ACT Speed Reading Guide

Summary

1. Recommended Reading Sequence: Start with Passage 2, then move to Passage 3, followed by Passage 4, and finally Passage 1 (usually the most difficult). 

2. Skim the Article: Spend approximately 4-5 minutes skimming the article. Analyze the importance of information rather than focusing on language comprehension. Identify key information, including special punctuations and characters, special sentences, key words, and opinion sentences.

3. Selective Reading: Don't read every sentence or paragraph carefully. Skip sentences that aren't special or important. Focus more on the left side of paragraphs, as they usually contain more questions (5-8). The last two paragraphs can often be read quickly if they don't contain special words or sentences.

4. Analyzing Choices: Pay attention to key words when reading choices. If a choice contains a wrong key word, discard it immediately. If a choice aligns with key information in the article, even if not all words are understood, choose that option.

**Key Information:**

1. Special Punctuations and Characters: - Special punctuations include colon (:), semicolon (;), dash (—), hyphen(-), quotation mark (“”), question mark (?), exclamatory mark (!), and parentheses (). - Special characters include italics, CAPITALS, numbers, people's names, locations, and countries.

2. Special Sentences: - Pay attention to signal words and key information around them, such as "not...but...", "however", "not", "but", "not only...but also...", and negative words. - Consider comparative and superlative forms, comparison sentences, parallel structure, question sentences, inverted sentences, conditions, contrast sentences, cause-effect sentences, and emphasis.

This guide emphasizes efficient reading strategies and selective analysis of key information to enhance comprehension and accuracy in answering ACT reading questions.