ACT Reading Test contains 40 questions to be answered in 35 minutes. The test is designed to measure your reading speed and comprehension. The passages on the reading test come from published materials, such as books and magazines, written at a level that a first-year college student can expect to read for a class.
NATURAL SCIENCE: This passage is adapted from the article "Worlds Apart: Seeking New Earths" by Timothy Ferris (2009 by National Geographic Society).
HUMANITIES: This passage is adapted from the article "Winslow Homer: His Melancholy Truth" by John A. Parks (2006 by VNU Business Media).
SOCIAL SCIENCE: Passage A is adapted from the book Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand (2001). Passage B is adapted from the article "The Flop Heard Round the World" by Peter Carlson (2007 by The Washington Post).
LITERARY NARRATIVE: This passage is adapted from the novel - A Map of Home, by Randa Jarrar (2008).
You have 35 minutes to read the reading test’s passages and answer the 40 multiple-choice questions. The reading test evaluates your ability to understand the passages that appear on the test. It does not test your ability to remember relevant facts from outside the passage. You don’t need to be knowledgeable about the subject area that a passage covers in order to do well on the questions, but you do need to read attentively and to think carefully about what you read.
The keys to the ACT Reading test are strategy and pacing. You need to have a plan for how you will read each passage, tackle the questions, and finish in the allotted time; otherwise it will be hard to achieve your desired score.
The reading test is a 40-question, 35-minute test that measures your ability to read closely, reason logically about texts using evidence, and integrate information from multiple sources. The test questions focus on the mutually supportive skills that readers must bring to bear in studying written materials across a range of subject areas.
The reading test measures your reading comprehension in three general areas: