ACT Reading

Overview

  • 35 minutes to work through 4 passages of 40 questions

  • One dual passage

  • Types of passages

    • Prose fiction (literary narrative) --(excerpts from novels, short stories, historical fiction)

    • Social science (biography, business, economics, government, geography, sociology, psychology, etc.)

    • Humanities (architecture, art, dance, language, literary criticism, music, television, etc.)

    • Natural science (biology, medicine, technology, physics, etc.)

    • 800-850 words, each passage has 10 questions



Skills

  • Implied meanings

  • Determine main ideas

  • Locate and interpret significant details

  • Understand the sequence of events

  • Make comparisons between two things

  • See cause/effect relationships

  • Recognize meaning in context of words, phrases, and statements

  • Draw conclusions or generalizations

  • Analyze the authorś voice/style

  • Literature: setting, atmosphere, relationship between characters, plot, dialogue, characterś thoughts and emotions, point of view

  • Social science: more informative or persuasive, clear topic sentences, claim,

  • Humanities: memoirs, personal essays, criticisms, reviews, magazine articles

  • Natural science: more technical descriptions, more linear organization, clear topic sentences, transitions, expository or persuasive

Question Stems

  • XXX most likely encourages XXX to wear XX because he XXX

  • According to the passage, XXX contributed to XXX by XXX

  • The author believes that XXX is XXX.

  • In the passage, the phrase, XXX, refers to XXX.

  • Which of the following best represents a general trend associated with XXX?

  • According to the passage, XXX is characterized by XXX

  • According to the passage, XXX differs from XXX in that:

  • Information in the paragraph makes clear that the author beliefs that:

  • Based on the information in XX paragraph, the author implies that:

  • When the author uses the phrase XXX, he most nearly means that XXX that

  • Which of the following most accurately summarizes how the passage characterizes XXX on XXX?

  • The main idea of the passage is that:

  • How does the author directly support her claim?

  • Which of the following questions is NOT answered by information given in the passage?

  • Which of the following statements is LEAST supported by the passage?

  • A similarity between the two passages is that they both…

  • The details in lines XX-XX primarily serve to suggest that:

Practice Questions