the author of the passage ismost likely to agree with which of the following?" gosh, i don't really knowwhere to look for this, right? because the author was kindof talking the whole time. here's what youcan do on test day. we think about our main ideaand what we know of the author. the author has an opinion, andit's in the last paragraph. we said the main idea isthat the separation of brain

hemisphere and handedness,it's not just genetic but it's other things, as well. so it's neither 100% geneticnor 100% other things. go ahead and tellme what the answer is going to be in termsof what the author would most likely do. what would the authormost likely think? i love this. you are getting so, so,so much better at this.

because i see so manyvotes for answer choice d, which says that handednesscannot be explained by purely genetic or purelylearned factors. that's exactlywhat we predicted. can you now seethe power of being able to predict the answerbefore you look at the answer choices? students love to do thisbecause it takes away the possibility of gettingsucked into another answer

choice. so you're like, oh. it's like yourdating ryan gosling, but then you see johnny depp. and you're like, maybe iwant to date him instead. i don't know what's better. ryan gosling or johnny depp? it's actually impossibleto answer that question, so you don't want to findyourself in that situation.

instead you want to have areally clear idea of what you're looking for first,and then nothing else will sound good. so if that analogy doesn'thit home for some of you, then i don't know. i don't know what to do. so you can quickly seehow we can get points-- not just how to get points,but also how confident we feel in our answer.

i want to draw yourattention to a couple things, though, before we moveon to another question-- is that taking a look atanswer choices a and b here. when we see something thatsays all species of animals are right handed, you'vegot to ask yourself, is the author going tohave to agree with this? can i point tosomething in the passage that would allowyou to say ok, this makes me feel like all speciesof animals are right handed?

or reliance on fine motor skillsalone created the preference for right handedness? if you want to pickanswer choices a or b, you have got to be ableto do the following. you've got to be able togo back to the passage and say this is where i sawthe author talk about this. [? ok ?]? good. all right, so again,we want to talk

about-- we want to getconfident on test day, we want to get accuracy,and we want to get speed. don't rush through the questionsjust to get it over with. let's go ahead, andwhat we're going to do is a road map apassage together. are you guys read to roadmap a passage together? it's not abouthandedness invertebrates, it's not about science,but it is about rap. so let's do this.

i'm going to give you 45 secondsto road map paragraphs one and paragraphs two. and then we're goingto do the same thing we did from the lastpassage, and i just want to go overwhat a sample road map would look like beforewe do maybe one or two questions on this. but my biggestemphasis here is i want to make sure that you feelcomfortable with the reading.

so, let's do it. 45 seconds. go ahead and tell ms-- whatwas the topic of this passage? the broad, raw subjectmatter of this whole passage. without gettinginto the details, what is the firstparagraph doing? what is it introducing to us? because it's not backbonedanimals with right hands or left hands any more.

it is about rap genius. what the firstparagraph is doing and what it's presentingto us-- it's telling us what rap genius is, right? now, did anyone stop tocatch what the author thinks about rap genius? in other words, doesthe author like it? does the author hate it? or is the author neutral?

does the author like it,hate it, or is neutral? yes, the author loves it. he said that rapdeserves the attention. so whenever an authorexpresses some kind of opinion make sure to payattention, because it's a really nice bonusfor questions later. so we might think toourselves, ok, they're telling us that rapgenius is a site where people talk about rap lyrics.

and the author thinksit's pretty great. and in thinking this way, whatthe expert reader is doing is taking notes of the mainidea of each paragraph. chocolate nerd-- and i love yourname-- "the author loves it." and we can see thatbecause of our key words. so an expert readeralways take note of what the author's tone is. so a road map couldlook something like this-- what is rap genius?

and then, what is thehistory-- blues versus jazz. now go ahead-- you're doinggreat, by the way-- go ahead and take one minute to roadmapparagraphs three and four doing the exact same thing you'vebeen doing and just looking for the big idea. i see some really greatanswers coming into the chat. [? rob's ?] significance. yep, eugene-- rap geniusgives rap legitimacy. that's the purpose here.

if we think bigpicture, what the author is doing in talking abouthow rap genius helps show rap as a cultural art form. we didn't have to get distractedby words like double entendres or alliteration,similes or metaphors. you don't have to know whatall of these things mean. if we step back andsee the big picture, we just have tounderstand that those are common literarytechniques that rappers use.

paragraph four-- who or whatis the star of paragraph four? paragraph four-- who or whatis all of paragraph four about? and i see some of you sayingin the chat, rap artists. rap artists likenas and rza actually start participatingin rap genius. yay. so finally, let meask you one more time. is the author's tone positiveor negative throughout these two paragraphs?

it is positive. yes, we see great author opinionwords, like "elevates" up here and, "climacticmoments" down here. and that's the author talking. so as you were readingthese paragraphs, i hope you werethinking things like, rap genius is pretty deep. it shows the literary andpolitical side of rap. and not only does the publicjump in to help [? annotate, ?]

