Quizzes, exams, and flashcards about Reading: Reading 1 — what the words support.
← ACT
Thirty-six questions in forty minutes, across literary and informational texts — the section where most people run out of time.
Three reporting categories:
Twenty-seven of the thirty-six questions are scored; you cannot tell which nine are not.
Forty minutes, four passage sets, thirty-six questions. That is ten minutes a set, of which the reading itself takes three or four. Almost nobody finds the passages hard. Most people find the clock hard, and the strategies that matter are all about the clock:
Between what the text states, what it implies, and what is simply true or reasonable. Only the first two can be the answer, and on the ACT the wrong options are usually of the third kind: statements a sensible person would agree with, that the passage never supports.
This is why background knowledge is a liability here as often as an asset. If you know something about the subject, one option will agree with what you know and feel right. The only evidence is the words on the page.
The other reliable trap is the extreme word. Always, never, all, proves, the only — a passage that says something is often true does not support an option that says it always is, and the mismatch is usually the whole question.
A word you know, used in a sense you do not expect, with four definitions offered. The right one is fixed by the sentence, not by the dictionary — and the most common meaning of the word is very often the wrong answer. Cover the options, decide what the sentence needs, then look.
