ACT Strategy: the 2nd Sweep

By Doug Buehl,
Madison East High School teacher
Member, Wisconsin State Reading Association

April 2002

A short excerpt about an apprehensive girl’s excursion to an art museum to view a famous painting that reminds her of a teacher. A portion of passionate testimony at a congressional hearing debating the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park. A reminiscence by a young woman contrasting her experiences in India with growing up in the United States. Musings by a naturalist about the biological partnerships at work in a tropical rain forest.

What do these four examples of text have in common? They were all featured passages on a recent ACT reading test. Each presents a challenge of a particular nature, from inferring emotions to tracking logical arguments. Some passages are jam-packed with sophisticated vocabulary. In the course of this 35-minute test, readers will journey in their minds from an urban America cultural setting, to the wilds of western national parklands, to daily life in the distant country of India, to a threatened South American rain forest. Clearly, test-takers face a formidable task when confronting this section of an ACT.

The Strategy
Last month’s column (March 2002) introduced a three-stage protocol for tackling ACT reading passages. The 1st Sweep through a passage was described in this previous column, and emphasizes initially “sizing up” the material before reading it. This month’s column will offer suggestions for the 2nd Sweep – a somewhat faster than normal reading of each of the four passages on an ACT.

Step 1: After a 20- to 30-second scouting of a passage (the 1st Sweep), readers should have gleaned a general sense of the topic, the perspective of the author, and a few key terms or vocabulary that might signal what is most significant for understanding. They will have slightly less than nine minutes to accomplish this preview, and then read the passage and answer the 10 questions that follow. Therefore the ACT encourages “macro-reading” – reading for major ideas and author intent, rather than a slow and comprehensive digestion of facts.

Step 2: The 2nd Sweep involves setting a pace that may be somewhat faster than normal reading. While test-takers do not need to rush through a passage, they should concentrate on the central message. Why is the author telling you this? What seems most important to this author? Does the author express a viewpoint or attitude related to this topic?

To help readers maintain a steady focus under severe time constraints, recommend they use selective marking as a comprehension strategy. When students search for a few key items in each paragraph, they prompt themselves to evaluate what is most important and avoid becoming bogged down in a morass of details.

Teachers can model paragraph-by-paragraph marking with a short selection on an overhead transparency. Only pick a few transcendent ideas or details for this attention; otherwise, students will waste time by overmarking and not consciously prioritize what they read. In addition, model briefly pausing at the end of each paragraph to quickly paraphrase and summarize its gist: “Basically, this section concerned . . . and the point of it seems to be . . .”

Many students report that selective marking helps them stay with a challenging passage, and gives them momentum to keep forging ahead, and not become diverted by unfamiliar terms or details. Also, when key sections are marked, it is easier to refer back during the 3rd Sweep, which involves answering the questions, and bouncing back to specific areas for a quick re-read or a verification.

Step 3: Students should read the four ACT passages somewhat differently, depending on the specific genre of text. The prose literature passage is the only fictional material they will encounter, and should be read with an aggressive eye for emotional content. Verbs like “sighed,” “winced,” or “smirked,” for example, all signal emotional qualities and should be marked. In addition, the relationship between characters is key to understanding a literary excerpt. How do the characters seem to get along? Are there any implied tensions or disagreements? Is a “history” between these characters suggested? Does the passage have a tone or mood, such as exhilaration, ominousness, resentment, or anger?

The ACT science passage may be from either the physical or biological sciences, but in marking this passage, students should be especially tuned into cause/effect dynamics. What phenomenon is being described, and what causes it? How or why does something happen? Why do certain results appear from certain conditions?

Students may find the science passage the most difficult because of a heavy load of unfamiliar vocabulary and densely detailed description, but if they focus on what is causing what, they have a blueprint for extracting the main point of these passages.

The last two passages, from the social sciences and humanities, could feature pieces representing a variety of disciplines and a wide range of topics. Although these passages tend to be informational in purpose, they also frequently reflect an author’s viewpoint. Readers need to mark key terms and phrases as they ponder: Why is the author telling me these things? What point is the author making about this topic?

Step 4: Finally, an essential aspect of the 2nd Sweep is inferential thinking. The ACT asks few literal detail questions and instead examines reader abilities to identify implicit rather than explicit messages. As students read, encourage them to generate “I wonder” statements: “I wonder why the author feels . . .” “I wonder if this is about . . .” “I wonder whether this means . . .” “I wonder” statements elicit hunches and suppositions about a text, hallmarks of inferential thinking. This strategy encourages readers to make predictions, formulate generalizations, and draw conclusions. As a result, they will be prepared for the 3rd Sweep: answering the questions and re-visiting targeted areas of the text for clarification or further information. This 3rd Sweep will be examined during next month’s column.

Posted April 11, 2002