but some of the rapartists do, too. it's always helpful toseparate fact from opinion, because you're going to needto develop that skill in order to be able to answer questionswith confidence later on. so here's a nice summed up roadmap that you can compare yours with. it's ok if yours is not exact. and you know what, it'sok if yours is even way off, becausethis is a safe zone

and we're just practicing today. with practice itwill come, i promise. if you find that you're writingtoo much, check your notes. you could accidentally bejotting down every detail but don't forget, we justwant real tiny summaries of the big picture, because thedetails aren't going anywhere if you need them late. nicholas ryland digs it. paragraph five.

uh-oh, this is a super long one. do you think it's going to bean unimportant or important paragraph to the authorif it's super long? it is going to be important. so it still doesn't mean youhave to memorize everything, but make sure to pay closeattention to any opinions that you see. and think about thetopic of this paragraph. let's do 45 seconds forthis one since it's so long.

all, right and i love whatyou are saying in the chat. i need a road map for my life. i often feel thatway, by the way. so big, big opinionsin this paragraph. it's not that everyone lovedrap genius when it came out, or that everyonehated rap genius. we have a contrastkey word, which is going to be"while", right here. so that means is, someliked it, some didn't.

while some people likedit, other people didn't. so we talked about aparagraph this long being superimportant, and we also talked about the mixedopinions on rap genius. so in doing this, we're makingsure to focus on things that will get us points insteadof memorizing everything that we read. the entire topicof the paragraph, even though it's solong, it is just the aclu

and how the fans react[inaudible] them getting involved in the kanye song. you are doing sogreat, and that's going to be the main idea. so a road map is the main ideaof the separate paragraph. i saw a questionon that earlier. and we're in the homestretchof this long packages. you are definitelywinning the reading game. so let's finish it up, andthen just do one quick question

so you can see exactly how fastyou're able to get points here. all right, 45 seconds forthe last two paragraphs. road map it, and have fun. and really great question. i'm actually goingto address one that i see from eugene,which is what if you didn't know what the aclu was? it doesn't matter. there's just talkingabout the aclu.

you don't needoutside information to do well on thereading test of the act. so it could standfor anything at all, and all you needto know was what the opinions were in reactionto what the aclu did. it could have said, aclu,or it could have said, "elsa", from the movie, frozen. last paragraphs--last two paragraphs. what we see is rap isn'talways logical, right?

where did this come from? well, the criticism inthe previous paragraph was the aclu hadmissed the point and criticized rap genius. somebody said that. but the author justkeeps on being positive. we see words like, the beautyand power of rap genius is that it enablesconversations. so when we take a lookat paragraph seven

it's pretty short,but what it showed us is that rapgenius is so awesome that people started imitatingother things besides rap. so all in all, tell me onemore time in the chat-- is the author lovingor hating rap genius? is the other lovingor hating rap genius? love, love, love. there's so much love forthe author and rap genius. he has as much love as akanye west has for kanye west.

kanye is super inlove with kanye, and this author is superin love with rap genius. so let's talk aboutyour internal monologue. we noted the author'sdisagreement with the criticism from paragraph five. ideas we can see are theauthor's positive tone, so always be focused on ideas. ideas can be expressedwith many different words. so instead offixating on the words,

think about the main ideas,and the author is center stage. so look at something likethis-- rap's illogic, rap genius gets peopletalking, and other texts-- it's so good that other textsare going to do it as well. so let's see if how fast-- ifthere are just even any more people out there with alittle bit doubt as to with road mapping is goingto do for us on test day. let's see how fast youcan get this question. it can be most recentlyinferred from the passage

that the author of the passagebelieves that rap is-- hmm. i don't have theanswers in front of me, but would we be looking forsomething positive, negative, or neutral? positive, negative, or neutral? got to be positive. all right, toggleover to the poll and see which one isgoing to show love. which answer choice showsthe love of the author

for rap and rap genius? yes, sirs and ma'ams. very nice job for goingwith answer choice c. it is going tobe notably poetic. there's nothing-- there's noother romantic answer in here than that one. so great work everyone. very nice. and these weresuper fast answers

that came into the poll. so trust the road map. trust the road map and knowthat if you do it right up front and you put goodwork up front, you will be able to get quickanswers on test day. fantastic work. i am so sad that ourhour has come to an end. do you do you feelnow that you have a better grasp of how thereading test works on the act?

even if you got somequestions or if you're like, i'm going to you haveto practice some more. do you have a better grasp whywe have to do the things we do? as long as you canpractice the skills that you see on the boardhere and you keep practicing and keep practicing,you're going to start understanding thereading test better and better. so thank you so much foreveryone for being here. it was wonderful tospend this hour with you,

and i hope thatyou learned a lot. i wish you the very beston the june 11th act. borris and i wish youthe best, best, best. don't forget to stay positive,and really believe in yourself. i know that you can do it,and you're going to do it. bye.