Reading Foundations

What you'll learn

• Identify the four ACT Reading passage types: prose fiction/literary narrative, social science, humanities, and natural science
• Practice annotating passages for main idea, tone, and structure
• Develop a passage-reading order strategy based on personal strengths
• Understand how to budget 10 minutes per passage (or adjust for difficulty)

Key concepts

The ACT Reading section presents four passages (sometimes including a paired passage set) with 9 questions each, totaling 36 questions in 40 minutes. The passage types (literary narrative, social science, humanities, and natural science) always appear in that order. Active reading means engaging with the text by underlining topic sentences, circling transition words, and jotting a one-line summary for each paragraph. This small upfront investment saves time when answering questions because you already know where key information lives.

Pro tips

• Start with your strongest passage type to build confidence and bank time for harder passages.
• Spend roughly 3 minutes reading the passage and 7 minutes answering questions. Adjust as needed.
• For 'main idea' questions, the answer is almost always in the first and last paragraphs.