Expert Review The Official ACT Prep Guide

Expert Review The Official ACT Prep Guide SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips Looking for official ACT practice? The Official ACT Prep Guide is a great resource. In this article, I'll provide a review of the current Official ACT Prep Guide, including positives and negatives of the new guide, how it differs from The Real ACT Prep Guide (3rd Edition), and whether or not you should buy it to help you through the study process. What’s in The Official ACT Prep Guide? The book is organized into five parts, which each are further divided into smaller chapters. The five parts of the book are: Part One: Getting Acquainted with the ACT Test (general study strategies and test-taking tips, explanation of the format and what’s covered on the test) Part Two: Taking and Evaluating Your First Practice Test (diagnostic practice test along with an explanation of how to use your results to identify weak areas) Part Three: Improving Your Score (test-taking strategies for each section of the exam) Part Four: Taking Additional Practice Tests (two additional practice tests for you to take after you’ve evaluated your mistakes and done more prep) Part Five: Moving Forward to Test Day (shows you how to sign up for the test and what to expect on test day) There are five full practice tests included in this guide, counting the initial practice test that you'll use to diagnose your mistakes in part two. The online bonus content includes 400 extra official ACT practice questions (100 each for English, Math, Reading, and Science). In the next section, I'll go through my full review of the book with extensive details on its strengths and weaknesses. The Official ACT Prep Guide Review There are many reasons to like or dislike this version of the Red Book. I'll start with the positive attributes of the guide and move onto its not-so-awesome qualities. Pros Smart Overall Structure The order of the chapters in the book corresponds to when you should take each step in the review and testing process. This book understands that the best way to guarantee improvement over time is to take a practice test, evaluate your mistakes, study the content that's relevant to your mistakes, and take another practice test to see if you’ve improved. You'll learn exactly how to begin studying and which steps you should take along the way to make sure you’re improving. Good Advice on Scores and What They Mean The guide walks you through scoring your practice tests accurately, and it gives you a table of percentiles so you can see how your scores compare to those of other students. It also does a good job of explaining how to judge your scores based on where you plan on applying to college and how much you improve from test to test. Learning to set appropriate goals is a huge aspect of studying for standardized tests that can be overlooked in some prep books. Abundant Test-Taking Tips There are many test-taking tips for each section of the ACT included in this book. Some tips can seem a bit repetitive (sometimes it seems like they’re just filling up space), but most are solid pieces of advice. For ACT English, helpful tips listed in the book include considering the context of the question before choosing an answer, rereading the sentence using the answer you've selected, exercising caution with two part questions, and paying attention to the writing style. Cons Dull Style This guide is dryly written, with little in the way of images, graphics, or differentiated headings to break up the text. There are sporadic efforts to be more engaging, but it’s definitely not the most student-friendly prep guide. Adding to this, Part 1 has an overview of the test that includes long lists of concepts covered by each section that could be condensed. The book makes the test seem way too intimidating and overwhelming (more on this in the next point). Complicates the Material While it's great that there are abundant test-taking tips included in this book, they aren't always presented in the best way. The tips are a bit hard to digest and use in practice on the test. While question examples are given to show how the tips work in some cases, these examples are not as abundant as they should be. This book falls short specifically in demystifying the science section. The main issue with this section for most students is that it looks super intimidating, and it's easy to feel overwhelmed. To overcome this, you need to learn to pick out the most important details and ignore extra information that’s just there to distract you. This guide makes the science section look scarier and more â€Å"sciencey† even though in reality it’s more about reading comprehension than scientific knowledge. Answer Explanations are Lacking Math and science question explanations are laid out in a way that makes them confusing and difficult to think through. Here's an example of what the answer explanations for math questions look like: As you can see, there are rarely any images to guide you in your understanding or even much room for the text to breathe at all. Everything starts to blur together into a mass of unintelligible math-like word goop. If you're already having trouble with the Math section, these sorts of answer explanations probably won't clear things up. The guide also makes some assumptions about how much you know about the content. If you didn't even understand where to begin in answering these math questions, the answer explanations provided aren't too enlightening. It would be helpful if they at least indicated the page in the book where you could find additional details on how to solve these types of problems. Not Enough Guidance on Understanding Mistakes The book tells you how to understand your mistakes, but it could have a