so now what we'll do is move on to the reading section okay your favorite right by show of hands how many of you would say that the reading section of the acct is your all-time favorite like you absolutely love the reading section okay this normally would expect only a few hands go up most people are not crazy about the reading section well for those of you who are not crazy about it tell me what is it that you don't like about the reading section what is it that just burns you up about it okay um so once we often hear the passages are too long what else you just don't like to read in general okay what else run out of time right is boring okay you definitely hear that one a lot it's boring what else okay questions are confusing and what else is hard to comprehend he said you're tired okay so it's boring and you tired okay so pastures are too long you don't really like to read you definitely run out of time it's boring you're tired questions are confusing it's hard to comprehend okay so the acct reading section is actually my favorite section of the test to teach it's my favorite section of teach here's why because in the years that I've been doing this I've been able to figure out what your problem is I know what the big mistake that you're making on the acct reading section is and why it always gives you so much trouble the big mistake that you're making on the acct reading section is this word right here that's the mistake that you're making you're reading and you don't way too much of it to begin with okay so if you can follow along for the next 20 or 30 minutes what I'm actually gonna do is show you how to answer the questions to the AC T reading section with barely doing any reading at all barely doing any reading at all okay that's why it's so important for you to follow along for you to be paying attention stay awake and make sure that you take notes because listening to me talk will do absolutely nothing for you listen to me talk will do nothing for you you have to be paying attention you have to take notes okay so the AC T reading section first thing we need to know is how the reading section is set up all right you got four passages 40 questions thirty-five minutes four passages for two questions 35 minutes you don't even get a full minute per question okay so some people are gonna look at that and say well shoot it takes me you know 20 minutes just to read through the passages let alone start answering any questions that's because you may not be approached approaching it the best way okay but four passages forty questions thirty minutes you got 10 questions per passage it is designed for you to run out of time is the time is supposed to be an issue for you they don't want everybody to get a perfect 36 on the mess on the reading section excuse me on the reading section time is supposed to be an issue okay now these are the four different types of passages you have you have literary narrative approach fiction social sciences humanities Natural Science okay literary narrative approach fiction Social Sciences humanities and Natural Science okay so notice we're only one of those did I say fiction so that means that the of the three must be considered what correct nonfiction okay nonfiction well what are the differences between the two right ones real and one's fake which is which okay nonfiction is real fiction it's fake all right so give me some examples of a fiction book okay Harry Potter Hunger Games Twilight Percy Jackson Junie be Jones Keeping Up with the Kardashians right all that is fake okay I'll that's fiction so now give me some examples of nonfiction all right so biographies encyclopedias textbooks dictionaries atlases okay all right even essays that you write for class will be considered nonfiction okay if you're writing that essay for class but not a story or anything like that all right essays would be considered a nonfiction all right so now one thing that you have to remember is that the AC T at the end of the day is an open book test you don't have to remember what you read okay and no point is anybody gonna jump from behind a wall and say hey summarize passage number two okay are you being graded on how much you read or are you being great on how much you remember absolu not what are you being graded on your answers to the questions these little circles with a letter inside of them that's the only thing you're being graded on so if you don't have to read everything and don't have to remember everything that you read why are you reading everything to begin with because truthfully rather than reading everything what you should be doing is skimming now here's the issue if I were to ask everybody in this room to flip their paper over and write the definition of skimming we might get at least 15 to 20 different definitions okay so I want to get everybody on the same page so when I say skimming what does that mean to you I mean I say just look for the keywords well how do you know what how can you just glance at a page and know what the keywords are okay or if you say read somebody might say read the first and last sentence from every paragraph or whatever okay you're gonna have a lot of different answers but let's get us all together on the same page okay remember how I said even essays that you write for class will be considered nonfiction okay every essay that you write is supposed to have something in it call what correct main idea thesis statement topic sentence key argument all those words mean the same thing okay you know every essay that you write is supposed to have one of those in it okay so we're in your essay is your thesis statement normally supposed to be located right it should be in the first paragraph truthfully should be wearing the first paragraph towards the end of the first paragraph one of the last sentences in that introductory paragraph okay what is the function of your thesis statement correct to tell the reader what the entire essay is gonna be about I should be able