ACT Reading Prep: How the ACT Tries to Trick You
The ACT reading section seems like it should be easy: you read some stories and then answer some questions about them. How hard can that be? Well, the ACT uses a few different techniques to make reading comprehension more difficult than that. That’s why it’s so important to practice this section leading up to test day and become used to the different ways the ACT will try to divert you from the correct answer.
The ACT reading section consists of four stories, each accompanied by 10 questions. Students have just 35 minutes to work through this section, dissecting stories from various categories like natural science and literary prose. Questions will range from broad, asking about the main idea or mood of the story, to specific, asking about key details in the story or use of particular vocabulary. For many students, 35 minutes is not enough time to read and absorb the four stories and work through all 40 questions thoughtfully. Students generally are not used to being examined on how quickly they can read and comprehend stories, and for that reason this section of the test can be particularly stressful.
This pesky time constraint is a big reason that it’s important for students to have spent time practicing and to have identified an ACT reading strategy that works well for them prior to test day. The ACT reading section is one that anyone can master with increased practice and familiarity of the types of stories that show up and the types of questions asked. This is the one section of the ACT where all of the answers are somewhere in the passage right in front of you, so it seems like it should be a pretty easy section of the test. The key to ACT reading prep is A LOT of repetition and identifying strategies that help you to complete as much of the section as possible in the 35-minute time constraint while simultaneously getting as many questions right as possible. ACT reading prep focuses on increasing familiarity with the format and language that show up in the stories, frequent practice of the types of questions asked, and, as always, identifying tips, tricks, and strategies that work for an individual student to help with combatting the intense time constraint of the ACT reading section.
Before you start to think about what tips and tricks you should make sure to remember on test day, make sure you have a solid big-picture strategy in place that’s going to help you do your best on test day. Once you’ve identified what big-picture ACT reading strategies work well to help you attempt as many questions as possible and answer them correctly as consistently as possible, it’s time to consider what other tips and tricks could help you boost your ACT reading score even higher. We encourage students to use trial-and-error to determine what ACT reading tips and tricks work well for you as you work through the ACT reading section.
Upon looking over a sample ACT reading story and its corresponding questions, the content itself doesn’t seem like it would be too difficult. You read a short story and then answer some questions about it. How hard is that? Well, the actual reading and comprehension aspect of the reading test is not usually what students struggle with. Rather, it is the time constraint combined with difficult questions and answer options.
Most of the answers are there somewhere, embedded within the reading stories, so from a knowledge standpoint this section should be more relaxed than the others. If a student reads an ACT reading story and comprehends it well, they could probably discuss the text at length, analyzing the different aspects, explaining the main ideas, and so on. These are the types of things that students have become used to doing in their high school English classes, spending full class sessions talking about what is meant by including certain pieces of information in a text and reading between the lines to find the underlying meanings. Literary analysis on the ACT, however, happens to be in multiple-choice format.
If the ACT reading section were fill-in-the-blank style, students would probably have an easier time with many of the questions. Alas, this is not the case, and the ACT will use the multiple-choice format to their advantage. The ACT does this by crafting the answers to the ACT reading sections in a way that makes the section a lot harder.
For one, the ACT writers are very good writers, and they have a way of crafting all answer options so that they are appealing. They are worded nicely and are always related to the story in some way. That means that there are not going to be many wrong answers that are very easy to eliminate. Every answer option is related to the story and will likely include specific details that do show up in the story. Wrong answers will often include information about a different part of the story than what is being questioned, and even a single word can make an answer choice wrong. Every single word in each answer choice is put there by the ACT for a reason.
If just one word is incorrect, the whole answer is incorrect. That means students have to pay incredibly close attention and take their time dissecting questions and answer options. That’s easier said than done when there’s only 35 minutes to work through four full stories.
This is a big reason why students who do not prepare in advance for the ACT reading section generally do not perform as well as they expect to on test day. Students hurrying through this section may miss a word or two in an answer option and mistake it for a perfect fit. Similarly, students may misread questions or not notice when questions require them to make an educated guess.
This happens when the ACT uses wording like “the author most likely includes the example to…” or “the passage most strongly suggests that…” Test phrases “most likely” and “most strongly suggests” tell the student that the answer is not word-for-word in the passage somewhere, so they better not waste their precious time digging around for it. Rather, these types of questions require students to take what they’ve learned from the story and analyze it. Why do you think it was included? How do you know?