more consolidated system to help you go through and diagnose them. An organized chart where you could record your findings would be better than just saying "put a checkmark next to the mistakes you made" and listing potential mistakes for each section. There are also no direct actionables that go along with each type of mistake. The guide doesn’t tell you which page to turn to if you have a certain problem. It would be great to know where to find advice that corresponds to the errors you made in each section. The tips for the Reading section also don’t elaborate on different ways to approach passages, which can be a huge problem for people on that section and should be addressed more comprehensively. It would be a shame to burrow down into your mistakes only to reach a dead end. Should You Get This Guide? You should get this book if you’re new to the ACT. It's a thorough summary of everything you need to know about the most up-to-date version of the test, even if has its imperfections. If you need additional practice materials, you may also choose to buy the 3rd Edition as a supplement (though don't use the old Writing prompts to practice your essays because they’ve changed significantly). Keep in mind that many of the questions from the fourth and fifth practice tests in the 3rd Edition were transferred over to the third practice test in the new edition. The first three tests will be the most useful for practice in that case. You also could decide to get the Official ACT Prep Guide book if you want to practice your essay-writing skills using new prompts that align with the current version of the ACT. There haven't been many official ACT essay prompts publicly released, and if you're struggling with the essay, four extra prompts to practice with could prove extremely valuable. If you're confident about self-guided studying and are just looking for more practice questions, it might be worth getting the new ACT prep book. The addition of the fourth practice test in this addition is valuable, since there aren't that many full, publicly released official ACT practice tests out there. However, there still isn't that much material, and almost all of it is recycled from previous tests. An alternative would be to get the 3rd Edition, which has more original practice materials, and supplement it with free online resources (particularly for ACT Writing). The third practice test in this guide is the rebellious twin of the last two practice tests in the 3rd Edition. It may have changed its hairstyle, but the same DNA is still there. Side note: If anyone had natural eyelashes that were this long, it would be a truly terrifying sight to behold. How to Get the Most Out of The Official ACT Prep Guide The best way to ensure that you're getting the most out of the guide is to go through it in chronological order. First, read the basic tips in chapter two so you can get a handle on the basics of how the test works. Then, take the first practice test and go through your mistakes. Go on to use the content sections of the book and any other resources on hand to study the areas that need the most work. When you feel that you've addressed your mistakes and are confident that your results will reflect your newfound expertise, take a second practice test to see if you've made significant improvements. Note that the most recent version of The ACT Black Book, a resource that we recommend alongside the Official ACT Prep Guide for the best strategic test-taking advice, is tailored to the practice questions in an older version of the guide. The main upshot of this is that there are no answer explanations in the Black Book for questions in the fourth practice test of The Official ACT Prep Guide (since previous additions did not have this test). The tips can still be helpful, but this is something to keep in mind so you aren't confused when you can't match questions to explanations using the newest Black Book and Official ACT Prep Guide editions. What's Next? Not sure what score you should be aiming for on the ACT? Learn how to calculate a target score that makes sense based on your college goals. Did your ACT test date sneak up on you? Check out our 10-day prep plan for advice on how to cram for the ACT and potentially raise your score by four composite points! If you still have quite a bit of time before the test, read this guide on how long you should study for the ACT so you can come up with a solid study schedule. Want to improve your ACT score by 4 points? Check out our best-in-class online ACT prep program. We guarantee your money back if you don't improve your ACT score by 4 points or more. Our program is entirely online, and it customizes your prep program to your strengths and weaknesses. We also have expert instructors who can grade every one of your practice ACT essays, giving feedback on how to improve your score. Check out our 5-day free trial:

The Youth in Saudi Arabia and USA Review Sample

The Youth in Saudi Arabia and USA Review Sample Differences Between Saudi Arabian and USA Girls and Boys Review Essay Sample Differences Between Saudi Arabian and USA Girls and Boys Review Essay Sample There are historical factors that created misunderstanding between Saudi Arabia and the United States. Different traditions, cultures, ways of life and so on created a curtain between people from both countries. Approaches to education are different in both countries. There are differences between Saudi Arabian and U.S girls and boys based on love, marriage, education, entertainment and style of clothes. Love is treated in different ways in Saudi Arabia and the U.S. In Saudi Arabia love relations are protected by religion and traditions. A young man is raised to protect the women, men respect their chastity. Arabian boy is brought up to cherish and adore the woman. If the Arabian girl or woman tries to touch or hug a man, she will be ostracized (Yackley-Franken 143). A Saudi man is inclined to think about woman outside of marriage, offer her intimate relations, he can take it. However, he will not touch the woman he is inclined to marry. When the man has serious intentions and thinks about marriage, he wants to defend and guard the woman he loves. He does not care weather she is Saudi or not. He will protect her from other men; he will not let them think less of her. Most Saudi men want to create a family with Saudi woman because they share the same religion and culture. Saudi men are not against Western women, they want to have relations with them and to get to know them. People i n Saudi Arabia continue to perceive relations between man and woman as sinful and shameful, unless they are married. This year was a boom of sales of Valentine’s presents and gifts to men and women in Saudi Arabia. It seems that love conquers all people even in this conservative country. Young men and women secretly give presents to each other. Young lovers have chosen difficult path, because Saudi Arabia is a highly conservative country. Love in Saudi Arabia is shameful and associated with sin. Saudi people reject even pure love. This attitude to love creates a wall between both sexes. When the young woman goes somewhere, someone should accompany her, to prevent contacts with men. In the U.S young people are not afraid to show their affection, passion and love. It is not forbidden to have sexual relationship before marriage; society is not biased against it. Before marriage men and women usually have some experience in love relations. Men and women may have free relations without being intended to marry each other. American young people consider love as joy, satisfaction, ability to know the opposite sex, find peace, second half, or a soul mate. People in America think that one cannot find his/her second half without socializing with different people of opposite sex, hanging out together, and dating. Some people may live with each other for some time before marriage. People should know each other in everyday life, to know if they can share their life with this particular person (Seabright 78). In the U.S people think of marriage as a union of souls. People are inclined to be honest with their partners. Approach to marriage is different in Saudi Arabia and the U.S. People in Saudi Arabia are often afraid to reveal their true feelings to each other. Men reject their potential partner, who lost virginity, because society perceives virginity as highly important. Parents want their daughter to get married when she is twelve or thirteen years old. Parents are afraid that their daughters will fall in love and besmear their dignity and reputation (Yackley-Franken 245). This is the reason why parents push their daughters to get married at a very young age. International Center for Research stated that Saudi Arabia is the twelfth out of twenty countries with early wedlock. The thing is that a twelve-year-old girl may be pushed to marry an old man. Society does not care that the young girl is not ready to get married and carry a baby. Many young girls die while giving birth to a child. This tragedy happens because of young marriages that are common in Saudi Arabia. The age of marriage in the United States differs in every state. The average age of the first marriage for men in the U.S is twenty nine, for women twenty seven. Men and women chose their partners by themselves without parent’s interruption (Seabright 230). They build their careers first and achieve some social position. People decide to get marry when they are ready to be responsible for their family, one another and their children. Education is special phenomenon for girls and boys in Saudi Arabia and the U.S. In Saudi Arabia poor parents first try to give education to their sons, because girls are not intended to work. It is a burden to economy, because one part of population is not working. Parents’ belief that marriage protects girls more than education is wrong, because such a belief causes high illiteracy among Saudi women (Yackley-Franken 145). Government tried to set the minimum age for women to be allowed to get marry, but this plan failed, because Islam is against it. Girls are forbidden to talk with male strangers, except for shop assistants. Also, they are allowed to ask a man for direction. In Saudi Arabia, there are segregate schools for girls and segregate rooms in public places. There are mixed universities, but public education establishments are separated. Public schools have separate rooms and facilities for both sexes starting from primary school. Boys and girls should not meet each o ther, socialize at school; they should be concentrated on getting knowledge. In kindergartens children of both sexes are together. Only women are allowed to enter female school, so only mother may pick up her daughter. The same thing with male schools, only men can come there. Men and women have equal rights for education in the U.S. There are separated schools for boys and girls, but public schools are mostly mixed. Boys and girls study together; it helps them know each other better, to understand each other’s psychology and behavior. Illiteracy is not a big problem in the U.S, because secondary education is compulsory for both sexes (Seabright 87). Men and women are eager to be successful in their lives, get higher education, and be competitive in the job market. Women do not treat family as their main career as Saudi women do. They want to fulfill all their potential. That is why the U.S is developing at an ever increasing pace. Both men and women work, providing their country with products and