ACT Reading — two passages, one topic: where the writers agree and where they part

ACT describes its Reading section as made of several parts: some hold one long passage, others two shorter passages on the same topic, and in those paired parts some questions involve both passages at once. Cross-passage questions are a different task from reading a single passage. You have to hold two positions in mind, find the ground they share, locate the exact point where they part, and predict how one writer would answer the other without inventing views that neither writer expresses.

This material gives you four original paired sets, three questions each. In the first, a wildlife biologist and a city animal-services director discuss coyotes that live in cities. In the second, a museum conservator and an art historian disagree about cleaning the darkened varnish from old paintings. In the third, an economist and a labor analyst draw different lessons from a trial of the four-day workweek. The fourth pair is literary: two narrators remember leaving a small farming town for a city, one with relief and one with grief.

The questions cover the main cross-passage moves. You identify what both writers would accept, often a point one of them concedes just before the word "But." You name the claim in one piece that the other most directly challenges. You predict a response: how the animal-services director would answer the biologist's view that removing coyotes seldom helps. You compare methods, such as a writer who argues from one specific incident against one who argues from a study. You explain what a phrase or an example does inside the argument, and in the literary pair you compare how two narrators feel about the same situation and what their details reveal.

Explanations quote the words that decide each answer and say which writer, if either, holds each wrong choice, which is the habit that makes paired questions quick: sort every choice by who says it. The flashcards summarize the strategy for a paired set, the signals of a concession, and the checks for "both writers would agree" and "how would Writer B respond."

The material offers a quiz and a flashcard deck. All passages are original and describe no real study, town or museum. It is written for students preparing for the ACT and is not produced or endorsed by ACT.

  • Identify the point on which two writers agree, including a point one writer concedes
  • Locate the claim in one piece that the other piece directly challenges
  • Predict how one writer would respond to the other using only stated views
  • Compare how two writers support their positions
  • Compare two narrators' responses to the same experience

Practice material written by Zestly, based on ACT's published description of the ACT Reading section (reporting categories Key Ideas and Details, Craft and Structure, Integration of Knowledge and Ideas; act.org, retrieved September 2026). All passages are original.

Sample question

Read the following two short pieces about coyotes that live in cities. Writer A is a wildlife biologist; Writer B directs a city's animal-services department. Writer A: Coyotes have lived in American cities for decades, mostly unseen. In our tracking study, collared coyotes spent their days in rail corridors and along the edges of golf courses and crossed streets at night, when people were indoors. Attacks on people are rare; in most years our city records none. When a coyote does become bold, the cause is almost always food left out by people, on purpose or not. Trapping and removing coyotes seldom solves anything: the territory remains, and within months a new animal moves in to claim it. The better investment is teaching residents to secure garbage, bring pet food inside and haze a coyote (shout, wave, throw a tennis ball) so that it relearns its fear. Writer B: I agree with biologists that most coyotes in our parks are harmless and that people who feed them create the trouble. But "most" is not "all." Last spring a single coyote followed joggers on the river trail for weeks, and hazing did not change it. An animal that has learned to approach people will not be taught otherwise by a tennis ball, and waiting for it to bite someone is not a policy. Our department removes such animals, rarely and only after documenting the behavior. Education is our first tool; it cannot be our only one. On which point do both writers agree?

See the answer

Food left out by people is a main reason some coyotes become bold.

Writer A says bold behavior comes "almost always" from food left out by people, and Writer B opens by agreeing that "people who feed them create the trouble." Neither wants every park coyote removed (Writer B removes animals "rarely"), Writer B describes a coyote that hazing did not change, and Writer A says attacks are rare.

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