My ACT Reading Strategies: Read Smarter, Find Evidence, and Eliminate
The ACT Reading section can be one of the most intimidating parts of the test. You are given several fairly dense passages, followed by questions that can seem like they require you to remember everything you just read. On top of that, you have to do it all under a strict time limit.
The good news is that you do not need to memorize the passage to do well on ACT Reading. In fact, one of the most important skills I teach my students is learning how to efficiently locate the information the testmakers want you to use and then eliminate answer choices that don't hold up under close examination.
ACT Reading: The Basics
The current ACT Reading section contains 36 questions that must be completed in 40 minutes.
The section contains four passage sets. Three sets contain a single longer passage, while one contains two shorter passages. The passages can come from literary narratives, the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Some questions may also require you to integrate information from a passage with a graph, table, or other visual.
The questions test skills such as:
Identifying the main idea of a passage or paragraph
Finding and interpreting specific details
Understanding relationships between ideas
Making logical inferences
Understanding the meaning of words and phrases in context
Identifying an author's purpose or perspective
Comparing information from two passages
Evaluating claims and evidence
Importantly, ACT Reading is not a test of outside knowledge. The information you need to answer the questions is contained in the passage or passages.
That means your goal should not be to become an expert on whatever subject the passage happens to discuss. Your goal is to become extremely good at finding, understanding, and evaluating the evidence that is actually on the page.
Manage Your Time Spent Reading Each Passage
I recommend that students aim to read the entire passage in about four minutes.
This does not mean that you should race through it without understanding anything. Quite the opposite. You want to get a solid enough understanding of the passage that you know where different ideas, people, events, and terms are located.
Think of your first read as creating a mental map of the passage.
For example, you might remember:
The first paragraph introduces the main subject.
The second paragraph gives some historical background.
The third and fourth paragraphs explain a particular theory.
The fifth paragraph introduces a disagreement.
The final paragraph explains the author's conclusion.
You don't necessarily need to remember every detail. You need to know where to go when a question asks about a particular detail.
This is especially important because many ACT Reading questions can be answered efficiently by returning to the relevant portion of the passage.
A Deep Read Can Save Even More Time
If you are naturally a strong reader and can deeply understand the passage in roughly four minutes, you may be able to answer several questions without returning to the passage.
That can be a huge advantage.
However, there is an important rule:
If you have any doubt whatsoever about an answer, go back and reference the passage.
Do not let a feeling of familiarity with the passage turn into a careless answer.
The ACT is specifically designed to make incorrect answers sound reasonable. If you can verify an answer directly from the text, you should.
Try to Get Into the Content
One of the most underrated ACT Reading strategies is simply trying to become interested in what you are reading.
This may sound strange when you're sitting in a testing room reading a passage about a subject you have never heard of, but your level of engagement matters.
If you are actively interested in the passage, you are much more likely to:
Understand what you are reading
Remember where information is located
Recognize the author's main point
Follow changes in the author's argument
Understand relationships between ideas
Read more efficiently
Don't approach the passage as a meaningless wall of words that you need to get through.
Instead, try to actually get into the content.
Ask yourself questions as you read:
What is this person trying to accomplish?
Why is the author telling me this?
What changed here?
What is the author trying to convince me of?
Why did the author include this example?
The more engaged you are with the passage, the easier the questions tend to become.
Understand How the Questions Progress
For many normal ACT Reading passages, the questions generally progress from broader questions toward more specific, fact-finding questions.
Early questions may ask about:
The main idea
The overall purpose
A broad theme
The author's perspective
Later questions often become more specific and ask about particular:
Details
Words or phrases
Events
Characters
Arguments
Relationships between ideas
This means you should be prepared for the nature of the questions to change as you work through the passage.
Don't Get Stuck
You will eventually encounter a Reading question that you don't immediately know how to answer.
Don't let one question destroy your timing.
If you aren't making progress, star the question and move on.
The goal is not to prove that you can solve every question immediately.
The goal is to maximize the number of questions you answer correctly within 40 minutes.
Sometimes another question will be much easier, and you can come back to the difficult one with more time and a fresh perspective.
My Strategy for Individual Reading Questions
Step 1: Identify the Keywords
One of my biggest ACT Reading rules is this:
Every single Reading question is a keyword question.
The key words in a Reading question are often even more important than they are in ACT English.