services. Entertainment in Saudi Arabia differs from entertainment in the U.S. In Saudi Arabia there are women-only gyms, shopping centers and travel agencies. It is very popular among men and women to hang out at home. They organize parties, listen to music and enjoy friendly company, boys and girls separately. Mall is a very popular place among teens to go  «numbering ». It means that boys and girls exchange phone numbers and call each other to flirt. Nowadays Saudi girls and boys may watch local TV, but young people do not like conservative programs, a lot of families own satellites, so young people may watch films and programs from all over the world. Saudi Arabia is a beach country, young men and women spend time there. Women are allowed to spend time at the beach only in their long abayas. There should be no boys nearby. Camel and horse races are the most popular sports in Saudi Arabia among girls and boys. Young people in America spend their free time with interest. They like clubbing. Such sports as football, volleyball, and swimming are among their interests. Most people try to lead a healthy lifestyle that is why jogging in the morning is popular activity among people of different ages. Boys and girls like to have a rest at the beaches, lying under the sun, playing beach volleyball, swimming, and surfing. Women wear open swimsuits. Men and women can rest there together. Girls in the U.S are eager to look like movie stars that is why they attend beauty centers and gyms. Gyms are usually common for girls and boys. Yoga and Pilates are very popular trends among young people in the U.S. They struggle to live a long life, to become centenarian (Seabright 211). It is possible only for those, who live a healthy life. In the U.S there are people who do not care about their health. For such people TV is the best entertainment. Everyone in the U.S owns a satellite. Watching TV shows is very p opular, these shows give people the feeling that they participate in social life seating in front of their TV sets. People in Saudi Arabia prefer traditional garment to Western clothing. Traditional Arabic loose clothes are very suitable for hot climate and reflect Islamic ideal of simplicity. Men wear long shirt of cotton. It is called thawb. On the head they wear ghutra. They also wear bisht, it is outer manteau. In can be used as a blanket. Women wear abaya, it resembles dress. They have everyday black abaya, also they can wear colorful abaya on holidays. On their heads they wear a shaula. It is a scarf, usually decorated with coins and jewelry. Some women wear veils. It used to protect their faces from wind and sand in the past, because Saudi Arabia is a desert country. In the U.S people are less traditional, so they wear different clothes. Among women it is very popular to wear casual dresses, jeans and T-shirts. At work they wear costumes, elegant blouses and skirts. Men wear casual in their daily life: jeans, T-shirts. At work they wear smart suits. There are no traditional clothes in the U.S, people wear modern style. There are more differences than similarities between girls and boys in Saudi Arabia and the U.S. The main differences are in attitude to love, education, clothing and marriage. These countries are far away from each other geographically and culturally. In the Saudi Arabia Islam is the main religion which decides the way of life and relations in the country. The most vivid feature of Muslim country is strong family relations, man and woman may have only relative relations. In the U.S relations between man and women are more relaxed. Men and women have a lot of activities to do in their free time in Saudi Arabia and the U.S.

Leadership and Motivation Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Leadership and Motivation - Assignment Example ese steps include identifying the important priorities, considering the ability and commitment of the available staff and application of the best situational leadership (Learn to be a leader, n.d.). For instance, a manager can determine the staffs level of maturity and competence and after that, adjust their leadership to support the least mature staff while offering the mature staff more room to operate with minimum support. A manager has to understand perfectly the key role of the human resources department (HR). A HR department ensures that an organization reaps benefits from its investment in its staff. Hence, performance can be hampered when an experienced executive assistant discovers that he/she earns the same amount of money as a newly hired janitor. To effectively correct the discrepancies in the payment of the employees, a newly appointed manager can initiate an employee performance appraisal (PA). The PA will enable the organization to make informed choices, such as the contribution of the executive assistant and the janitor to the organization. Once their contribution is analyzed and identified, the management can come up with an effective remuneration plan that matches the input and contribution of the individual employee (Daft, 2013). Specifically, the new manager can also employ rewarding and resourcing as specific HR strategies to address the situation. Through a reward policy, the organization would ensure that its best employees are rewarded for the great job that they are doing. This means that, even if the basic salary for the executive assistant and the janitor are equal, the executive assistant will receive a reward on top of their salary based on the successful application of their work. The company’s decision to offer semiannual bonuses is a good motivation strategy for its employees (Daft, 2013). If employed correctly, such a motivational tool can help in the retaining and motivation of the staff during the tough economic times. The