Reading Practice for the ACT

How the Reading section is scored

Your raw score (number correct out of 40) converts to a 1–36 scaled score. Reading and Math have the steepest curves — a single missed question can swing you a full scaled-score point at the top end. There is no penalty for guessing; always bubble.

Strategy notes

Spend roughly 8.5 minutes per passage including reading and answering. If you are a slow reader, skim the passage in 2 minutes and use the question stems to drive your re-reads. If you are a fast reader, read in 3–4 minutes and let the questions go quickly from memory.

Always go back to the passage. The ACT writes wrong answers that sound like the passage but distort one specific word. The only way to catch the distortion is to re-read the cited lines, not to rely on what you remember.

On "main idea" or "primary purpose" questions, answer in your own words first, then find the choice that matches. If you choose between options without a prediction, the test's wrong-answer writers will draft you toward a slightly-too-narrow or slightly-too-broad option.

Common mistakes

• Picking an answer because one phrase from it appears in the passage. The ACT loves "true but irrelevant" wrong answers.
• Reading the four passages out of order. The order is calibrated to ramp difficulty; jumping around wastes setup time.
• Ignoring line references. If the question says "as used in line 24," go to line 24 — do not guess the meaning from elsewhere.
• Spending too long on the hardest passage and shortchanging the easier one that comes after.

What to drill first

Start with the passage type you find hardest — usually prose fiction or humanities. Reading score gains come almost entirely from passage-type comfort, not from "reading faster" in general.