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Facing 40 Questions: The Reading Test

The Reading Test consists of four passages, each with 10 questions, for a total of 40 questions. Each passage is supposed to be similar in difficulty to materials you encounter during your freshman year of college. The test contains one passage on each of the following topics:

Prose fiction: The first passage in the section is a fiction passage from a novel or a short story. Some of the fiction passages are very fun to read. But don’t expect that you’ll have read them before. In all the years we’ve been preparing students for the ACT, we’ve had only one student tell us she remembers having read the passage before in a novel. The ACT test makers obviously don’t want to test you on what you’re already familiar with (and maybe even have discussed in class); they want to test you on how well you evaluate a passage that’s new to you.
Social studies: The social studies passage comes after the prose fiction piece and covers sociology, anthropology, history, geography, psychology, political science, and economics. That’s an incredibly wide range of topics when you think about it. The history passages are generally easier to understand; some of the psychology ones can be intense.
Humanities: The third passage can be about music, dance, theater, art, architecture, language, ethics, literary criticism, and even philosophy. Most students tend to like the humanities passages because (believe it or not) they’re actually interesting.
Natural sciences: The last passage is what most people think about when they hear the word science. The natural sciences passage can cover chemistry, biology, physics, and other physical sciences.

Are you panicking right now, screaming, “I haven’t taken physics! No fair!”? Not to worry. The questions don’t require you to know any particular subjects. Everything you need to answer the questions is right there in the passages, and you can go back to the passages as often as you like.

The ACT may present you with a set of comparative passages. You see two passages on the same general topic followed by ten questions. The questions will be grouped in three categories: those about the first passage, those about the second, and those about both. So you may see two shorter humanities instead of one long one. Some of the ten questions ask you about just one of the two passages. The others require you to compare ideas in the two passages. If you see one of these comparison exercises on your test, treat it the same way you do the one-passage format. Pay attention to the wording in the question to be sure you’re answering it based on the appropriate passage of the two.

Timing

The Reading Test is 35 minutes long. Assuming you live to the average age of around 80, the Reading Test is only about 0.000000008 percent of your life. Now that doesn’t seem so bad, does it? Because the test includes 40 questions, you need to spend just a little less than a minute per question. Remember that a little less than a minute includes reading the passage as well as working through the questions.

When you’re finished with the prose fiction passage, glance at the clock. You should be no more than nine minutes into the section. If you’ve taken significantly more time than that to finish the first passage, you need to work more wisely (and quickly!) on the remaining passages. Check out the later section “Saving the Passage for Later” in this chapter for a timesaving approach to reading passages.

Scoring

You get three reading scores. One is the total score, based on all four passages and 40 questions. Colleges pay the most attention to this score. Then you get two subscores: one in natural sciences/social studies (based, obviously, on the natural sciences and social studies passages) and one in arts/literature (based on the prose fiction and humanities passages). Though you may be interested to see which passages you did better on, colleges rarely put much emphasis on your reading subscores.

Getting Prepared: Reading Strategies

You’ve probably been reading since you were about 5 years old. It’s a little late for us to teach you the basics. But we can tell you how to make the best use of your time in this test. To do your best on this 35-minute test, follow these guidelines for skimming through the passages and focus on the questions.

Preview the passages

You’re naturally going to like one type of passage more than the others. Look for it and read it first, being extremely careful to shade in the correct bubbles on your answer grid as you answer the questions.

What happens if your brain takes a little vacation and you suddenly find you’ve filled in the bubbles all wrong? Maybe you started off by reading Passage 2, with Questions 11–20, but you filled in the bubbles for Questions 1–10? Hey, you laugh now, but mixing up the bubbles is easy to do, especially when you skip around. The first reaction usually is panic; first you erase all your answers, and then you try to remember what they were. Bad move. Here’s how to handle this problem: As you answer a question, first circle the correct response in your booklet and then fill in the bubble for that response on the answer grid. That way, if you mess up and have to erase your answer grid, you can just glance at your answer booklet and find the right answers again.

Decide on an approach

Some students do well under time pressures and can finish all four passages and the questions in the allotted 35 minutes. Those students often don’t have to read slowly and carefully, getting every little morsel the passages have to offer; instead, they can read quickly to get the overall idea. Other students get so totally nervous if they have to rush, they mess up completely. If you’re one of these students, a better strategy for you may be to concentrate on reading three of the passages carefully and answering all (or almost all) the questions correctly on them. Here are the steps to success if you apply the three-passage approach:

Pick the passage you like the least and mark guesses for all ten of its questions on your answer sheet.

Choose all Bs/Gs or Cs/Hs for the ten questions. It’s highly likely that the correct answer for at least two of the ten questions will pop up in one column. Consider that passage answered and done.
Gravitate to the passage type you like best.

