The Reading Test always have the same four types of reading passages, and they will always be in the same order:
- Prose Fiction–a short story or an excerpt from a longer fiction story. Something you would typically find in your English class.
- Social Science–something that a teacher from Social Studies would instruct, including history, economics, psychology and more. This is basically, any non-fiction area that is not a “hard” science like physics, chemistry, etc.
- Humanities – This is about art, music, films, and other creations. You’ll find first-person and third-person accounts of human creative tasks.
- Natural Science – Could be anything from the sciences, such as astronomy, geology, or physics. You won’t have to have any specialized scientific knowledge – it will be material you can understand simply based on the passage.
Each passage is approximately 700-800 words, and has 10 questions that follow. You will have two subscores: The Social Studies/Sciences subscore is based the Social Science and Natural Science passages, and the Arts/Literature subscore is based on your performance on the Prose Fiction and Humanities passages.
This is the one section of the ACT where no background knowledge is required, other than having the skill of knowing how to read.
This test is extremely quick; if you want to finish the whole thing you must be a fast reader. You can improve your overall reading speed and comprehension by reading high quality books and magazines.
Hope you found this article helpful! If you did, please share it with your friends. Thanks, Brian Stewart