The ACT reading section confounds many students because of the length of the passages in small print no less — and only 35 minutes to complete.  Simple math tells us the student has roughly eight and one-half minutes per passage.  That seems like a very short amount of time to read a passage and complete ten questions.  We agree!  This seems particularly true if the passages tend to be dry or, as the students often say, boring.

So…how to handle the time crunch?  That is not an easy question to answer unfortunately.  Some students can adapt their reading styles to suit this test, but most cannot change — it is difficult to do!  Speed reading is useless if you cannot remember what you read.  The real question is how to comprehend what is necessary in the fastest time.

The clues to a strategy can be found in the questions themselves.  The readings are from four disciplines — fiction, social science, humanites and natural science.  Each passage has its share of vocabulary-in-context questions, but after that, their focus shifts.  The fiction passage deals with the basics of a novel — setting, tone, characters, mood, moral.  So, when reading, make note of these terms in the passage and underline words that fit the categories.  Social science and humanities tend to deal with persuasion.  A good argument makes one point consistently and is structured with supporting detail.  If you find the main argument or idea or theme, you find the key to unlocking the passage.  The natural science deals with lots of facts and requires the least amount of pre-reading — happy hunting!

If you develop a strategy for each type of passage based on the question formats, you will increase both efficiency and accuracy.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 at 1:53 pm and is filed under College Entrance Exams, For Parents, For Students, Test Preparation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.