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A little about me and the purpose of this blog. I am a licensed high school teacher (Language Arts 6 - 12) in the state of Tennessee going on 13 years now.  I have 7 children and drive a school bus.  Love me or hate me, none of my students will tell you that I am a typical school teacher.  I, like many, believe that education is woefully equipped to keep pace with technology.  As a technology enthusiast and educator publishing on a crypto website, I am trying to do my small part to bridge this gap for as many people as I can.  Recently, the development of AI has created an accelerated urgency for education to take its head out of the sand and teach relevant skills in the classroom.  The resources, lessons, and philosophy I publish here, I use in my own classroom, and anyone (especially homeschoolers) can use this blog as a resource to supplement their own instruction.  If you are new to my blog, I suggest starting at the beginning as I will be structuring my lessons here the same way I would for my classroom.  Tips are appreciated.  Questions and feedback in the comments are welcome. So if you are a teacher, student, or homeschooler that is motivated to learn about, teach, or utilize all available technology in education (or know someone who is), I encourage you to give me a follow:  https://x.com/TheRealMrE09

And to view  my entire blog:  //https://www.publish0x.com/education-and-ai-resources-and-instruction

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English Lesson 8:  NOT using AI to Completely ignore Sequencing Questions

Yea, this is gonna be different. 

So let me be perfectly clear about the intention of my instruction on the ACT.  The ACT is designed so that if you are a super genius you have the ability to demonstrate that.  That is the reason that the time limits are what they are.  I am not here to instruct super geniuses; super geniuses don’t need me.  I am here to instruct everyday, normal students who simply need a respectable score on the ACT for college admission purposes.

The average amount of time that a student has on Language Arts questions is 35 seconds per question.  To be really specific:

Total time in seconds: The test gives 45 minutes. Since there are 60 seconds in a minute, multiply 45 by 60:

• 45 × 60 = 2,700 seconds.

Number of questions: There are 75 questions.

Seconds per question: Divide the total seconds by the number of questions:

• 2,700 ÷ 75 = 36 seconds.

The point is this:  sequencing questions take far too long to answer for the vast majority of students.  The questions involve you deciding what order a sentence or sentences should be in for any given paragraph.  Sometimes a brand new sentence is introduced, and the question asks where in the paragraph should the sentence be placed.  The mental gymnastics involved in doing this correctly are not beyond most students, but the time it takes for those gymnastics to occur is.  Just imagine.  You are given 5 sentences, and then you are asked what would be the best order to put them in.  You now have to mentally consider an insane number of variations.  Let me be more specific:

The average teenager reads at a rate of 200 - 250 words per minute.  By the time the initial paragraph is read, and then mentally having to reread the three different proposed sequences and consider them all (skipping all of the fancy calculations), it will take a normal student 1.5 to 2 minutes to answer each one of these questions!

Yea, no!  You don’t have time for that.

Lets even consider that you are given the slightly easier of the sequencing questions where you are asked to place a new sentence into a 5 sentence paragraph.

The student still has to mentally consider an entire paragraph in 4 different orders; again, skipping the fancy calculations, this still brings the time for each of these questions to somewhere around 1.1 - 1.4 minutes.  That is still nearly 3 times the average time per question on the exam.

There is also a third type of question that involves choosing the placement of a phrase within a sentence.  I call these Description Sequencing or Positioning Questions.  This type of question is asking for a describing phrase to be placed in the proper position in the sentence to make it the most clear on exactly what the phrase is describing (Most often, it should be the closest position possible to the thing that it is describing.  This type of question isn’t as bad as the two described above, but it still falls into the category of “long questions” that should have last priority and only be answered at the end of the test if there is any time left.  So, on these, I’m not saying don’t try and answer them; I am just saying answer them last!

So, the sequencing questions are asked in a few different formats.  Let’s look at them so that you can immediately recognize them for what they are, ignore them, pick A or F, and move along.

Pure Sequencing Questions:

1. Which sequence of sentences makes this paragraph most logical? 

1. NO CHANGE 
2. 2, 1, 3 
3. 3, 1, 2 
4. 1, 3, 2

      2. The writer is considering adding the following sentence to the essay: 

“The black stripes were woven flat, sharply setting off the white stripes, which were woven to form raised columns of perfectly even points that seemed to cascade down the piece.” If the writer were to add this sentence, it would most logically be placed at: 

1. Point A in Paragraph 1. 
2. Point B in Paragraph 1. 
3. Point C in Paragraph 2. 
4. Point D in Paragraph 2.

Here is an example of the one you may wish to consider answering if time allows at the end of the test.  The rule is to place the descriptive words or phrase as close to the word that it is intended to describe as possible.

Description Sequencing/Positioning Question

Sally’s porcupine quill lids are often decorated with art inlaid on birch bark; as far as lids go, I wouldn’t say that’s basic.

Which placement of the underlined portion makes clear that the art that decorates the lid, not the lid itself, is made of porcupine quill? 

1. Where it is now 
2. After the word “are” 
3. After the word “often” 
4. After the word “with”

The answer here would be C.  That places the describing words/phrase directly beside the word that it is describing.  This makes it more clear that the art is made of porcupine quill and not the entire lid itself.

One more time, I would like to emphasize a very important concept considering all types of "long" questions.  I teach all of the Juniors in my high school, and also two sections of ACT Prep.  The vast majority of all of my students consistently report to me after their first take of the ACT that they did in fact NOT have time to go back and answer the "long questions."  Many of them improve on their second take as a senior, but by and large almost all first time test takers barely finish the short questions in the given time.