Drill 1 · English · Usage
ACT English: Usage (Drill 1) is a English practice drill covering Usage. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.
Usage questions on the ACT English test ask you to correct errors in subject-verb agreement, pronoun-antecedent agreement, verb tense and form, adjective and adverb usage, and idiomatic word choice. For each question, an underlined portion of a passage sentence is presented. Choose the best revision, or select "No Change" if the original is correct.
Question 1. Which choice makes the sentence most grammatically acceptable?
Explanation: Choice B is correct. In American English, collective nouns like "committee," "team," "jury," and "board" are treated as singular and take a singular verb. "Has voted" correctly pairs the singular subject "the committee" with a singular verb. Choice A uses "have voted," which treats the committee as plural; this is standard in British English but incorrect in American English, which is what the ACT tests. Choices C and D use plural or past-tense forms that are both grammatically incorrect and introduce tense inconsistency with the rest of the sentence.
Question 2. Which choice makes the sentence most grammatically acceptable?
Explanation: Choice G is correct. The pronoun here is the object of the verb "had nominated", the committee nominated the researcher, not the other way around. Object pronouns take the objective case, so "whom" is correct. A quick test: substitute "him", "the committee had nominated him" sounds natural, and "him" maps to "whom." Choice F ("who") uses the subjective case, which is correct only when the pronoun is the subject of a verb, as in "the researcher who won the prize." Here the pronoun is the object. Choice H ("whoever") is a subjective indefinite pronoun and does not fit this structure. Choice J ("whomever") is the objective indefinite form but is reserved for general, unnamed referents; "whom" is the correct choice for a specific, identified person.
Question 3. Which choice makes the sentence most grammatically acceptable?
Explanation: Choice A (No Change) is correct. The sentence describes a completed action at a specific point in the past ("In 1969"), so the simple past tense "stepped" is exactly right. It also matches the parallel verb "spoke" later in the sentence. Choice B uses the past perfect "had stepped," which implies the stepping occurred before some other past event, no such prior event is referenced here. Choice C uses the past progressive "was stepping," which suggests an ongoing action rather than the decisive single moment being described. Choice D uses the present perfect "has stepped," which is used for actions with present relevance, inappropriate here since the sentence is anchored to a specific historical date.
Question 4. Which choice makes the sentence most grammatically acceptable?
Explanation: Choice B is correct. The word modifies the verb "moved"; it describes how the team moved. A word that modifies a verb must be an adverb. "Swiftly" is the correct adverb form. Choice A uses "swift," which is an adjective; adjectives modify nouns, not verbs. Choice C uses "more swift," a comparative adjective form, which is doubly wrong; it modifies a verb and introduces a comparison that has no basis in the sentence. Choice D uses "in a swift manner," which is wordy and awkward compared to the clean adverb "swiftly," making it an inferior choice even if technically not wrong.
Question 5. Which choice makes the sentence most grammatically acceptable?
Explanation: Choice B is correct. The sentence describes two past events: the supplies arriving and the floodwaters receding. The receding happened before the arriving; it was the earlier of the two past actions. When one past action precedes another, the earlier action takes the past perfect tense ("had receded"). The phrase "By the time" is a strong signal that past perfect is required. Choice A uses simple past "already receded," which fails to show that the receding occurred before the arriving. Choice C uses present perfect "have already receded," which is incorrect in a passage set entirely in the past. Choice D uses past progressive "were already receding," implying the receding was still in progress when the supplies arrived, contradicting "already."