<p>Hello :P</p>
<p>I'm taking the ACT in a week and the one score I have to increase to get my dream score of 33 is reading. My reading right now is at about a 29, mainly because I simply don't know any strategies to increase my score. </p>
<p>It seems to me there are two ways to go about the reading section
1. Read the passages carefully and absorb all the information which allows you for the most part to answer the questions without referring back to the passage a million times
2. Skim the passages and answer the questions by referring back to the passage for many of the questions</p>
<p>I tried both of these methods and they seem to never work for me for different reasons. For the first one, you are relying pretty much on unreliable memory to answer the questions. Because of the time you take reading the passages, you can't afford to spend time looking for answers you don't remember by going back to the passages. For the 2nd, because you only know the main idea of the passage, you have to refer back to the passage multiple times to look for the subtle details the questions are looking for. This can result in having to take multiple guesses because often you might get stuck trying to find some obscure details which consumes your time. </p>
<p>So my question is, how do I increase my reading score to like a 32? I realize that in order to get that score, I must have a strategy that's concrete and foolproof. Any response would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!</p>
<p>Sorry i didn’t make it here before you tested. What did you end up getting?</p>
<p>Probably too late to help you in particular, but this is my strategy and it may help other people. I’ve always been a fast reader, so I can focus more on the questions. People that are not fast readers have to spend less time on the questions, but if they underline and pick out the important stuff they can do it. In the humanities and prose fiction, the questions often seem to focus on the characters, so you want to pay special attention to the relationships between them, their personalities, attitudes to the conflict, etc.</p>
<p>I was told that the Prose fiction piece is often the hardest of the four passages, for MOST people. Most people will find the social science, humanities, natural science, or prose fiction piece the easiest. The prose comes first to throw you off, since it is, often the hardest piece for most people. People without a good strategy will go through it and get thrown off for the remaining passages. You want to start with the easiest and go to the hardest, for a few reasons.</p>
<ol>
<li> You arent too demoralized by the hard ones to start</li>
<li> You can know how much time you have left to do the hardest questions in the end</li>
<li>it’s better to guess on hard questions than easier ones that you can figure out by analyzing it for 10-15 seconds</li>
</ol>
<p>Time is probably the biggest enemy for most test-takers on the reading test. Take the time you are given during the break before reading to regain your composure and have your strategy in mind when you go back.</p>
<p>I’m also curious to know your score!</p>