If you're a student preparing to take the act, you may have noticed that there's a new trend: test prep games. While it's good to have some fun with your studying, these games aren't a substitute for real practice questions.
Many of these games are just glorified multiple-choice quizzes that dress up competitive elements and power-ups. But most still operate under the same basic mechanic as a normal multiple-choice quiz, which means that they don't always offer high quality questions or helpful explanations.
For example, an ACT reading game might give one pair of students a passage and question set. Then they'll compete to see which player can find all of the answers in the text first. This is a great way to encourage teamwork and also help students learn to look for verbs, adjectives, and adverbs that modify nouns in the text. The player who finds the most answers wins, or you can award points based on how closely their answer matches the explanation provided in the ACT answer key.
Another ACT review game that can be played competitively is an ACT English scavenger hunt. The players will need a large stack of index cards. Each card should have a word, term, event, or person on it. They then have to race to find these things in the text, underlining them as they go. The judge will then look at the ACT answer key to check the competitors' work. The competitor who provides the most accurate description of the answer and follows all rules of written English wins.
