A Guide to the Reading Section of the ACT
What’s Covered:
- What Is the Format of the Reading Section of the ACT?
- How Is the Reading Section of the ACT Scored?
- What Skills Does the Reading Section of the ACT Assess?
- Strategies for the Reading Section of the ACT
- Free ACT Study Materials
The dense, dry passages found in the ACT’s reading section, whether from fiction, the humanities, or the natural sciences, can leave even the most confident readers questioning their comprehension and analysis skills. And that’s before you factor in your race against the clock, as you strive to answer 40 questions in just 35 minutes.
To ease your angst on exam day, you want to be sure that you have a clear understanding of the reading section—including its structure, scoring, and content.
What Is the Format of the Reading Section of the ACT?
Reading is the third section of the ACT, administered right after a break. This is great timing, since you’ll already be in the testing frame of mind, and after your break, should be feeling refreshed, focused, and ready to show your knowledge. Hopefully, you’ve had a snack and some water and returned to the test prepared to hit the ground running.
As noted above, the reading section of the ACT contains 40 questions, which you must answer in 35 minutes. You may think that gives you about 50 seconds per question, but in reality you’ll have significantly less time than that, since that doesn’t account for the time you need to spend reading the passages in this section.
The reading section has three standalone passages and one set of two shorter passages. Each passage is between 700 and 1,000 words long (in the case of the paired passages, they will total 1,000 words), and is designed to reflect the difficulty and style you’d encounter in a first-year college course. After each passage, you’ll need to answer 10 questions about its content.
The passages cover a broad range of fields and no pre-existing knowledge is assumed—everything you need to know to answer the questions is found directly in the text. The questions are designed specifically to test your reading comprehension and critical reading skills, not your knowledge of the topic a passage is about, or the novel it comes from.
Each passage includes a brief introduction, which is usually between one and three sentences long. Although you might be tempted to save some precious time by skipping these introductions and getting right to the body of the text, doing so is actually counterproductive.
The introductions often contain critical information about the passage, such as historical context or specific vocabulary terms, or provide a useful overview of what the main points are, which can be an invaluable reference point as you answer the questions. Make sure to always at least skim them.
Finally, keep in mind that the passages are not presented in any specific order, and you are not required to complete them in the sequence they appear. Skipping ahead to read an easier passage first is fine, and is often part of a smart time-management plan.
How Is the Reading Section of the ACT Scored?
While the reading section has 40 questions, your score will not be out of 40. Instead, your raw score—the number of questions you answered correctly—is converted into a scaled score, between 1-36. This is the number you receive on your score report, and the one that averages into your composite ACT score.
However, the ACT scale is not a curve. Your score has nothing to do with the scores received by other people who took the same test as you. Rather, scaling accounts for the difficulty of the particular test you took compared to other versions of the ACT.
Although no ACT is designed to be harder or easier, some variation is inevitable. The test makers use scaling to ensure that a specific score always reflects the same level of mastery.
Below is an example of how the number of correct answers on the reading section of the ACT translates into a scaled score. Note that this scale is from a particular practice ACT, and the exact numbers may vary slightly from one test to another.
|
Scaled Score |
Questions Answered Correctly |
|
36 |
40 |
|
35 |
38-39 |
|
34 |
37 |
|
33 |
36 |
|
32 |
34-35 |
|
31 |
33 |
|
30 |
32 |
|
29 |
31 |
|
28 |
30 |
|
27 |
– |
|
26 |
29 |
|
25 |
28 |
|
24 |
26-27 |
|
23 |
25 |
|
22 |
23-24 |
|
21 |
22 |
|
20 |
20-21 |
|
19 |
19 |
|
18 |
18 |
|
17 |
16-17 |
|
16 |
15 |
|
15 |
14 |
|
14 |
12-13 |
|
13 |
11 |
|
12 |
10 |
|
11 |
8-9 |
|
10 |
7 |
|
9 |
6 |
|
8 |
5 |
|
7 |
– |
|
6 |
4 |
|
5 |
3 |
|
4 |
2 |
|
3 |
– |
|
2 |
1 |
|
1 |
0 |
What Skills Does the Reading Section of the ACT Assess?