When you read a question, identify the specific words, names, terms, phrases, events, or concepts that tell you what part of the passage you need to consider.
For example, if a question asks about the author's description of a particular character in the third paragraph, you immediately have several things to work with:
The author's description
The particular character
The third paragraph
Those are your search terms.
Once you identify the keywords, use them to locate the relevant portion of the passage.
This turns a seemingly difficult question into a much more manageable task:
Find the relevant part → understand the context → evaluate the answers.
Step 2: Go Back to the Passage
For specific fact-finding questions, I strongly recommend going back to the passage unless you immediately and confidently know the answer.
You should be able to locate the relevant information relatively quickly if you:
Read the passage sufficiently the first time.
Identified the important keywords in the question.
Know what you are looking for.
If you cannot find the relevant information quickly, that can actually be useful information about your reading strategy.
It may mean that you need to read the passage more carefully the first time so that you have a better mental map of where things are located.
Read Around the Keywords
Finding the exact sentence containing your keyword is not always enough.
If the question directs you to specific lines, or you locate the relevant phrase yourself, read the surrounding sentences for context.
The answer may depend on something that was said immediately before or after the keyword.
Ideally, you want to understand what the passage is saying before you look at the answer choices.
This makes it much easier to recognize the answer that actually matches the passage rather than allowing the answer choices to influence your interpretation.
Step 3: Use My #1 Reading Strategy — Eliminate Specific Words, Phrases and Terms
This is perhaps the most important Reading strategy I teach.
When you're looking at the four answer choices, don't just ask:
"Which answer looks right?"
Instead, ask:
"What are the fewest, most specific words in these answers that I can prove are wrong?"
You can often eliminate an answer without needing to completely disprove the entire sentence.
Look for individual words, phrases, or ideas that don't belong.
There are several things I specifically look for.
1. Assumptions
Eliminate words or ideas that are not stated or reasonably implied by the passage.
The ACT frequently creates answer choices that sound logical but introduce information that the passage never actually supports.
Remember:
You are answering based on the passage, not based on what you think is probably true.
2. Irrelevant Information
An answer can contain a statement that is factually true while still being wrong for the question.
If part of the answer doesn't actually address what the question is asking, that portion can make the entire answer incorrect.
Don't be distracted by an answer simply because part of it sounds familiar.
3. Statements You Can Prove Are Incorrect
Sometimes the passage directly contradicts an answer choice.
Those answers should be eliminated immediately.
You don't need to spend additional time debating an answer that the text disproves.
4. Strong or Extreme Language
Be especially careful with strongly worded answers.
Words that make an answer sound absolute or overly negative can often be warning signs.
For example, an answer that claims something always, never, completely, or in an otherwise extreme manner should make you stop and ask:
Does the passage actually support that level of certainty?
If it doesn't, eliminate it.
5. Comparisons
I pay particular attention to answers containing comparisons such as:
More than
Less than
Greater than
Better than
Worse than
If the passage does not establish the comparison being made, the answer is wrong.
A comparison can be especially deceptive because the answer may use words and concepts that appear in the passage while quietly making a claim the passage never made.
The Final ACT Reading Checklist
By the time you finish each Reading question, I want you to be able to say that you have done three things:
1. I found and understood the relevant part of the passage.
You know exactly what information the testmakers are asking you to consider.
2. I understand why my answer is correct.
You aren't simply picking the answer that "sounds best." You can connect your answer to the passage.
3. I know what is wrong with the other answers.
Ideally, you can identify the specific word, term, or phrase that causes each incorrect answer to fail.
That last point is extremely important.
You don't necessarily need to know why an answer is completely ridiculous. You need to know what you can cross off.
The Big Picture
The ACT Reading section becomes much less intimidating once you stop treating it like a test of memory.
You don't need to remember every sentence.
You don't need to know everything about the subject.
And you don't need to immediately know the answer to every question.
Instead, develop a repeatable process:
Read the passage → build a mental map → identify the keywords → find the relevant section → read for context → evaluate every answer → cross off the bad words.
The best Reading students aren't necessarily the students who read the fastest. They are the students who can efficiently find the evidence, understand what the evidence actually says, and recognize exactly why an answer choice doesn't work.
That is the skill I want my students to develop.
And once that process becomes automatic, ACT Reading becomes much more manageable.
Contact me today to get started with expert ACT/SAT tutoring and take the next step toward college success!
