How to read an ACT reading passage under time pressure

The ACT reading section is a reading test, but for a lot of students it plays like a timing test. They understand the passages fine. They just run out of minutes. The fix usually isn't reading faster. It's reading with a plan, and knowing exactly what the section asks of you before you sit down.

What numbers should students know about ACT reading first?

According to ACT, the reading section on the current version of the test has 36 questions in 40 minutes. Only 27 of those questions count toward your score. The rest are field-test questions mixed in with the real ones, and there's no way to tell which is which, so treat every question as if it counts.

ACT's design documents describe single passages of roughly 650 or 750 words, paired sets made of two shorter passages, and passages that come with a graph or table. The passages are drawn from literary narrative (fiction and memoir), the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. And there's no penalty for guessing. Your score is based only on the questions you get right, so a blank answer is a point you gave away.

ACT also publishes what the questions measure. Roughly half (44 to 52 percent) are Key Ideas and Details: main ideas, supporting details, cause and effect, and inferences. About a quarter to a third (26 to 33 percent) are Craft and Structure: word meaning, the author's purpose, and how the passage is organized. The rest (19 to 26 percent) are Integration of Knowledge and Ideas: evaluating arguments, connecting paired passages, and using graphs. If your students only practice finding details, they're practicing about half the test.

How should students do the pacing math before test day?

Take 40 minutes and divide by the number of passage units on the form. On a form with four units, that's ten minutes each. Students should know their checkpoint times cold, the way a runner knows split times. If a unit started at the 20-minute mark and it's now the 31-minute mark, it's time to make your best guesses and move on.

The easiest timing mistake to make is getting stuck. One hard question can eat three minutes that would have covered three easier ones later. ACT's own advice says the same thing: answer the easy questions first, skip the hard ones, and come back if there's time.

Why should students read for the map, not every detail?

Students often try to absorb every fact on the first pass. That's slow, and it isn't necessary, because the details will still be there when a question sends you back for them. On the first read, the job is to build a map: what each paragraph is doing and where the passage is headed.

A simple habit helps. After each paragraph, jot three or four words about its job. "Intro, the problem." "Example, 1930s farm." "Author's opinion, disagrees." On a paper test, write it in the margin. On a computer-based test, use whatever note-taking the test allows, or just say it in your head. That small pause keeps you reading actively instead of letting your eyes slide over lines you won't remember.

Pay extra attention to the first paragraph, the last paragraph, and any sentence where the author's attitude shows. Words like however, surprisingly, unfortunately, and yet are where passages turn, and the questions follow the turns.

Why answer from the passage, not from what you already know?

This is where strong students can lose points. They know something about the topic and pick the answer that matches what they know instead of what the passage says. Every answer on this section has to be supported by the text. If you can't point to the lines that back it up, it's not the answer.

Wrong answers tend to fall into a few families. Teach students to name them:

• True but off target. The statement is accurate, maybe even stated in the passage, but it doesn't answer the question asked.
• Too strong. The passage says "some" or "often," and the answer says "all" or "always."
• Right words, wrong place. The answer borrows phrases from the passage but attaches them to the wrong person, time, or idea.
• Half right. The first half matches the passage and the second half doesn't. One wrong part makes the whole choice wrong.

When a question points to specific lines, go back and read a few lines before and after. The meaning of a sentence usually depends on what's around it.

How should students handle paired passages and graphs?

For a paired set, it helps to split the work. Read the first passage and answer the questions about it alone. Then read the second passage and answer its questions. Save the questions about both passages for last, once you have both in your head. The comparison questions get easier when you're not trying to hold two passages at once from the start.

For a passage with a graph or table, read the title, the labels, and the units before you look at the numbers. Many graph questions are really asking whether you can connect one claim in the text to one feature of the graph.

How can students practice ACT reading under time pressure?

Strategy only sticks with repetition under real conditions. A routine that works:

1. One timed passage unit, with the checkpoint time written at the top.
2. Score it right away, in class, from the key.
3. For every miss, the student names the trap family it fell into.
4. Track misses by question type over several weeks. Patterns show up fast. Some students miss mostly inference questions. Others miss mostly vocabulary in context. Each needs different practice.

I'll be honest about the limits here. No strategy replaces reading a lot and knowing a lot about the world. But strategy keeps a strong reader from losing points to the clock, and that's worth teaching.

The free trackers on the Free Tools page are set up for exactly this kind of question-type tracking.

Related

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• Great Depression and New Deal passages with ACT-style questions
• Practice testing and feedback
• High-level reading in history class

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