The ACT’s reading section assesses both reading comprehension and critical reading skills. While your knowledge of the content area isn’t evaluated in this section, your ability to apply the skills you’ve been taught during English and literature classes most definitely is.
The content covered by the reading section of the ACT is reported in three categories: key ideas and details; craft and structure; and integration of knowledge and ideas. Each of these categories appraises a variety of different skills.
- Key Ideas and Details tests your ability to determine ideas and themes central to the passage, draw inferences and conclusions, and understand relationships within the text.
- Craft and Structure assesses your ability to understand the meaning of words and phrases in the text, analyze word choice and structure, interpret characters’ points of view, and comprehend the purpose and perspective of authors.
- Integration of Knowledge and Ideas evaluates your ability to differentiate between facts and opinions, make connections between different texts, and analyze how authors make arguments.
Since 2021, one passage in the reading section of the ACT may also contain a graph, figure, or table with information relevant to the text, to test your ability to integrate various types of information to draw conclusions.
Strategies for the Reading Section of the ACT
1. Time Management
The ACT’s fast pace is notorious, and the reading test is no exception. You’re allowed significantly less time per question than on the SAT, so time management is critical. You should go into the test with a time management plan for each section.
For the reading section, your plan should center on how you’re going to handle the passages themselves. Some students read the questions before the passage, so that they know what to look for. Others skim the passage first and then refer back to specific sections for details.
Most students find that reading the whole passage in detail up front is too time-consuming, but if you’re a pro speed reader that approach could work for you! Use your practice tests to find which strategy works best for you–none of them is inherently better than the others.
2. Stay Engaged
Many test takers have a hard time concentrating on four passages with different topics, presented in quick succession. However, engaging deeply with the text, perhaps by drawing connections to your prior knowledge, will help you pick up on the subtleties that the questions are getting at.
Mental tricks like pretending you’re an expert in the field and your career depends on understanding the article can help with focus and retention. Physical cues can also prove helpful. For example, changing positions, using hands as blinders, or taking deep breaths between passages can refocus your attention.
3. Use Process of Elimination
Although some questions on the reading section of the ACT may seem subjective, there’s only one correct answer. If you’re having trouble finding it, try eliminating the answers you know are wrong.
Correct answers will always be directly and clearly supported by the passage—if any choice isn’t, cross it off. Your chances of answering the question correctly are much better when you’re choosing between two answers instead of four.
4. Take Practice Tests
The ACT reading test requires you to both quickly and thoroughly comprehend what you read. While you may be used to reading high-level texts efficiently, and you might even be accustomed to interpreting and explaining what you’ve read, the best way to prepare for the reading section of the ACT is to practice with the real thing.
There is simply no way to replicate the timing and structure of this section, so make sure you take full advantage of ACT practice tests, to become as familiar as possible with the test’s particular quirks.
Free ACT Study Materials
There’s an abundance of free ACT study materials available to students. Popular resources for ACT practice tests and tools include:
Another option is to ask friends, family, or recently graduated classmates if they have any leftover prep books from when they took the test. Lastly, simply reading is an excellent way to build reading comprehension. Don’t limit yourself to solely what you enjoy reading; rather, challenge yourself to read widely—whether books, magazines, journals, or newspapers—to familiarize yourself with different formats and writing styles.
How Will the ACT Impact Your Chances of Acceptance?
Even with the expansion of test-optional policies, standardized tests like the ACT (or SAT) continue to play a major role in college admissions, especially at highly selective schools. However, test scores aren’t the only factor considered—your GPA, course rigor, extracurriculars, essays, and letters of recommendation are also crucial.
If you’re wondering how your overall profile will stack up at the colleges you’re considering, check out CollegeVine’s free chancing engine, which evaluates all quantifiable aspects of your application, including grades, course rigor, extracurriculars, and, yes, standardized test scores to estimate your odds of being accepted at over 1,600 schools across the country.
Our admissions calculator can also give you suggestions for how to boost your chances of acceptance—for example, by raising your ACT score.