Devote a little more than 11 minutes to carefully answer its ten questions. Thekey to success with this approach is to be super accurate. Mark your answers on the sheet.
Do the same for your second favorite passage.
End with your third favorite.

Make sure you mark answers for all 40 questions in the Reading Test.

The three-passage approach works best when you commit to concentrating on only three passages. Don't even entertain the idea that you may get to the fourth passage. Otherwise, you’ll be tempted to rush and risk missing more questions than you would if you pretend that the section has only three reading opportunities.

Generally, the highest reading score you can achieve with the three-passage approach is a 27. And that’s if you get some lucky guesses on the passage you skip and correctly answer almost all of the other 30 questions.

Skim the passage effectively

Save time by skimming — not reading — the ACT passages before you tackle the questions. When you practice reading questions, set a timer for 60 seconds on your phone. When the timer buzzes, stop reading and move to the questions. Here are some tips on how to accomplish that feat:

Know how paragraphs are organized. Most writers (except writers of literature) pay attention to the maxim, “Tell ‘em what you’re gonna tell’ ‘em; tell’ em; and tell ‘em what you told’ ‘em.”
- The first sentence of a paragraph presents its main topic. Read the first several lines to get a glimpse of what the paragraph is about.
- The middle sentences provide supporting evidence or examples for its main idea. You can pretty much skip these lines on your first reading. Save reading this stuff for when you encounter a question that asks about supporting details.
Don’t memorize. We see some students stop reading, gaze out into the distance, and mutter to themselves, counting off on their fingers. These students are obviously trying to memorize facts from the passage: “Let’s see, the three basic elements that make up Kleinschwab’s Elixir are ….” Stop! You don’t have to memorize anything; in fact, doing so can be counterproductive. Although you naturally want to remember some of what you read, you can always go back to the passage as often as you want. When you go to the passage for information, you’ll find it more quickly if you summarize (not memorize!) as you read.
Summarize. As you read each paragraph's topic sentence, think about what you’re reading and summarize it in your own words. Don’t make things complicated. A simple “This paragraph is about the way the Greeks looked at nature and the next paragraph covers the way the Romans looked at nature” helps to focus your thoughts and keep track of where information occurs in the passage.
- Question: Should you underline or outline as you go?
- Answer: Other than a quick circling of a paragraph topic, don’t spend time underlining or outlining during your first read of the passage. When you go back into the passage to answer questions, you may want to keep track of information to help you answer other questions. Highlight key words (especially things like dates, proper names, unusual vocabulary, lists of examples, key transition words, and anything that really confuses you). Occasionally jotting a note in the margin to summarize a paragraph is particularly helpful. For example, next to Paragraph 1, you may write, “Need for elixir.” Next to Paragraph 2, you may write, “Failed experiments.” By Paragraph 3, you may write, “Success; uses of elixir.” You get the idea. You’re allowed to refer to the passages as often as you want; having an idea of what is where in the passage can save you precious seconds.
Look for relationships and connections. If the author contrasts two or more concepts, ask yourself what makes one idea different from the others. When a passage compares and contrasts theories, ideas, or techniques, keep track of which explanations apply to each and pay attention to which of the theories, ideas, or techniques the author seems to favor. Perhaps you’re given thoughts in sequence. Try to keep track of what comes first, next, and last. For passages that talk about cause and effect, determine how one thing impacts another.
- Question: Should you read the questions before you read the passages?
- Answer: The large number of questions that accompany each ACT passage make it tricky to get helpful information from skimming through the questions first. You may find it helpful to completely skip the passage and jump right into answering the questions. See “Tips and Traps” later in this chapter for an explanation of how to answer reading question without spending time in the passage beforehand.

Identifying Reading Question Types

Although you may encounter many different types of reading questions on the ACT, most fall into one of the following general types. Each of these question types requires a slightly different approach.

Big picture questions ask you about the passage as a whole.
Direct statement questions ask you to regurgitate information straight from the passage.
Inference questions require you to make logical assumptions about the passage details.

The next sections break down each of these question types and explain how to answer them correctly.

Big picture questions

Big picture questions are almost always the first questions in the set of ten questions for a passage. A question may ask, “Which of the following is the main idea of the passage?” or “The primary purpose of Paragraph 3 is to do which of these?” You’ve likely tackled big picture questions like these on other exams. As you answer them on the ACT, keep in mind these three characteristics of the overall idea:

The big picture is broad and general. It covers the entire passage (or the entire paragraph, if the question asks about a paragraph). Be sure not to choose a “little” answer. The mere fact that a statement is true doesn’t mean it’s the main idea. Suppose you have a question that asks you for the main idea of a passage about high school education. One answer choice says, “The ACT gives students the heebie-jeebies.” No one can argue with that statement, but it isn’t the main idea of the passage.
The answer to a big picture question may repeat the topic sentence or key words. If the passage is about Asian philosophy, the correct answer may have the words Asian philosophy in it. Don’t immediately choose any answer just because it has those words, but if you’re debating between two answers, the one with the key words may be the better choice.
The answer to a big picture question is always consistent with the tone of the passage and the attitude of the author. If the passage is positive and the author is impressed by the philosophy, the main idea will be positive, not negative or neutral. If the author is criticizing something, the main idea will be negative.