This type of questions is incredibly broad, and answering it well requires a deeper understanding of the passage than answering something like a specific vocabulary question. The ACT knows this as well, and so they will tend to ask students broader questions earlier in the answer set. That means students will often see questions that ask about the main idea of a story or the point of view of the passage BEFORE questions that ask about vocabulary and specific information within the text.
The ACT does this for a reason: students are more likely to answer the broad questions INCORRECTLY if they work through them earlier in the text. This is true because as students work through the remaining questions, they’ll continue to learn about and increase their understanding of the story as a whole. For this reason, students are better equipped to answer broad questions last because they will have a stronger understanding of the story as a whole compared to when they have just finished reading.
In summary, you need to practice the ACT reading section and get used to paying attention to details in the questions and answers, eliminating wrong answers based on incorrect words. You need to practice putting the questions into an order of specific to broad to increase your probability of answering questions correctly, and you need to practice inferring based on the passage so that you know how to approach the questions that you will make educated guesses on.
This is a lot to practice, and that’s not to say you shouldn’t also work on your reading comprehension as a whole. If you struggle with comprehending the stories, the questions will become that much harder.
ACT Reading comprehension practice recommendation:
We recommend that students practice their imagery while reading. This can be helpful for any written text, not just the ACT.
When you read, do you find yourself picturing in your heads the different parts of a story or text? Most students will naturally picture characters and scenes in their heads when they read engaging, interesting texts, making a movie in their head of the story. This is why so many people love to read - your brain literally puts you into the story.
This concept of making pictures in your head as you read is referred to as “concept imagery,” and it is a skill that can be practiced and developed to help increase reading comprehension.
However, some students struggle with imagery in general, and many struggle with imagery when reading difficult texts or dull, uninteresting texts. Sadly, the ACT reading stories are not always very interesting, and chances are you will have to read about at least a topic or two that you don’t find particularly fun.
One way that you can help yourself work through difficult and uninteresting stories on test day is by practicing your concept imagery leading up to test day. Focus on making pictures in your head of the practice stories you read. Make pictures for different people and places. Pay attention to any details in the story - if they describe a characters with brown hair and blue eyes, adjust your picture and focus on making a movie in your mind that reflects what you’re reading.
You can even practice your imagery with your textbooks. It’s going to be challenging to make pictures out of the reading material you do for classes like chemistry, biology, and calculus, but it can be done, and it will actually help you to retain information.
This may sound kind of crazy if you are not familiar with this practice, but creating concept imagery while reading is proven to assist in reading comprehension, which is EXACTLY what you need for test day.
Lindamood-Bell, a leading education company in the areas of literacy and reading comprehension, helps students build reading comprehension through concept imagery. Lindamood-Bell instructs students to consider 12 main “structure words” when making mental images from texts: What, Size, Color, Number, Shape, Where, Movement, Mood, Background, Perspective, When, Sound.
If you can identify as many of these twelve aspects as possible and use them to assist you in creating a vivid mental image of the story you’re reading, you’re going to have a mental picture that matches the story well. This will help you to more easily recall certain aspects of a text, understand the overall meaning, and, for the sake of the ACT, answer questions quickly.
It’s really important to have an identified strategy that you’ve already proven works well for you for the ACT reading section. When deciding which strategies to try, consider a couple of things — reflect on your general experiences with reading: Do you struggle with comprehension or tend to remember everything you read? Do you enjoy reading or does reading feel like a chore? Do you tend to read quickly or do you like to take your time and absorb information slowly? Based on your answers to these questions you will have a pretty good idea of what your ACT reading performance would probably be like without a strategy in place. Students who struggle with comprehension or prefer to read slowly should focus on strategies that don’t include reading the whole story. Students who read more quickly and can recall content easily can lean toward those strategies more focused on reading.
Whatever the case, make sure to test out any strategy before attempting to use it on test day. Every student is unique, and what works well for your best friend is not necessarily going to work well for you. Last but not least, practice, practice, PRACTICE! The reading section is no exception — the more you practice this section the more familiar you’ll be to the types of stories that show up, the language the ACT uses on the questions, and, perhaps most importantly, the strategy you’ll use on test day to assist you in defeating that pesky time constraint, questions, and answer options.
Hint: Most students will find success in working in an order of Easy to Hard across any given section on the ACT. The reason for this has to do with anxiety levels being lowest early on in the exam. While your anxiety levels are lower, you want to be focusing on what is easier for you and the questions that you are most likely to answer correctly. As time goes on, your anxiety levels will increase. When your anxiety levels are higher, you want to be working on the questions that are harder for you, since your overall probability of answering correctly goes down just based on what your hormones are doing!
Good luck, and happy studying!
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