A crucial part of scoring points on the ACT is understanding what the particular question is asking. You’ll read more about typical wrong answer traps later on, but for right now, you should know that the test maker includes details from the passage among the wrong answer choices. You won’t necessarily find the correct answer to a question simply by selecting an answer that is familiar from the passage. To find the right answer, you have to make sure it answers the question posed by the question stem. It’s for this reason that we’ve broken down ACT Reading questions into six different types: Detail questions, Inference questions, Big Picture questions, and Vocabulary-in-Context questions. As you read about these common question types, remember, you don’t score points for correctly identifying a question type. The purpose of recognizing different question types is to help you understand what each question is asking because that’s the first step in determining the best answer.
A Detail question asks about a specific detail in the passage. These questions are very straightforward. You don’t have to draw a conclusion or make an interpretation; you simply have to locate the particular detail in the passage and restate it. Sometimes the correct answer choice for a Detail question uses virtually the same wording that’s used in the passage. At other times, the correct answer is a paraphrase of the wording from the passage.
Certain phrases in the question stem serve as clues that a particular question is asking about a detail directly from the passage. These phrasings include:
What all these phrasings have in common is that they refer you back to the passage, and they ask about something that is stated directly rather than something that is implied.
Although Detail questions are easy to answer when you know where in the passage to look, it can be challenging to locate the part of the passage that contains the answer. Therefore, it’s very important to take good notes for your passage map on your first read-through of the passage. Remember that passage map notes should not include specific details but instead should note the location of details. For example, if a paragraph discusses the career of an artist, don’t take notes about specific paintings and critical reactions. Instead, write a short note that describes the general purpose of the paragraph, such as early career—critics admired.
For such a paragraph, some people like to underline the names of specific paintings or critics on the first reading. You might find as you practice that this kind of underlining helps you. However, we recommend that you underline sparingly. Each ACT reading passage includes many details, but the test presents only ten questions for each passage. Many of the details in a given passage will not be relevant to any of the ten questions. The purpose of your first read-through is to focus on the big picture. Do not try to psyche out the test maker by trying to guess which details will show up in the question and underlining them. Though this advice may seem counterintuitive at first, the best way to score points on Detail questions is by not getting too wrapped up in particular details on your first read-through of the passage.
Keep Detail questions in perspective. Of all the question types, they appear most frequently on the ACT Reading test: roughly one-third of the questions are Detail questions. If you’re attacking the questions and you have difficulty locating a particular detail, don’t sweat it. Just circle the question number in your test booklet and make an initial guess. If you have time before the section ends, you can come back to the circled question. Remember that you don’t have to answer every single question correctly to get a good score. This is especially important to keep in mind for Detail questions. Do your best, but don’t obsess. No single question is worth more of your time than any other is.
Inference questions ask about something that is implied, or suggested, in a small part of the passage. You may be tempted to think that such questions are a matter of opinion, that anything could be implied, but this is not the case. Although it’s true that Inference questions, unlike Detail questions, ask you to draw a conclusion that’s not directly stated in the passage, the correct answer to an Inference question will not be a huge logical step away from what is stated in the passage. In other words, to answer an Inference question correctly, do not go too far beyond what’s in the passage. You do have to make an inference, but you can’t get carried away. The best answer to an Inference question, like the best answer to all ACT Reading questions, is strongly grounded in the words of the passage.
You can learn to recognize Inference questions by spotting key phrases in the question stem. Common wordings used in Inference questions include:
Notice from these phrasings that an Inference question refers you to a specific line, phrase, or location in the passage. To answer an Inference question, you must read that part of the passage and come up with a prediction based on what is stated there. Thus, Inference questions refer to a small, localized part of the passage.
Big Picture questions look a lot like Inference questions. The two are similar in that they both require you to draw a logical conclusion based on what you read in the passage. The difference between them lies in how much of the passage you need to consider for each. We’ve defined Inference questions as those that refer to a small, particular part of the passage, such as a phrase or sentence. An Inference question stem directs you exactly to the part of the passage it’s asking about. A Big Picture question, on the other hand, asks you about a larger part of the passage, which may or may not be clearly identified by the question stem. It may address a whole paragraph or the passage as a whole. To answer a broadly worded Big Picture question, you sometimes need to draw on material from multiple parts of the passage, say the beginning, middle, and end. In this case, keep the overall purpose of the passage in mind. Whenever a question stem refers to the passage as a whole, you must choose an answer that fits with the passage as a whole, not with just one part of the passage, such as a single sentence or paragraph.
The same key words that appear in the question stem for an Inference question are also used for Big Picture questions. For both question types, you’ll see words such as probably, most likely, implies, inferred, and suggests. When you spot these words in a question stem, don’t worry about explicitly determining whether you’re dealing with an Inference or a Big Picture question. Remember, identifying question types doesn’t score points on the ACT; answering questions correctly does! We distinguish between Inference and Big Picture questions only to remind you that the first refers to a smaller, narrower part of the passage, while the second refers to a larger part of the passage or to the passage as a whole. The main point for you is that you always need to read the question stem carefully. (Remember Step 2 of the Kaplan Method: Read the question stem looking for clues.) With a careful reading of the question stem, you’ll know what the question is asking you to do (for both Big Picture and Inference questions, that’s drawing a conclusion) and how much of the passage you should consider when you make your prediction.
A Vocabulary-in-Context question asks about the meaning of a word or phrase as it’s used in the passage. The word or phrase is always printed in italics, and a line number reference is always provided. The line reference is a terrific help; the question stem tells you exactly where in the passage you need to look to answer the question. The following steps will help you answer Vocabulary-in-Context questions:
Here are some other points to help you with Vocabulary-in-Context questions:
You should learn to love Vocabulary-in-Context questions. They don’t appear frequently on the ACT (you’ll probably see between one and three on any given test day), but they’re easy to spot and fairly easy to answer quickly once you know how. Because of this, always look for Vocabulary-in-Context questions and try to answer them. If you have to guess on any question, guess on a harder question that would take you more time to answer. Make use of any Vocabulary-in-Context questions you find in order to rack up a few easy points quickly.