<p>I tried the strategy, "Quickly read the passage in 1-2 minutes and answer the questions in 5-6 minutes" and it was horrible. I finished with ~5 seconds remaining and i constantly had to refer back to the passages whenever i needed to answer a question. I felt like after i was done "skimming" i had absolutely no idea what i had just read and i wasn't ready to tackle the questions.</p>
<p>But, despite all of this, i scored a few points higher on this practice test (implementing the 1-2 min skim strategy) than i did on the one prior to it (where i read the passages completely through then answered the questions, but didn't have enough time to finish so had to guess on the last 10 or so).</p>
<p>Any tips to help me out? I'm scoring a 25 or so right now, and i want to bump that up to a 30+ because i KNOW i'm capable of doing it.</p>
<p>Hmm… well, if you’ve only taken two practice tests, take more! Practice will help you with time!</p>
<p>Also, I don’t do this myself, but some of my friends will read the questions first, then the passage, so they know what to look for in the reading. Maybe that strategy will work for you?</p>
<p>^if you read what the OP wrote, you would realize that the strategy you proposed would be MORE of a drag for the OP.</p>
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<p>You can infer from this quote that reading the questions before going to the passage would be a waste of time for the OP because he would simply forget the questions, and thus would read normally as if he/she had no idea what to look for. So, he would read the questions first, which he would have forgotten by the time he finished reading half-way (or so) through the passage, then read the passage, having forgotten the passage by the time he got to the questions, and then when he would be on the questions, he would have had to go back to the passage. That’s more time consuming than reading the passage, answering the question, while going to the passage no?</p>
<p>@JustMae, thanks for the suggestions but, as airfreshener pointed out, it would probably work against me.</p>
<p>@airfreshener, thank you too. I feel like my comprehension and speed are adequate but for some reason the reading section gives me the most trouble. I’ll do a few more practice tests and keep you guys updated.</p>
<p>Thanks again, and more responses are welcome.</p>
<p>Just skim the passage; don’t read it, but look at each paragraph and what it is generally about. That way you get a good idea of what the passage is about for the “main idea of the passage” and other more holistic questions.</p>
<p>Then attack the questions. Just general advice, but it does help me save time. I usually finish with a few minutes left and I have an official 34, unofficial 36.</p>
<p>I personally don’t like the 1-2min strategy for each passage. It’ll only make you forget easily, and thus make you go back to the passage and lose even more time. My strategy is skimming at a comfortable pace. By comfortable pace, I mean reading as fast as you can while still being able to take everything in. This works for me because I take around ~5min for Prose. Then for Science, which is my hardest, i take around 8-10min. The extra time for Science is made up by the Prose section.</p>
<p>I really think the exact opposite is the best way to take the reading portion, although it does depend on the your particular skills. </p>
<p>Read it slowly and really understand it. If you spend 2 more minutes on reading, that only breaks down to 12 seconds per question that you need to cut off to make up for that time.
You can easily cut off that much when you really understand the passage and know where to find particular answers.</p>
<p>I hate to say this, but in my experiences, a lot it comes down to reading speed. If you can read fast, you’ll do well, if you can’t, you’ll have a hard time. A lot of my friends make fun of me because I read in my free time sometimes, but I get the last laugh when it come to the reading section because while I get a 34+ on reading, they all sit there and get 24 or less They’re all smart kids, but they hardly ever read unless it’s required for homework, so they’re all pretty slow readers.</p>
<p>What I tell them to do is to read for an hour a day in the two weeks leading up to the ACT to get their reading speed up a bit and make it so reading feels like more of a habit. Of course none of them ever do it though, so I can’t really tell you if it works. The other thing I tell them to do is to make sure they pay attention to what they’re reading. You can’t go through the section and read in a zoned-out fashion. You have to read actively or you will not remember the answers.</p>
<p>I’ve taken it twice and feel like it helped me to underline important dates, numbers, emotion provoking words, and stuff like that while reading over it so the referring back was less of a time consuming hassle</p>
<p>I did this last time and I think I improved my subscore by A LOT but I’ll have to wait until Monday to find out :)</p>
<p>Read. That’s really the best thing you can do to improve. If you’re still in your junior year, you have a year to improve your reading skills and get your scores up. Get reading. A book a week is easy once you get into the habit of it. If you’re in your senior year, well, you probably can’t improve that much, but it’s worth a shot if you just need a couple more points.</p>
<p>Coming from an habitual reader who’s scored 34 on the reading twice.</p>
<p>i just read really slow. like normal pace. i finish with 10 minutes left</p>
<p>same on science. i read everything to what to me is slow. i take in all the info and don’t look back at the section unless it refers me to it. I guess im just a really fast reader.</p>
<p>Really batpad? You don’t refer back to the reading unless it directs you to it? That’s awesome! I guess i’ll try out different techniques with my practice tests. Thanks for all the responses guys, you’re all very helpful.</p>
<p>I just want to say that I haven’t really read the other posts so if someone has said this strategy already I’m sorry. This works for me:</p>
<p>What I do is I peruse through the first three passages and soak up all the information I need. When I do this I find that I don’t have to look back in the passage to answer most questions. I do this since I know the last passage is about Science where most of the questions are about data or some sort of answer that can be easily “scanned” in the passage.</p>
<p>I usually run out of time and have to guess on 2 or 3 questions but i know I got a good amount of them correct before the guessing begins due to careful reading.</p>
<p>For reference I scored a 30 in Reading on my last test (this Sept.).</p>
They’re all smart kids, but they hardly ever read unless it’s required for homework, so they’re all pretty slow readers.</p>