Follow this method for each passage in the Reading section. Step 1 addresses what to do on your first read-through of the passage. Steps 2 and 3 provide a plan of attack you take for each individual question. Here’s the Kaplan Method:
Let’s consider each step in detail. Why should you take notes as you read the passage? You may think that taking notes will take too much time. However, the notes you take on an ACT Reading passage will be different from note-taking you do in school. Your ACT passage notes should be brief. They should summarize main ideas only, not supporting details. The purpose of your notes is to provide a passage map. Think of your notes as signposts guiding you to where in the passage you’ll find the answer to a particular question.
One important thing to know about the Reading section is that the questions don’t appear in any particular order. For example, the first question for a passage won’t necessarily ask about something from the first part of the passage; it may ask about something from the end. Therefore, because the ordering of ACT Reading questions doesn’t give you any clues about where in the passage you’ll find the answer, you need to create your own passage map to help you find the information you need quickly. Your notes will provide this guidance.
The best way to work through each ACT Reading passage is to read actively. Reading actively simply means asking yourself questions as you read and jotting down a brief note after you read each paragraph. Read a paragraph quickly; then pause to identify briefly the purpose of the paragraph. Ask yourself: Why did the author write this paragraph? How does it contribute to her purpose in the passage as a whole? Working with these questions will help you generate brief, appropriate notes to help you remember what information is located where in the passage. The specific details aren’t important for your notes. A short description, often only a word or two that labels the information in the paragraph, rather than a long note that restates the information, is what you want here.
We suggest that you actually jot your notes for each paragraph in its margin. You may be wondering, wouldn’t it be quicker simply to underline a few words in the passage? Underlining is possibly a little quicker, but there’s a danger involved. If you read through a paragraph thinking you’ll underline what’s important, you may find yourself underlining too many details. On the other hand, when you read each paragraph with the goal of determining the author’s purpose for that paragraph, there’s a certain discipline involved. The mental processing required to decide on a note to jot down in the margin is more likely to help you develop a good overall understanding of the passage. Writing a quick note in your own words in the margin is a more active approach than simply underlining words in the passage.
Though you must guard against the dangers of too much underlining, there is a limited use for underlining in Step 1. While you shouldn’t use underlining to take the place of your own hand-written notes in the margin, it can be helpful to underline an occasional word or phrase on your first read-through. Good words to underline are those that indicate an opinion, such as fortunately and regrettably. Other words to underline are phrases that direct the logical flow of the passage. These include words that show contrast, such as however and on the other hand, and words that show cause and effect, such as as a result of and because. You can also underline names and dates if you feel that’s helpful. It may not be necessary, however, because it’s usually easy to skim for names and dates if you need to find them to answer a question.
Perhaps the biggest trap that unprepared students fall into with underlining is trying to anticipate on a first reading what specific questions may be for this passage. This is a waste of your time. Your goal in reading through the passage is to get a big-picture understanding. Remember the key questions to guide your active reading: What is the author’s purpose here, and how is this information organized? Rely primarily on your passage map notes, and use underlining sparingly. If you practice in this way on all the Reading passages in this workbook, then by Test Day, active reading will have become a habit.
Step 1 of the Kaplan Method for ACT Reading guides you as you read the passage. Once you finish reading, apply Steps 2 and 3 of the method for each question. Step 2 is to examine the question stem, looking for clues. The question stem is the part of an ACT problem that appears before the answer choices. The stem of an ACT Reading question can contain two kinds of clues. First, the test maker uses certain phrases repeatedly in question stems. You’ll frequently see phrases such as As stated in the passage and The author suggests. These phrases, along with others that you’ll learn about in the Reading introduction, help you recognize exactly what a question is asking you to do. This is important because to answer a question correctly, you need to know what it’s asking.
Another kind of clue that the question may provide is an indication of where to look back to in the passage to locate the answer. Occasionally, an ACT Reading question stem provides a line reference. If present, a line reference can be a great clue about where to research the passage for the answer. What if the question stem doesn’t give you a line reference? In that case, the passage map you created in Step 1 is invaluable. If a question stem includes the phrase Marc Brown’s early education, and you’ve made a note in the margin saying, Brown’s childhood, your note guides you to the right spot in the passage to find information about Brown’s early education. Thus, important words in the question stem give clues that work with your passage map notes to help you find where in the passage you need to read to find the correct answer.
While Step 2 helps you understand what a question is asking and where you need to read to answer it, Step 3 helps you avoid the temptation of wrong answers that the test maker includes among the choices. In Step 3, you predict (that is, state in your own words) what you think the best answer to the question will be. It’s important to make your prediction before you read any of the multiple-choice answers. This helps because when you go through the process of predicting in your own words, you do so by focusing your attention on the words in the passage. The correct answer is always based on the passage itself. Predicting will help you avoid thinking too much and falling for a wrong answer that introduces material that isn’t in the passage. Predicting also helps you avoid an answer choice that includes a detail from the passage that doesn’t answer this particular question.
For nine out of ten questions, an effective prediction will help you easily spot the right answer quickly when you read through the four answer choices. Think of it this way: The process of predicting does take some time, but if you predict, you’re certain to spend less time reading and thinking about each answer choice. In the long run, predicting is the best way to work efficiently through the ACT Reading questions. Remember, predict before you peek.
As you do the practice problems in this workbook, you might want to note your prediction before you even read through the answer choices. You shouldn’t write out your prediction on test day, because doing so uses valuable time. However, jotting down your prediction in practice will help you develop the skill of predicting. Another strategy, which you can use on Test Day, is to get into the habit of covering the answer choices with your hand until you’ve verbalized your prediction.
Again, the most important things are to know the test and to be aware of the clock as you work through a section. The ACT Reading section always includes four passages. All four are roughly the same length, and each has exactly ten questions. With four passages to get through in 35 minutes, you should spend less than nine minutes per passage.
Aim to spend no more than three minutes on your first read-through of the passage, including the time you spend jotting down your notes. This breakdown allows you about six minutes to spend attacking the questions. You’ll have half a minute per question. If you practice all three steps of the Kaplan Method, you’ll gain a lot in efficiency. Some questions won’t take you even half a minute to answer. The time you save is time that you can spend on a more difficult question that may take you a little longer to answer. When you consider timing issues for any multiple-choice section of the ACT, it’s crucial to make sure that you answer the easier questions first so you can spend more time on the harder questions. Skip around within the passage but not within the whole Reading test—chances are you won’t remember one passage once you move on to the next.
Here’s another point to consider in managing your time for the Reading test: You don’t necessarily have to work through the Reading passages in the order they appear in your test booklet. Another order could work better for you. For example, you can choose to focus on each subsection and tackle the Sciences passages or the Arts/Literature passages first. As you practice in this workbook, you may find that you are more experienced and confident with some passage types than others. If that is true, work on those passages and questions first.
Some people don’t find any particular passage type in general to be more challenging than any other, but many people find one particular passage on a given ACT to be harder. It can be useful to take a very quick glance at each of the four passages in the Reading section and determine if one seems as if it will be more difficult. If so, it makes sense to leave that passage for last. This can help prevent you from getting bogged down and spending too much time on a particularly tough passage early on. Manage your time wisely, and make sure you answer the questions that are likely to be easiest for you first.