Reading ACT

The Big Technique: Follow the Four Steps Step 1– Read the Question When you read the question, put it in your own words before going to the passage to find the answer. Step 2– Find the Answer in the Passage Use the line reference or lead word to locate the part of the passage with the answer in it. Read there until you’ve figured out the answer. Step 3– Put the Answers in Your Own Words This is the most important step. You must put the answer in your own words before you go back to look at the answer choices. You do this to confirm that you really understand what you’re reading and to avoid falling for any of the traps that are waiting in the wrong answer choices. Step 4– POE Read the answers and cross off any that don’t agree with your answer.

Use the Four Steps 1. The theme presented by the Chicago “Century of Progress” celebration in line 4 was that: A. humankind can triumph over adversity. B. the Depression was almost over C. the future held world peace. D. prosperous times were ahead for all Americans. One of the peculiarities of the years of the Great Depression was the fact that in the middle of the worst economic period American had ever seen, four cities somehow found the time, money, and energy to produce four World’s Fairs—more than during any other time period in the nation’s history. (4) The first, Chicago’s “Century of Progress” celebration, opened for business on a 400-acres landfill on the ledge of Lake Michigan on Apriol 29, 1933. The fair, said its president, Rufus C. Dawes, on opening day, was “the spontaneous expression of the pride of citizenship of Chicago” and, furthermore, demonstrated man’s “power to prevail over the perils that best him.” Over the two years of the fair’s life, 38 million people came to witness its attractions, giving the city of Chicago a helpful shot of income for several months (although the fair itself lost money, as World’s Fairs tend to do). This question tells you that the information you need is in line 4. Never read only the indicated lines. Start about 5 lines earlier and continue about 5 lines past, adjusting for where sentences begin and end. The first thing you should do is put the question in your own words. You should have something like, “What was the theme of the Chicago celebration?” Then go to the passage. Start at line 4 with “The first,” and read until the end of the paragraph. What was the theme of the celebration? Put it in your own words before going to the answers. You should have something similar to “The people of Chicago are proud, and mankind can make it through hard times.” If that’s not what you thought it was saying, you should reread the passage now. Now compare your answer to the answer choices. None of them mentions Chicago, but choice A sounds like what we got from the passage. Choice B mentions the Depressions, which isn’t discussed here. Choices C and D also talk about stuff that just isn’t mentioned in this part of the passage. The correct answer is choice A.

LINE REFERENCE Always do questions that include line numbers or paragraph numbers first. You’ll have to do some reading for every question on the test, but if you start with these line reference question, you won’t be shooting in the dark. These types of questions tell you where to look for the answer.

LEAD WORD QUESTIONS Many questions do not include line numbers. The problem is figuring out which part of the passage to read. No problem. You are going to pick out words in the question that jump out at you—lead words—and use them to help you find where to read in the passage. It’s a bit like looking something up in the dictionary. If you’re looking for the definition of “peripatetic,” you wouldn’t start at A and read every entry until you finally reached the one you want. You’d flip to the P’s and start scanning for “peripatetic” until you found it. That’s how lead words work. You scan the passage until you find them and then start reading to find the answer. Try it on this question: 2. According to the passage, Norman Bel Geddes was: There are no line numbers, but there are great lead words. Names make for great lead words because they are capitalized. That makes them jump out of the passage when you scan it. Scan the passage for Norman Bel Geddes, and read until you figure out what the passage says he was.

REVERSE LEAD WORD Sometimes, the question doesn’t have any great lead words, but the answer choices do. This frequently happens when you’re being asked to identify a particular place or person. No big deal. Use the answer choices as your lead words. Consider this question: World’s Fairs were held in all of the following states in the Great Depression EXCEPT: Illinois Texas Florida California This question is not only a reverse lead word question it’s an EXCEPT question. Generally, you want to save EXCEPT questions for last because they involve finding three “correct” answers and one “incorrect” answer—much more work. Nevertheless, we’re going to tackle this one. This questions doesn’t have a great lead word (“Great Depression” doesn’t count because the entire passage is about the Great Depression), let’s look at the answer choices. Place names are easy to find because they are capitalized, so these should work well. Chicago comes up almost immediately, and because that’s in Illinois, you can cross our choice A. Remember, on an EXCEPT question you’re looking for the “wrong” answer. Texans pops up pretty quickly in line 11, and Texas in line 13, so answer choice B is gone too. Line 20 mentions San Francisco as a fair site, so there goes choice D. The correct answer is choice C. POE wins again.

WORKS CITED Domzalski, Shawn Michael. Crash Course for the ACT: the Last-Minute Guide to Scoring High. 4th ed., New York, New York, Princeton Review, 2012.