ACT English: Clarity
The ACT English test will test your ability to identify clear, concise sentences. This won’t be as easy as it sounds, as you’ll need to know rules about using the passive voice, proper noun, pronoun, and adverb agreement, among other writing conventions. Since there’s so many rules for writing, proper test prep is necessary to answer clarity questions on the ACT. Remember to use these strategies when answering clarity questions:
Clarity Practice Question
The original sentence is convoluted and confusing. It uses the passive voice (“Were already known to be”) and puts the noun (Alexus) at the end of the sentence. Unless there are no better choices, we should eliminate this one. B isn’t much better than the original sentence, for the pronoun “that” is in a location where it’s difficult to know what “that” is referring to. We should eliminate it from our possible answer choices. If we move on to C, we get a reasonably good sentence. The noun (Alexus) is at the beginning of the sentence and the first verb (knew) is active. We should keep this and check the last choice. In D, we have a dangling modifier—no subject in a clause (“The keys to…appreciation”). For this simple reason, D cannot be the choice, leaving us with the correct answer—C!