<p>I am having a hard time w/ the reading section.....I can't seem to finish on time and my score is the lowest on this sect. Any Advice, tactics, or tips?</p>
<p>plz help! :(</p>
<p>Get these books:</p>
<p>Kaplan
Real ACT Book
Barron’s</p>
<p>Kaplan helps you with timing because its passages are considerably longer than real ACT passages</p>
<p>The real ACT book is good because it contains actual reading passages from actual tests</p>
<p>barron’s is really good because it’s harder than the real act reading sections</p>
<p>also, read the strategies in all three books (particularly kaplan and barron’s.. they helped me jump from a 23 in reading to a 34 on reading in 2 months)</p>
<p>From 23 to 34? Wow, cool. I just took the one test from the Red book as diagnosed test. I got 23 on reading, too. Hope Kaplan would also help tremendously!</p>
<p>yeah.. kaplan helped me… the questions were a little harder and the passages were a little longer.. so that really helped get my timing straightened out.. and it increased my accuracy b/c i was able to recognize some stuff i had previously not been able to recognize</p>
<p>but are there any tips or advice tho…I am def. gonna follow ur suggestions ^^…cuz like I am reading the entire passage in about 4 mins, which gives me 5 mins for 10 qs. And that is not enuf time cuz I keep going bak to the passage trying to find the answer. 
anything u’all suggest I change? anyother approach?</p>
<p>i know!!! i have the same problem as u, sigh… i m going to spend the next three weeks figuring out how to read fast T______________T</p>
<p>to peytocline: 23 to 34??? omg, how did u do that? from 23 to 34? did u just read the passages and do the problems..? or there s more to that..</p>
<p>i was doing kaplan today, it took me 12 minutes to do one reading passage, and i got 4 out of 10 - -||||||||||||. sighhh… i took ACT in june, and got 14, my god… reading part is sooooo hard</p>
<p>Peytoncline, how fast do u read ea passage?
and wat approach do u use?</p>
<p>^^ i can read a passage in 2 - 3 minutes, which gives me about 6 - 7 minutes to answer the questions (8 min 45 secs for each passage)… what i do is read the passage as fast as i can.. the key to this is don’t think about what you’re reading.. just read it.. if you try to think about what you’re reading, you’ll slow down, and you’ll actually miss more info… i can vouch for that –> that’s how it used to be for me… when i read strategies over and then did a lot of practicing, my scores boosted… i got a 25, 21, and 23 on my first 3 ACT reading tests, respectively (30, 30, 31 overall composite in that order as well)… and then on my last two, i got a 32 and a 34 respectively (34 and 35 overall composite in that order as well)… so my reading jumped my ACT score up to almost a perfect score.. it took a while to do, but i eventually got my reading where it needed to be</p>
<p>in two months?</p>
<p>Peytoncline, thats a pretty good strategy. I’ve been doing a wrong approach; I try to learn as much as I can from the passage, which takes me like 4 mins to read. and try to answer qs from memory and try to go bak…and run outta time.
So all ur saying is, read the passage 1st and don’t try to comprehend. Answer QS by looking bak at the passage and trying to find where that answer is?</p>
<p>Its kinda like looking a big jigsaw puzzle and try to look at where things are but don’t try to solve it. —> if that makes sense :p</p>
<p>^^ yeah, in a way, that’s it.</p>
<p>what i did on every passage was i was able to answer 3 - 4 by memory, 2 - 3 questions i answered by double-checking with the passage (i thought i knew the answer, but i wasn’t 100%), and then on the last few questions, i was stuck between 2 or 3 answers, so i rechecked with the passage a little more thoroughly… for me, it always took me about 10 mins for the prose passage (so now i’m 1 min 15 secs behind)… then about 8 and a half mins for the humanities and social studies passages each (so now i’m 45 secs behind), and then a little under 8 mins for the science passage (so i’m like 0.001 secs ahead)… i barely finished in time, but i somehow manages (i probably could have saved about 5 - 10 secs on each passage in my reading, but i still finished, so i didn’t worry about it)</p>
<p>but yeah… june 07 ACT – 25 reading… october 07 ACT – 21 reading… february 08 ACT – 23 reading… april 08 ACT – 32 reading… june 08 ACT – 34 reading.</p>
<p>so 2 months between a 23 and a 32 (i had been consistently getting 34’s on the real act book’s reading the night before, so i was sure i got this down… and i did)… and then i just went up a little more to a 34 for june… took me a complete year to figure everything out, but now i’m finally done</p>
<p>but the way u practice, is it read each passage over and over again in the two months..?</p>
<p>no, i just kept taking different reading tests and then i went through my right and wrong answers and saw why they were right or wrong… i probably went through 15-20 reading tests (so that’s 60-80 passages)</p>
<p>I completely agree with peytoncline. I didn’t use any review books but I took
A couple of practice tests from the red book. First test, I got a 28 but then I changed my approach to one similar almost identical to peytonclines and got a 35 on the June act</p>
<p>ah, ok, so just read more? XD</p>
<p>I’m going to help you out. I don’t know if the method I’m going to introduce you guys is foolproof; however, I’m not a genius like the rest of you guys, so if it works for me, there’s a good chance it’ll work for you. Before this method, i got all kinds of scores on practice tests (22,24,25,26,26,23). After being introduced to the method, practicing it a bit, and taking the June ACT, I raised my reading score from 24 to 32. Here’s how you do it.</p>
<p>TIME. TIME. TIME. That’s what killed me on my reading scores. After getting most of the first 30 questions right, I’ll have maybe 2 mins left to finish the last 10 questions. I’ll end up getting maybe two or three of the last ten right. Since it’s important, I’m going to repeat: TIME. More time equals more chances to get more questions right (duh), so how do you get more time? You can’t add more time to the period of 35 minutes (even though I wish I could). The only thing you can do is speed up. </p>
<p>When I say speed up, everyone automatically thinks of reading speed. “If you can’t read fast, you won’t do good on the reading section.” “You have to read fast if you want to answer more questions.” LIES. If you want to learn to read fast, go right ahead. It’ll help you while reading a book, but it won’t necessarly help you on the ACT.</p>
<p>On the Reading section you have 35 Minutes or 40 questions (4 passages). Divide 35 by 4 and you get 8.75. That means you have on average 8 minutes and 45 secs per passage. So, Mr. Funployee, how does help me? Well by knowing this, you can keep better track of time on the test. Bringing a watch, I was able to figure out whether I was going too slow on a passage. As you can see Time control is the key.</p>
<p>LIMIT YOUR TIME READING EACH PASSAGE TO NO MORE THAN 2 MINUTES. DONT READ ALL OF THE PASSAGE. INSTEAD, READ ALL OF THE FIRST PARAGRAPH, THE FIRST SENTENCE OF EVERY OTHER PARAGRPAH, AND ALL OF THE LAST PARAGRAPH. THAT’LL GIVE YOU ON AVG 6 MINUTES AND 45 SECS TO ANSWER QUESTIONS. </p>
<p>Next thing I wanna talk about is order. I do Prose Fiction last because it takes the longest. For that passage, you should read all of it and answer the questions. If you remember the 2-Minute-Rule, you might go faster than expected through the rest of the passages, therefore, you’ll have more time to do the prose fiction.</p>
<p>So, that’s all there is to it.</p>
<p>^^^ the first paragraph and first sentence thing does work for some people.. i tried it out and it didn’t work for me (that’s why i use my strategy), but for some this does work.. so try out funployee’s strategy and mine and see which one works better for you</p>
<p>to peytoncline, how passages do u read everyday O.O? sorry, this should be my last question XD</p>