How to Improve Your ACT or SAT Reading Score
Any ACT or SAT reading tutor worth her salt will tell you that tutoring reading is the toughest. While students can learn rules that govern math and grammar, scoring well on the reading comprehension sections of the tests often depends on a student’s lifelong reading habits and skills. Not surprisingly, online discussion boards like Reddit mimic ACT and SAT reading tutoring students’ most common question. “What can I do to improve my reading score?” In this post, I’ll share my top three tips, culled from over thirty years of tutoring SAT and ACT reading.
ACT SAT Reading Tutor Tip 1: Read, Especially What You’re Bad At
If you want to lift heavy weights, you’ve got to start by lifting weights. If you want to run fast, the only way to do it is by practicing running. Likewise, getting good at reading on the SAT and ACT means that you need to read. My website has links to a variety of publications that contain articles with the right difficulty and length. If you struggle with all kinds of reading passages, try to read one article from a different genre every day.
On the other hand, if you find only one or two genres challenging, focus on those. For example, even though I’m now an ACT and SAT reading tutor, I hated reading science passages as a kid. Whenever I took standardized tests, I’d feel like Peppermint Patty listening to Charlie Brown’s teacher when I read science passages. If you’re like me, you need to read more science!
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ACT SAT Reading Tutor Tip 2: Ask Yourself Questions About What You’ve Read
If you’re like most of my ACT or SAT reading tutoring students – or most humans, in general – you lose focus when you read things you find boring. And if you find SAT and ACT reading passages boring, that means you’re constantly losing focus. Therefore, it’s important to train yourself to focus and understand what you read.
As a veteran SAT and ACT tutor, I suggest asking yourself at the end of every paragraph, “OK, what did I just read?” Then jot down a note. This process will seem grueling when you start it. Eventually, you’ll be able to progress to two, then three paragraphs at a time. If you practice with current ACT or old SAT reading passages, you might want to write one note for each column of text.
Luckily, the new SAT reading passages are way shorter than the old ones. So if you practice with the old passages, you’ll be a reading ninja on the new SAT. Sort of like training for a 5K by running marathons every weekend! And even though the current SAT is digital, you’ll get scratch paper. Use it to jot down the main idea of each passage you read. This practice will make answering main idea questions – one of the most common reading comprehension questions out there – much easier.
ACT SAT Reading Tutor Tip 3: Practice Timed
One of my ACT and SAT reading tutoring students’ most frequent complaints is that they ran out of time. Of course, losing focus contributes to this problem. Every time you need to re-read a sentence, you waste time. Once you improve your focus, though, if you’re not finishing the reading section, you still need to practice understanding the main idea of a passage in less time. Using old SAT or ACT reading passages, practice gradually shaving three, then five, then ten seconds off the time it takes you to read and comprehend a passage. Only when you’ve gotten as fast as you can, should you move to the (currently) six published official SATs to try your new reading skills.
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Conclusion
Students sometimes skip prepping for the reading section of the SAT or the ACT. So do tutors, because it is the hardest section of these tests on which to move the score needle. But, with consistent, mindful practice, you can improve focus, increase comprehension, and even cut your time on the reading section. Good luck! Let me know how you’re doing in the comments below. And of course, if you need more direct SAT reading tutoring, feel free to reach out to me here.