Developing an ACT ‘Game Plan’
By Doug Buehl,
Madison East High School teacher
Member, Wisconsin State Reading Association
March 2002
It’s March Madness! All those months of preparation
and now it’s crunch time. The stakes are high, clutch performances
separate winners from losers, and these final scores really matter. The
pressure builds . . .
For many of our high school juniors and seniors, March
Madness is not increasingly dramatic basketball tournaments, it is the
reality that they must take their ACT and SAT college entrance exams.
Certainly, their course work over the years has been
steadily preparing them to confront this annual “rite of passage,”
but many students struggle with how to effectively show their knowledge
and abilities under the time constraints of what is becoming an increasingly
important test to a number of colleges and universities.
Underlying the demands on college board exams is the
need for proficient reading skills. For example, three of the four ACT
subtests involve extensive reading tasks. While it is arguable that timed
multiple choice exams are not the best method to evaluate a student’s
reading strengths, there are some insights that test takers can apply
to maximize their performance on reading passages on the ACT and SAT.
The Strategy
Because most Wisconsin students will take the ACT, specific mention of
strategies tailored to that test will be outlined below. However, these
tactics are also effective for reading sections on the SAT or PSAT.
Step 1: Start students with the premise that
although effective overall reading behaviors are necessary to do well
on ACT passages, test takers need to adopt a specific reading routine
to help them be successful within limited time parameters. Many students
mistakenly believe that to do well on an ACT passage, they must read very
carefully and try to absorb as much information as they can to answer
the questions. In essence, they approach these passages as “micro-readers”
who attempt to extract as much as possible in a short period of time from
a challenging (and often unmotivating) segment of text. When they become
inevitably rushed, they are left with insufficient time to do all four
reading passages well, and they may accomplish only a hazy notion of the
last passage, with haphazard guessing their only option.
Instead, successful handling of an ACT passage mandates
a more mature reading posture. As proficient readers, we rarely read to
essentially memorize a message; rather, much of the reading we do is to
ascertain the gist of a piece, to locate a few transcendent details, and
to make some generalizations or draw a few conclusions. The questions
on an ACT encourage this kind of reading, which might be termed “macro-reading,”
reading to see the “big picture,” to notice major ideas and
determine author intent. Macro-reading requires readers to follow a series
of aggressive strategies to get what they need within a short period of
time.
Step 2: Next introduce a three-stage protocol
for reading ACT reading passages. Because an ACT reading test contains
four passages and is allocated 35 minutes for completion, test takers
will have slightly less than nine minutes to read a passage and answer
the 10 questions. Students should target using their nine minutes to attack
an ACT passage in three sweeps:
- 1st sweep – intelligently “size up” the passage, in
about 20 to 30 seconds.
- 2nd sweep – read at a somewhat faster pace than normal, to obtain
a general understanding of the passage.
- 3rd sweep – revisit specific parts of the passage, as necessary,
to clarify answers to questions. The rest of the time, then, is spent
bouncing back and forth between select portions of the text and the
questions.
- Step 3: The 1st sweep is an especially critical phase for reading
under time pressure. Students will be tempted to jump right in and move
line by line through a passage. Instead, they need to be encouraged
to take a step back to get an initial “take” or impression
of a passage. The rest of this column will focus on this crucial first
glimpse of a potentially demanding ACT passage.
Model how to size up an ACT passage by demonstrating the following:
- Determine which passage you are examining. ACT reading will always
feature four types of text: prose literature, social science, science,
and humanities. The order these fall on the test may vary.
- Note the source of the passage. Who is the author and from what larger
text was this passage excerpted? Do you know anything about these?
- Adjust strategy according to type of passage. For the prose segment,
quickly scan to locate names of characters and a sense of where and
when this story is taking place. For the social science and humanities
passages, quickly scan for key words that signal the topic and discipline
being discussed. For example, a social science segment may feature a
variety of topics within the disciplines of history, political science,
economics, psychology, or sociology. Humanities pieces could examine
a topic about art, music, theater, architecture, literature, or other
aspects of culture. For the science segment, notice whether the topic
falls within biological or physical science. Then scan for clues of
a cause-effect relationship, of why or how something happens.
- Quickly skim the opening paragraph, and the first sentences of the
subsequent paragraphs, and the concluding paragraph. What does this
passage seem to be about? Try to establish a general sense of the focus
of this passage.
- Finally, as you size up the passage, be constantly aware of what you
know that might be useful in supporting your understanding of this piece.
Step 4: This systematic preview readies test takers for the 2nd
sweep, a somewhat accelerated read of the passage. Next month’s column
will detail strategies that help readers dig in when they begin this stage.
Posted March 11, 2002