ACT Reading strategies

1.Your order, not theirs

The four passages are usually in the same order: a story, then social science, then humanities, then natural science. One slot is a paired passage, and that order has shifted across forms.

You do not have to do them in that order. Start with the type you read fastest. Bank those points while your brain is fresh, and leave the one that drags you for last.

2.Five lines above, five lines below

On questions that give you a line number, read five lines above it and five lines below it. Then answer. The answer lives in that window almost every time.

No line number? Do it last. Main-idea and inference questions are not in the window, and they are the three-minute sink.

Reading the whole passage again to "be safe" is how you end up with three questions left and no minutes.

3.The right answer is something you can point to

The wrong answers are built to sound true. They use the passage's words, they say sensible things, and they are not in the text.

If you cannot put your finger on the line that proves it, it is not the answer.

4.How to pace ACT Reading

Ten minutes a passage is the whole game. Halfway is passage two done by 20 min. If passage two is not done at 20 minutes, the fix is not reading faster. It is skipping the one question per passage that is eating three minutes.

5.Paired passages: one at a time

Read A, answer only A's questions. Read B, answer B's. Save the "both passages" questions for last — fewest and slowest, and you've already read everything.