The best answer to a big picture question is general rather than specific. If an answer choice for a big picture question contains information that comes from just one part of the passage, it probably isn’t the best answer. Here are some other ways to eliminate answer choices for main-idea questions:

Avoid answer choices that contain information that comes only from the middle paragraphs of the passage. These paragraphs probably deal with specific points rather than the main theme.
Cross out any answer choices that contain information that the passage doesn’t cover. These choices are irrelevant.
See whether you can eliminate answer choices based on just the first words. For example, if you’re trying to find the author’s main point in a natural science passage with an objective tone, you can eliminate answers that begin with more subjective words, like argue or criticize.

Direct statement questions

The direct statement question covers one particular point, not the passage as a whole. This question is one of the easiest to get correct, especially when the question gives you a line reference. You just go to the passage and find the specific answer. Clues that you’re dealing with direct statement questions are in the verbs they contain. Questions that ask for what the author or passage states, claims, indicates, and so on are usually direct statement questions. And they’re often the ones that start with “According to the passage.” Some examples include “According to the passage, James confronted Gary about the business when which of the following occurred?” or “The author states that the results of the experiments were considered unacceptable because….”

The key to answering detail questions is knowing where the information is in the passage so you can get to it quickly. (Here’s where summarizing the main point of each paragraph as you skim comes in handy; see the earlier section “Skim the passage effectively” for more info.) Read the question carefully, and keep in mind that the right answer may paraphrase the passage instead of providing a word-for-word repeat.

If you’re running short of time or your brain cells are about ready to surrender, look for this type of question and answer it first. You can often answer detail questions correctly even if you haven’t read the entire passage. Find a key word in the question (such as, say, elixir) and skim the passage for that word.

The passage provides you with the correct answer to a direct statement question. Eliminate any answer choices that require you to make an assumption or inference that the passage doesn’t specifically present. If you miss one of these questions, you’ve probably not read enough of the passage to locate the answer and have resorted to guessing.

Inference questions

Inference questions ask you about information that a passage implies rather than states directly. Specifically, they test your ability to draw conclusions from the information that’s actually in the passage. You may have to read between the lines at little to find the answers to these questions. For instance, suppose you read a passage about hummingbirds. Information in one paragraph may state that hummingbirds fly south for the winter. Information in another paragraph may say that the Speckled Rufus is a kind of hummingbird. From this information, you can infer that the Speckled Rufus flies south in the winter.

You can usually spot inference questions because they contain words such as infers, suggests, or implies. An example could be this: “The passage suggests which of the following about Gary’s response to John.”

When you face an inference question, look for the choice that extends the information in the passage just a little bit. Answer choices that make inferences that you can’t support with what’s stated in the passage are usually incorrect. Don’t choose an answer that requires you to come up with information that isn’t there. Sometimes knowing a lot about a passage’s topic can throw you off because you may be tempted to answer questions based on your own knowledge rather than the passage.

Vocabulary in context

You may have to determine the meaning of a word by its use in context. These questions, creatively called vocabulary-in-context questions, are pretty easy to answer correctly because you can use the passage to figure out what the word in the question means. They give you a word or phrase (usually italicized or in quotations) and its line reference and ask you what that word means as it's used in the passage.

The key to finding the best answer for a vocabulary-in-context question is to substitute the answer choices for the word in the passage. The answer choice that replaces the vocabulary word and makes sense within the context of the sentence and sentences around it is the right answer.

The only potentially tricky part about these questions is that they may test you on unfamiliar definitions of words that you know the meanings of. Sometimes, ACT passages use common words in uncommon ways. For example, the author may mention that, “Lawrence was unable to cow Michael, despite his frequent threats.” Although cow usually refers to a four-footed bovine, in this case, the word is used as a verb, meaning to intimidate or frighten. (Don’t let the ACT cow you!)

If a set of questions has a vocabulary-in-context variety, answer it first. You don’t have to know a lot about the passage to answer these babies, and the question tells you exactly where to go to answer it.

Most nearly means

Occasionally, you see an ACT reading question worded this way: “When the author says that Gary was ‘cleverly incommunicative,’ she most nearly means that his response is which of these.” A question that asks for what a passage or an author most nearly means or suggests by quoted or italicized portions of a paragraph may be easily answered by simply examining the possible answer choices. Usually the correct answer provides a definition or description of the quoted material and doesn’t require you to check out the passage at all. For example, the answer to the question about Gary’s response could be “Gary wisely chooses to refrain from responding to Jack's confrontation.”

