<p>I have taken practice runs of the ACT and SAT many times. The section that ALWAYS stump me is the critical reading sections. 22's and 25's on the ACT and even a low 560 on my PSAT (soph). I plan to take the ACT around Dec and hope to score 210+ on my PSAT this Oct. Do you have any suggestions? Books, techniques that you use etc? And I know reading books, newspapers etc can help, but they just are not doing it for me! Thanks!</p>
<p>are you reading the passages?</p>
<p>yeah, I am and I also tried different strategies. reading the questions, then passage. read questions, then skim passage, then read passage. Answer questions as groups or individually, etc, but none seems to be working.</p>
<p>just read and answer the question.</p>
<p>first time i took it, i tried PR's strategy and i saw it wasn't working well, so i freaked and skimmed passages because i was running out of time.i got a 23 on the reading.</p>
<p>I recently got the real ACT book and started to practice my reading abilities.i read through passages at speeds i felt i understood everything;it takes me around 3 mins and 20 secs to read each passage,which is surprising;on the actual test it took me about 4 mins just to skim each passage.just practice reading and give yourself around 30 secs for each question.being relaxed and familiar with the section helps a lot.i am averaging a score of 27 now.</p>
<p>Thanks! yeah, i tried PR's strategy, and answering all the referring questions were brutal 'cause I wouldn't be able to find the correct sections. Now, I'm just reading the passage from beginning to end with the questions in mind and answering the questions one by one. It takes about 9min for each passage. idk, is that a reasonable time for the test?</p>
<p>well 4 passages and 35 mins.</p>
<p>about 8 mins and 30 secs for each passage.</p>
<p>work on your timing a bit,but i'd rather spend 9 mins answering passages to the best of my abilities and guess on the last 4 or so questions then speed through the test and end up getting 15 or so wrong.</p>
<p>I agree that the PR strategy isn't good. What I did is I read the passage thoroughly without reading the questions, and then read and answered all the questions (referring back to the passage as needed). I would say that 9 minutes for the first three passages is good timing and use the rest on the last passage (most of the time if not always it's a science passage which I find easier to understand and go through). So this is what I used on the reading and i got my score up from a 30 to a 34. Good luck.</p>