Drill 2 · English · Conciseness and Redundancy
ACT English: Conciseness and Redundancy (Drill 2) is a English practice drill covering Conciseness and Redundancy. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.
Conciseness and Redundancy questions ask you to eliminate unnecessary words, repetitive phrases, and wordy constructions. This drill focuses on redundant pairings, phrases like "basic fundamentals" or "future plans", and unnecessarily complex sentence structures where the shortest grammatically correct option is always correct.
Question 1. Which choice is most concise and avoids redundancy?
Explanation: Choice C is correct. "Ancient" and "old" are synonyms, both mean the same thing in this context, so using both is redundant. "Ancient ruins" is complete and precise; "old" adds nothing. Choice A keeps the redundant pair. Choice B intensifies both synonyms with "very" and "extremely", this makes the redundancy worse, not better. Choice D restructures the redundancy into a clause ("ruins that were both ancient and old"), same problem, more words. The ACT consistently rewards cutting redundant synonyms down to a single precise word.
Question 2. Which choice is most concise and avoids redundancy?
Explanation: Choice A (No Change) is correct. "Additional funding" is not redundant, "additional" modifies "funding" to specify that it is more than what already existed, which is meaningful in context. The phrase is concise and necessary. Choice B ("added and additional new funding") strings together three near-synonyms, "added," "additional," and "new", creating genuine redundancy. Choice C ("extra additional funding on top of what already existed") is highly redundant, "extra," "additional," and "on top of what already existed" all say the same thing. Choice D ("more funding that is additional in nature") is wordier than the original and the phrase "in nature" adds nothing. The lesson: not every two-word phrase is redundant, only flag it if the words genuinely repeat each other's meaning.
Question 3. Which choice is most concise and avoids redundancy?
Explanation: Choice B is correct. "In order to be able to determine" uses six words to express what the infinitive "to determine" expresses in two. "In order to" can almost always be cut to just "to." "To be able to" adds nothing because determining something already implies the ability to do it. The result: "She studied the map carefully to determine the fastest route", clean and direct. Choice A keeps all six words. Choice C ("so that she would have the ability to determine") is longer than the original. Choice D ("for the purpose of determining") replaces one wordy construction with another, slightly shorter than the original but still much longer than "to determine."
Question 4. Which choice is most concise and avoids redundancy?
Explanation: Choice C is correct. "Previous," "had been set," and "before" all convey the same idea, that this record existed prior to the new one. A record by definition was set before a new one surpasses it, so "the record" is entirely sufficient. The sentence becomes: "The swimmer set a new world record, surpassing the record by nearly three seconds." Choice A uses "previous" and "before" redundantly. Choice B stacks "old," "prior," and "previously", three synonyms for the same concept. Choice D adds "prior," "existing," and "previously stood" to a phrase that already implies all of those things. When context makes a modifier's meaning obvious, cut it.
Question 5. Which choice is most concise and avoids redundancy?
Explanation: Choice A (No Change) is correct. "Complications" and "setbacks" are not precise synonyms in a surgical context, a complication is a medical problem that arises during a procedure, while a setback is a more general obstacle or delay. Using both together is not redundant; it is a slightly more complete description of the procedure going smoothly. The phrase is appropriately concise as written. Choice B cutting to "without complications" is defensible but loses the nuance of "setbacks", the ACT would not penalize you for keeping the original here. Choice C adds "problems" (a third near-synonym) and "of any kind", genuinely redundant additions. Choice D replaces a five-word phrase with a ten-word construction that says exactly the same thing.