Exception questions

Most questions ask you to choose the one correct answer, but some questions are cleverly disguised to ask for the one answer that isn’t true. We call these beauties exception questions. You can recognize them by the presence of a negative word (usually except or not) in the question: “The passage lists all of the following as reasons that Gary objected to the new model EXCEPT:” When you see questions worded this way, you know you’re looking for the one answer choice that isn’t true.

Exception questions aren’t that difficult if you approach them systematically. Determining which answer choice doesn’t appear in the passage takes time because you may think you have to look in the passage for the choice and not find it. But we have a better way to find the right (or should we say wrong?) answer. Instead of determining whether an answer isn’t true, just eliminate the three true answers. Doing so leaves you with the one false (and therefore correct) answer. Identifying choices that are true according to the passage is much easier than determining the one choice that isn’t. Take your time, and you’ll do exceptionally well on exception questions.

Tips and Traps

The ACT isn’t an especially tricky exam. However, these basic tips can prevent you from falling for the few traps that do exist … or from creating traps of your own.

Try leaping before you look. For many students, the best way to save time and focus on what’s important is to jump straight into the questions without even looking at the passage first. This strategy feels very uncomfortable at first, but with practice it can be a real timesaver. Here are the steps to follow to make the most of this approach:
1. Read the short bolded blurb at the beginning of the passage.
  
  This short intro may give you a general idea of the passage’s topic.
2. Skim the questions to find the one that appears easiest to answer first.
  
  Choose direct statement questions with line or paragraph references or those that contain elements such as dates, capitalized words, or proper names that are easy to skim for.
3. As you read the passage parts to answer one question, initial, underline, or circle important info that may help you with subsequent questions.
4. When you’ve exhausted the question with easy references, tackle the big picture question if there is one.
  
  You may need to answer several questions before you have enough information to find the passage's main idea. Check the last paragraph for clues.
5. Work on questions whose answer choices contain elements that are easy to look for.
6. Save the questions with except in them for the end.
To master this approach, be willing to leave a question if you spend more than 30 seconds searching for the answer. Eliminate obviously incorrect answers and take on another question in the set. Often when you go back to the question, you can answer it based on work you’ve done on other questions.
You don't have to work in order. Start with the passage you like best. If you’re a science buff, answer questions 31–40 first. Then go to the other three passages. There’s no good reason to leave your best chance for success for the end of the test when you’re running out of time. Likewise, answer the questions in a set in the order that makes the most sense. Start with questions that refer you to particular parts of the passage or that ask you for definitions. Save more challenging questions for the end of the set when you’ve spent more time in the passage.

You can use information you glean from answering some questions in a set to help you answer other questions in the set.
Know how to eliminate wrong answers. Using the process of elimination helps you weed out distracters and focus on the right answer. Sometimes you have to choose the best choice out of three pretty great choices. Other times you must choose from four really crummy options. Common wrong answers to reading comprehension questions include the following:
- Choices that contain information that the passage doesn’t cover: Even if the information in these choices is true in real life, you can’t pick them because the passage needs to be the source of the information. Eliminate these choices no matter how tempting they may be.
- Choices that contradict the passage’s main point, author’s tone, or specific details: After you’ve read the passage, you should be able to quickly eliminate most of the choices that contradict what you know about the passage.
- Choices that don’t answer the question: Paying careful attention to the wording of each question can help you narrow down your answer options. For example, a question may ask about a disadvantage of something discussed in the passage. If one of the answer choices lists an advantage rather than a disadvantage, you can eliminate that choice without thinking twice.
- Choices that contain debatable words. Debatable words are words that leave no room for exception, such as all, always, completely, never, every, none, and so on. The rest of the answer may look pretty good except for that unrelenting word.
  
  Don’t automatically throw out every answer that has one of these words. But if your answer contains a debatable word, make absolutely sure that information in the passage justifies the presence of that strong position.
Don’t read more into the passage than what’s there. Many questions are based on information that the passage specifically states. Other questions are based on information that the passage implies. Don’t take matters to extremes or bring in background information that you happen to have. Suppose that the passage talks about the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and its satellite countries. You can’t automatically assume the author also believes that communism will fail in China. Don’t choose the answer that takes the reasoning too far.

One final word: Try to enjoy the passages. We know; that’s easy for us to say. But believe it or not, some of this reading material is very interesting. If you approach it with a negative attitude, your mind is already closed to it, making the material much more difficult to comprehend and remember. If you at least pretend that you’re going to have a good time getting through it, you’re much more likely to put things in perspective, get a better handle on the material, and maybe even learn something new.

This, Too, Shall Pass(age): Sailing through the Reading Test