Omniac Attack!

Hey Students!

A lot of students may see the Reading section as the most straight foward sections on the ACT; after all, you're just reading a passage, then answering questions about it.  But, because the ACT asks Reading questions in a deliberately confusing way, it's actually one of the trickiest sections.  The thing that makes this especially frustrating is that there are very few tricks to making these questions easy; you just have to take the time necessary to getting the question right.  However, there are a few things you can do to help you save time so that you can focus that extra time more effectively.  Here are three of them.

When most students come to a Reading passage, the first thing they do is read the passage completely, then move on to start answering the questions.  This is actually not the most effective use of your time though.  You should always, always, always look at the questions before you read the passage.  This may seem ridiculous at first glance, but it makes much more sense once you think about it.  If you read the passage without knowing what the questions are, you have no way to know what you're looking for and you'll most likely have to read a second time after looking at the questions.  Reading the passage takes a lot of time, and doing it twice just doubles that, so this is the single biggest time saver you can use.

2 - Pick and choose your questions

Like with every other section, there are some Reading questions that are just more difficult than others.  And like with the other sections, it makes no sense at all to waste a lot of time doing difficult questions when you haven't finished all the easy ones.  The Reading section makes this especially tempting though, by often putting the most difficult questions at the beginning.  The important thing to remember is that you don't have to do each question in order and can skip questions that will be difficult and/or time consuming.  As a general rule of thumb, any question that points to a specific line or asks about a specific thing is one you want to do right away, because it's easy to skip right to the part you need and find your answer quickly.  Likewise, any question that asks you about the passage as a whole (like the aforementioned ones at the beginning of each passage) are ones that you'll want to wait to do, or even skip.

This is another tip that may appear counter intuitive at first glance.  But it will often save you several precious minutes on each passage.  We've established that the ACT asks its Reading questions in an intentionally confusing manner; and one important part of that is that they make it so that the correct answers are not easy to find in the passage.  They do not take the same care with the wrong answers though.  Because of that, it is often easier and quicker to find three wrong answers and eliminate them than it is to find the one correct answer.  Process of elimination is among the most important and helpful tools  that you can use on any section of the ACT, and by focusing on the wrong answers on Reading, this section makes it even more important.

The Reading section can be very difficult for a lot of students, primarily because the methods that are the most straight forward and most familiar to students are very, very time consuming.  It will take some work, but the most successful test prep will alter a few of the ways that you approach the test, so that you can begin saving a lot of time and focus that on getting more questions correct!

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