ACT English — verb tense, mood and voice

Verb errors on the ACT English section are rarely about a verb nobody knows. They are about a verb that is correct on its own and wrong in its sentence: a present tense dropped into a story told in the past, a "will" that should be a "would" because the promise was made decades ago, a "would" slipped into an if-clause where it never belongs. The test asks you to read the whole sentence, and often the one before it, to see which time frame the writer has set.

This material trains that habit with twelve original sentences, one question each. Four work on tense consistency: a series of past actions that must stay in the past, a plot summary that must stay in the present, a finished period between two dates, and "since" with the present perfect, where the sentence is already correct and NO CHANGE is the answer. Two work on the perfect tenses, which exist to show that one action finished before another: the past perfect before a past moment and the future perfect before a future one. One sets "will" against "would" after a past reporting verb. Three concern mood: an imagined present condition, an imagined past condition, and the subjunctive after "required that." One asks for the active voice to match the first half of a sentence, and one clears up "would of."

Every explanation names the rule, points to the words in the sentence that decide it, and says why each wrong choice fails, by what it says rather than where it sits. On the real test the sentences sit inside longer passages with a portion underlined; here each question prints its own sentence with the portion in square brackets, and NO CHANGE is one of the four choices, as it is on the test.

The flashcards collect the rules behind the questions in the form you need at speed: the past perfect in one line, the two conditional patterns, the verbs that trigger the subjunctive, when the passive is the weaker choice.

The material offers a multiple-choice quiz and a deck of flashcards. Verb tense and mood fall under Conventions of Standard English, one of the three reporting categories of the English section. Zestly is an independent study tool; this practice material is not produced, affiliated with or endorsed by ACT, Inc., which owns the ACT.

• Keep verb tenses consistent across a sentence and a paragraph unless the timeline changes
• Use the past perfect and future perfect for actions completed before another past or future moment
• Choose would rather than will for a later event reported from the past
• Build unreal present and past conditional sentences correctly
• Use the subjunctive after verbs such as require, demand and insist
• Prefer the active voice when it keeps the subject consistent and the sentence concise

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the reporting categories in ACT's public description of the English section of the enhanced ACT (Conventions of Standard English). Every sentence, essay, option and explanation is original; nothing is reproduced from any ACT publication or released test.