ACT English Skill Review: Idioms
An idiom is a word or expression that cannot be taken literally.
For example:
He pulled the wool over my eyes.
Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately!), there are no rules to learn about idioms. They either sound right, or they don’t.
The most common idiom errors you’ll come across are preposition errors. For example, it would be incorrect to say, “He pulled the wool
across my eyes.” For this reason, anytime you have a preposition in an underlined portion on the ACT English test, make sure it is idiomatically correct.
Example
Identify the error in the sentence below:
- If you keep practicing the oboe, you’ll eventually get the hang for it.
- NO CHANGE
- get a hang for it
- get a hang of it
- get the hang of it
Answer and Explanation
- The correct answer is D. The correct way to write the idiom is "get the hang of it."