I’ve noticed a pattern among the students who seek me out to seriously improve their ACT scores. No matter what their level of interest in or experience with “reading” as an activity is, they often complain about the gap between what they know their “reading comprehension” skills to be in real life, and the ACT’s way of evaluating that reading comprehension, i.e. the Reading section of the ACT.
And I don’t blame them for kvetching. Because they’re right: the ACT’s Reading section is different from the way you’re used to reading and analyzing text in English class or while you read for fun!
The only thing you need to “learn” for the ACT Reading Section is…strategy!
Unlike the English and Math sections of the ACT, the Reading section is basically a speed test. The questions themselves are not especially difficult, nor are the passages. Your only real challenge is to get through them all in the VERY short amount of time you have, without misstepping. Oh, and no amount of info on Chaucer or other literary greats crammed deep in your brain will save you. This is all probably very different from the English/Literature coursework or even state reading exams you’re used to!
Thus, it is imperative that you approach this section (and the ACT’s Science section) with a watertight strategy that you’re confident with. It’s your ability to use this strategy to navigate each passage swiftly that will make the difference between a BLAH score…and an AWESOME one.
Background on the ACT Reading Section
So, seeing as the ACT Reading is so different from what you’re used to, what is it you can practice to bring home that perfect section score of a 36? Worry not: below lie all the strategies and concepts you’ll need to learn to master this section. But first, you need to understand the section’s meta-structure.
1) Structure of the ACT Reading Section
The ACT Reading section evaluates how accurately and quickly you can answer questions about a range of reading passages. And let me repeat that: QUICKLY! The section consists of 40 multiple-choice questions that regular-time test takers must complete in 35 minutes. The section is broken down into four passages, each with 10 questions. The passages are all intended to be equally challenging, and the difficulty level of the accompanying questions is random. There’s always a Fiction passage (“Literary Narrative”), then 3 non-fiction passages: Social Science, Humanities, and Natural Science, in that order. One will be a Paired Passage, while the rest are single passages. In order to get through all passages in 35 minutes, you have 8 minutes 45 seconds to read and answer each passage. (Multiply those times by 1.5 if you get extended time.)
2) Should You Guess on the ACT Reading Section?
Short answer: yes. If you find yourself struggling to finish all four passages in the 35 minutes that regular time test takers are allotted—and again, many, if not most students struggle to do this!—you’ll need to guess. But what’s the best way to do so? I’ve got you covered with this post on my top approaches to guessing on the ACT.
Types of Questions on the ACT Reading
There are certain genres of question that show up again and again on the ACT’s Reading section. So, no excuses for going in unprepared. You need to learn how to speedily answer these recurring kinds of questions—and even WHEN to answer them!—if you’re going to grab their points.
3) Study for Vocab-In-Context Questions on the ACT
This is a crowd favorite of the ACT Reading section, though I’m sure you’ve also seen this question type in other reading comprehension tests over the years. This blog post shows you my basic-but-effective technique for slaying vocabulary questions on the ACT Reading. (Here’s the kicker: you can leave those vocab flash cards on the shelf!).
4) ACT Reading Section’s “Infer”/“Imply”/“Suggest” Questions
You need to understand what the ACT is asking when it uses the terms “infer” / “imply” / “suggest” in a question. Hint: it’s not as huge of a logical leap as you think it is!
5) What “Purpose”/“Function”/“In Order To” Means on the ACT Reading
It’s key to figure out what the ACT is really asking for when you see these words in the Reading section. This will require you to put on your “author’s hat” to think like the person who wrote the passage herself!
6) The Trick to “EXCEPT” Questions on the ACT
If you’re short on time, this question type might be the one to use your guessing strategy on, as it takes three times as long to answer…for the same one point as the rest of the Reading section questions!
7) Learn to Correctly Answer Big Picture and Specific Detail Questions
Or rather, you need to learn WHEN you’re dealing with “Big Picture” questions and “Specific Detail” questions on the ACT’s Reading section! This article gives you what you need to know about Big Picture questions, but the good news is that ALL of these questions—Big Picture, Specific Detail WITH line numbers, and Specific Detail questions withOUT line numbers—all get taken care of automatically…IF you go in with the right umbrella strategy for reading and answering your ACT Reading passages!
8) Single Passage Strategy for the ACT Reading
Now that you have a sense of how to swiftly and correctly answer a whole bunch of different question types, you’ll need a concrete technique—namely, an order in which you attack a passage and its attached questions. This will allow you to answer questions while they’re fresh in your mind, comprehend what you just read, and minimize rereading paragraphs (and whole passages!). Oh, and to FINISH the section within the time limit!
Knowing the specific dance (if you will) of WHAT to do WHEN in a reading passage is the single most significant score-improver that I’ve seen in my decade-plus of prepping high schoolers the world over for the ACT. After all, if you can’t get THROUGH the section, HOW will you pick up all those easy points? But here’s the thing: depending on how YOU process information when you read, YOUR personalized reading strategy might be VERY different from your bestie’s.
Over the years, working with hundreds of students privately to drastically raise their ACT scores, I’ve experimented with every trick in the book…and I’ve come up with five different ways to read an ACT passage. Some require students to “invest” up front, and others require students to “invest later.” One of them has always worked for each of my students, though we always run our own little “Reading Strategy Experiment” to identify which is a given student’s golden ticket, and to tweak it as needed!
But once it’s second nature, a personalized ACT Reading Strategy is your best bet to get through this section in time…and to get your highest score possible!
9) Technique for the Double Passage on the ACT
So, you’ve mastered your technique for the three single passages. You can guess what comes next: you now need a specific strategy for the Paired Passage that will definitely get thrown at you. Once again, the goal here is to save time, stop rereading and rereading, and answer all your questions correctly. I wrote a blog post about my basic Paired Passage strategy here. Depending on what regular Reading strategy you’ve adopted, you might need to make slight adjustments to that general Paired Passage method.
10) Practice those ACT Reading Strategies
Now that you understand how to recognize and answer the ACT’s basic question types (because you have a foolproof ACT Reading Strategy and ACT Paired Passage Strategy), you have to practice enough that you can carry out each method automatically when you see it on the test. And there’s (of course!) a METHOD for this!
It’s kind of like learning how to dance the ballet Swan Lake. First, you’ll need to get certain moves and jumps under your belt, like a sauté or a sissonne. (This is the equivalent of mastering each question type.) Then, you might learn some brief dance sequences that combine many of these moves in a specific order. (Analogous to learning your ACT Reading Strategy and your Paired Passage Strategy.) At first, you just work on linking up the different moves into the sequence, but soon, you’ll need to practice this in time with the music. Once these sequences are second nature and you’re up to speed, you’ll then need to practice all of Act II. (This is like doing a whole Reading Section, timed.) And then, you’ll advance to practicing the whole ballet in one go (practice tests), then dress rehearsals in full costume (mock tests). And then, of course, there’s the opening night performance (Test Day itself).
It goes without saying that you’re not going to get much out of doing a dress rehearsal before you even know the basic jumps and sequences. That would be about as useless as hammering through ACT practice test after practice test without having conquered the techniques for different question types and passages ;)
11) Stay Calm for the ACT
Finally, even if you know everything I’ve just discussed like the back of your hand, and you’ve practiced in the logical, deliberate way I’ve laid out, none of it will matter if you’re so stressed about the exam that your inner critic pummels you with negativity and self doubt! Test Day jitters can attack even the most confident-seeming student, so arm yourself with tools that’ll help you get your head in the game so you can grab the score you deserve. My two favorite hacks for maximum focus on the ACT Reading Section are Power Poses and a trick I call “Three Points of Contact.”
Oof. Feeling a bit overwhelmed by all of these to-do’s?
Never fear—online learning is here to streamline things even further for you. After YEARS teaching my proprietary ACT Reading tricks and strategies and getting stellar scores (and college acceptances!) for my tutees, I finally recorded all of it in an online video course, so that you can ace the ACT’s Reading section…and bring up your Composite Score!
My Ultimate ACT Reading Guide offers you 28 lessons and over 5.5 hours of video, and it’s as close as you can get to working with me…well, without actually being my private client! You can go at your own pace while relaxing in your PJs at home, and for a lower price than working with me privately.
Alternatively, if you thrive more with human-to-human style learning, read more about one-on-one tutoring with me—and if I have availability—by contacting me here.
