The ACT Reading section is one of the four sections of the ACT test, designed to evaluate your reading comprehension skills. It consists of four passages, each taken from a different discipline, such as social science, humanities, natural science, or literary narrative, and each with 10 multiple-choice questions. To prepare for the ACT Reading section, you should follow these steps:
Develop your reading speed and comprehension
Developing your reading speed and comprehension is crucial to succeeding in the ACT Reading section. It means improving your ability to read quickly and accurately while also understanding the content of what you are reading.
Improving your comprehension involves understanding what you're reading, analyzing the author's message, and making connections between different ideas. To achieve this, you can practice summarizing what you've read in your own words, answering questions about the material, and making connections between different ideas. By doing so, you can better understand the main idea of the passage and the author's purpose, making it easier to answer the questions on the ACT Reading section accurately.
Familiarize yourself with the ACT Reading section
The ACT Reading section is one of the four sections in the ACT exam, which is used by colleges and universities in the United States as part of their admissions process. The Reading section assesses your ability to read and understand complex passages from different subject areas, such as humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and literary fiction.
The Reading section consists of 40 multiple-choice questions, and you have 35 minutes to complete it. The questions are based on four reading passages, each approximately 800 words long, and the passages are accompanied by a set of questions.
Practice with official ACT Reading materials
Practicing with official ACT Reading materials is crucial for achieving success on the ACT Reading section. The ACT is a standardized test, which means that it follows a consistent format and difficulty level from year to year. Using official ACT Reading materials allows you to become familiar with the type of questions and passages that are likely to appear on the exam.
After practicing with official ACT Reading materials, you can review your mistakes and identify areas for improvement. The ACT website provides detailed explanations for each question, which can help you understand why you got a question wrong and learn how to approach similar questions in the future. By reviewing your mistakes, you can identify patterns in your errors and focus on improving those areas.
Build your vocabulary
Improving your vocabulary is crucial for performing well on the ACT Reading section. One effective way to improve your vocabulary is by learning common roots, prefixes, and suffixes. By understanding these word parts, you can better comprehend the meanings of unfamiliar words. Another helpful strategy is to use context clues to infer the meanings of words from the surrounding sentences or paragraphs. Practicing with flashcards and quizzes can also help you learn and retain new vocabulary words. By building your vocabulary, you can increase your comprehension and accuracy on vocabulary-based questions, which can lead to a higher overall score on the ACT Reading section.
Read widely
Reading widely exposes you to new vocabulary, sentence structures, and writing styles, which can help you understand more complex texts. Additionally, reading widely can improve your ability to understand and analyze different viewpoints, which is important for the ACT Reading section. The exam includes passages from a variety of subject areas, including humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, and literary fiction, so being comfortable with different types of texts can help you approach each passage with confidence.
It's important to note that reading widely doesn't just mean reading for pleasure. You should challenge yourself by reading materials that are outside of your comfort zone or that you may not normally choose. This can help you build your reading comprehension skills and improve your ability to understand complex texts.
Take practice tests
Taking practice tests is an important step in preparing for the ACT Reading section. Regularly taking practice tests can help you assess your progress and identify your strengths and weaknesses. This allows you to focus your studying on the areas where you need improvement, which can ultimately lead to a higher score on test day. Practice tests can simulate the experience of taking the real exam, including the timing and format of the questions. By taking practice tests under timed conditions, you can get a sense of how you'll perform on test day and how to manage your time effectively. You can also use practice tests to identify the types of questions you struggle with the most, so you can target those areas during your studying.
Focus on the main idea
To identify the main idea, start by reading the introduction and conclusion of the passage carefully, as these sections often provide important clues about the author's purpose or main message. Then, read the body of the text and look for recurring themes or ideas that the author returns to multiple times. Pay attention to how different ideas or concepts are connected and how they support the main argument or thesis of the passage.
By focusing on the main idea, you can better understand the author's intended message and more easily answer questions that require you to identify the purpose or message of the text. This skill is particularly important on the ACT Reading section, which includes passages on a variety of topics and from different subject areas.
Pay attention to the details
Success on the ACT Reading section requires close attention to detail. While learning the specifics of a passage is as crucial to understanding the passage's major theme, some questions may require you to draw conclusions or inferences based on these elements. It's crucial to read the material carefully and attentively if you want to be able to notice and retain certain information from a chapter. As you read, you can also underline or highlight key points to help you remember them later. This can consist of significant quotations, dates, names, or other particular information that may be necessary for resolving queries.
Be aware of the different question types
Being aware of the different question types is essential for success on the ACT Reading section. The exam features various types of questions, including main idea, detail, inference, and tone questions, each of which requires a different approach.
To effectively answer these different types of questions, it's essential to understand the directions provided for each question type. For example, main idea questions may ask you to identify the central message or purpose of the passage, while detail questions may ask you to recall specific information from the text. Inference questions may require you to draw logical conclusions based on the information presented, while tone questions may ask you to identify the author's attitude or perspective.
Time yourself
Timing yourself as you complete practice tests can help you become more aware of the amount of time you are spending on each passage and question. This will help you to pace yourself more effectively, ensuring that you have enough time to answer all the questions on the exam. Additionally, practicing timing yourself will also help you to develop a sense of how long it takes you to read a passage and answer the associated questions, which will enable you to adjust your approach as needed.
Stay focused
Staying focused is a critical factor in achieving success on the ACT Reading section. The exam requires you to read and analyze complex passages while answering questions within a limited time frame. To stay focused during the exam, it's essential to create an environment that minimizes distractions.
Choose a quiet area where you won't be disturbed to study in first. This could be a quiet place like a library or a study room, or anything else like that. Moreover, to prevent any potential disruptions, switch off or put your phone in silent mode. To eliminate any outside noise that might interfere with your concentration, you might also want to think about utilizing noise-canceling headphones.
