act reading 1

READING

For many students, Reading is the hardest section of both tests.

It takes a lot of concentration and focus.

Above all, reading is time-consuming.

Students have trouble finishing the reading sections on the SAT and A LOT of trouble finishing the reading section on the ACT!

More than anything, you have to find ways to SAVE TIME on the reading passages.

How do you accomplish this? Well, think about it:

The easiest way to read FASTER is to read LESS.

How much less?

Well, that’s up to you.

You can read the first and last sentence of every paragraph.

Or you can read the first paragraph and first sentence of each paragraph after that.

Or just the first paragraph.

Or some version of the above.

But you MUST read less if you want to be sure to finish the reading sections, especially on the ACT.

What you MUST NOT do is:

dilly-dally
Take notes
Underline or highlight
Jump around among passages (unless you’re faced with some extremely difficult passage, which is quite rare)

Think about it:

Dilly-dallying: This is obvious: there is no time to waste
Taking Notes: This is NOT a writing test; there’s no time to write! And you don’t need to. Someone’s already done the writing for you! If you need to sum up an idea, do it in your head. It’s usually summed up in the first sentence of a paragraph, anyway.
Underlining or highlighting: Same as #2.
Jumping around on any part of the test wastes time through dithering. Deal with the questions (and passages) on the test as they arise; if they’re easy, do them quickly but carefully; if they seem hard, do as well as you can quickly, and move on. Remember, they really only “look” hard: on math there’s always a simple way to do it; on reading, it’s just applying enough focus quickly enough. So do your best and move on!

CLICK HERE for an example of a regular passage on the SAT or ACT: