Do you actually read the science passages?

Test Preparation ACT Preparation
1

<p>I just finished taking my first ACT practice test and I found that I had very little time in the science section due to the fact that I actually read the science passages.</p>

<p>So, do you guys actually read the passages in their entirety? Or do you look at the questions and read what is needed to answer the question? Any particular strategies you find useful?</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

2

<p>Nope, don’t read the passages unless you have to.</p>

3

<p>I started to and then I realized that most of the words except for those in the comparison passages are essentially worthless. I thought I was going slow and went too fast, so I may be wrong. It’s probably a subjective opinion.</p>

4

<p>You need to be selective in your reading and usually, you can avoid a most of it.</p>

<p>Atleast look at what the information is, then go to the questions. If a question appears to be unsolvable, skip it or skim the passage looking for italicized text or anything useful. Don’t waste time on questions that you really can’t solve anyway. </p>

<p>For debating scientists, read the question, then read the information rather than trying to memorize anything.</p>

<p>

Pace is important.</p>

5

<p>I don’t think I have ever read every word in an entire science passage ever on any ACT and I consistently get 34s on practices and the last test I took. You need to read very little to get them all right but miss one tiny key word and you’ll get the majority wrong. The secret to always only missing 2 or less on every ACT science section is how fast and how many key words/key phrases you can pick out. 70% are in the graphs/charts and the remaining 28% are in the explanations. Somewhere around 2% of questions I’ve encountered are nowhere in the passage nor have anything to do with the experiment, they simply ask you a science question like the bio/physics/chem section of the SAT2. Weird, but they are there.</p>

<p>Hope that helps.</p>

6

<p>Thanks a bunch guys for the input!</p>

<p>@g0ld3n: About the 2% part: is there anything we can really do to prepare for that? On the one practice test I took today, all of the information seemed to be given to you and I think that’s how it should be.</p>

7

<p>No. Don’t read the passage. All you need are the graphs</p>

8

<p>For the data representation/5-question passages and the research/6-question passages, don’t read the passages. I always found that reading the conflicting viewpoints passage DID help. Good luck!</p>