to read that one sentence and know what the entire essay is gonna be about okay so is the body of an essay normally just one paragraph we should really be about how many right like three to five three to five paragraphs okay so you're telling me that in that one thesis statement that topic sentence my key argument whatever I'm gonna call it I'm gonna be listening or summarizing the different aspects of my topic that I'm about to discuss in my essay right well anytime I'm making a list of something what punctuation mark am I using don't think too hard commas right I'm gonna be using commas so the next question is how long should it really take you to look towards the end of the first paragraph and find the sentence with all the commas in it and highlight or underline it just a few seconds right because you know exactly where you're supposed to be looking and you know exactly what you're looking for and am I saying it's always gonna have a bunch of comments in it no not necessarily but you know exactly where you're supposed to be looking and what you're looking for and you know by definition this one sentence is gonna tell you what the entire essay is going to be about okay so this is how we will start off skimming but the first step actually no matter what type of passage it is your first step is to read the blurb read the blurb okay and what the blurb is the blurb is located right above the passage you're gonna see in bold letters will type of passage it is with this prose fiction literary narrative social sciences humanities Natural Science you'll see that in bold letters what type of passage it is and then you get some details about like who wrote it or what it was published in some information about the author okay so if you have these book the booklets in front of you turn the page turn to page 32 in the practice test and your full practice test page 32 okay and if you see the blurb on page 32 put your finger on it all right so that blurb is located in the same place for every passage it's located in the same place for every passage okay so now how many minutes do we get on this section right we get 35 minutes to answer how many questions 40 questions okay right now you got 20 seconds fine every blurb in the reading section and highlight underline it go ten okay times up raise two fingers if you found all four blurbs okay good so now what I want you to do is go to your take action on the a CT practice of the strategy booklet excuse me and we actually put two reading passages in this book so turn to the first reading passage in this booklet there are two of them in there turn to the first one okay since we only gave you two reading passages in this booklet right now you have ten seconds find both the blurbs and highlight underline them go okay stop raise two fingers if you found both the blurbs okay so we're getting the hang of this okay find the blurb highlight or underline it so now the next step if we're doing a nonfiction passage okay so we can't do that for this first passage in here that says social sciences excuse me it says literary narrative so we got to go to the second passage it says social sciences okay so that second passage turn to that one and our next step since we've already found the blurb the next step is to find the thesis statement okay so you got 20 seconds find a thesis statement go okay times up raise two fingers if you found it okay so everybody look up here for a second not where did I say but where did you say that you're supposed to put your thesis statement if you are writing an essay in the first paragraph right well how many sentences are in the first paragraph in this passage one okay so what's the thesis statement the entire first paragraph you know what a lot of people did you started you saw that little one at the top so that can't be it that's too small and you went down to the next paragraph that was huge and started looking in there do not second-guess yourself if you were writing this essay you would have to put your thesis statement in the first paragraph they have to abide by the same rules okay so it's that first paragraph so somebody read that let's read that paragraph together that first paragraph in the UH for the social sciences passage okay okay so the amazonian workshop school for fabrication of stringed instruments Ola is a small part of a larger effort to create a sustainable harvest of the great Amazon forest and to give employment to the region's burgeoning population okay so what are some words in that paragraph that you just read that jump out to you and give us some evidence about what this passage is gonna be about okay what words do we see alright so employment okay that's dealing with a larger y word you take this class in high school right economics okay so somehow we're talking about the economy and it says what Amazon for so you know we're not talking about the United States okay we're talking about the Amazon so somehow we're talking about the economy of the Amazon what other words jump out to you okay sustainable harvest okay so you know what sustainability means when we're talking to reference to the environment so what that means is let's say if we were to walk out this door as soon as you walk out the door there's a catfish pond and every day I went out there and took a huge fishing boat it just took as many catfish as I possibly could out of the pond every single day eventually what's gonna happen right it's gonna run out you're gonna run out of catfish because I'm not giving the environment enough time to replenish yourself I'm taking and taking and taking but not leaving enough so that it can be sustained okay so sustainability means only taking what we absolutely need and making sure that we leave enough so that the environment can continue that's why you're only supposed to hunt deer during deer season because if everybody just killed deer whenever they felt like it eventually what's gonna happen right you know you're gonna kill off the entire population so we know we're dealing with environmentally friendly issues and its passage so somehow we're talking about we're combining environmental issues of the Amazon and how that affects their economy okay well what type of institution is this that we're talking about in here okay so it says workshop school ok so school is dealing with a larger or what education so somehow we're talking about education and environmental issues of the economy of the Amazon and what do they do at this school what is this a fabrication of strained instruments and stringed instruments are used to do what right play music okay somehow we're talking about how music education in environmental issues are affecting the economy of the Amazon guys I've read this passage of a million times everything that you just said basically sums up with this entire passage is talking about okay that sums up what this entire passage is talking about and how much have you read one sentence one sentence and you have the gist of where the author is going with this passage okay this is how you skim this is exactly how you skin you have those main themes and you know what direction this author is going in and you've read one thesis statement and dissected it to really pull apart those details and get a general idea of what this passage is gonna be about this is how you skim okay now when I ask you for some examples of fiction you said Cat in the Hat you said Harry Potter you said Hunger Games you said Percy Jackson all that so I have a confession to make I have never in my life read a Harry Potter book sorry I just haven't okay but for those of you who have do they tell you on the first page in the first paragraph of the Harry Potter book what's going to happen in the entire rest of the story probably not right okay so that means we can't skim our fiction passage the same way we skim the nonfiction passages okay we have to have a different method so the first step is still to read the blurb and we know what the blurb is located okay but then the second step so let's turn back to the first reading passage I mean the literary narrative passage that's in your book so in the literary narrative passage the first step is read the blurbs we've got that taken care of the next step is to find the proper nouns now how can I just glance at a page and no one I see proper nouns what am I looking for I'm looking for names of people of places of you know stuff like that so how can I just glance at a page you know when I see that I'm looking for what write capital letters okay so how many minutes on this section how many minutes do we get up to do the reading section all right we get 35 minutes to answer how many questions 40 questions okay so you have 20 seconds I want you to find every capital letter every every proper noun in this first passage and highlight or underline it go ten okay stop time's up raise two fingers if you found some all right so let me tell you what I see some people doing whoo there go one so there goes another one you're doing this wrong don't read don't read stop reading you're wasting time do not read okay you should be skipping around the page when you see a word that starts with a capital letter highlight and move on do not go line by line you should be skipping around the page to find words that start with a capital letter I'll give you seven more seconds go okay raise two fingers if you found something all right do not read okay so we'll come back to those the next step after I found the proper nouns my next step is I want to look for dialogue dialogue what do you think I mean when I say dialogue okay right when characters are talking to another when they're having a conversation how can I just glance at a page and know when characters are talking right I'm looking for quotation marks right okay here's why I want to do that if I were to run over to this dude and say hey mama said we have to hurry up and clean our room before we get a whoopin chances are you would expect our relationship to be wood right we're siblings and you have an idea of the setting which is most likely what right most likely we're at home you have an idea of the plot which is what either we're about to clean our room or get a whoopin right so you're telling me you knew two of the characters their relationship to one another you have an idea of a setting and you have an idea of the plot I just said one sentence to them but everybody in this room knew what was going on from that one sentence this is why you want to find the dialogue you got 20 seconds go ten okay time's up raise two fingers if you found some dialogue okay so let's read together that dialogue that we found okay right here hi honey how was the trip did you get any sleep a little been waiting long long enough to beat your dad in two games of cribbage okay so based on that dialogue base well we just read what would you say is most likely these characters are relationship to one another what do you think okay some people are saying husband a wife some people saying mother and sons because a mother and child okay so let's read it again together okay one more time hi honey how was the trip did you get any sleep a little been waiting long long enough to beat your dad in two games of cribbage once again what do you think these characters relationships are to one another okay so forget this story all together let's just back up a second question has anybody in your life ever called you honey baby sweetie anything like that of the sort okay were you married to all those people no right so why do we think just because they call them honey that these people are automatically married to one another who would most likely call you honey baby sweetie or whatever like that and say oh yeah I've been over here what your daddy playing this game right most like this mother talking to her child okay so do we understand why it's not husband and wife all right so mother and child are speaking all right so what is happening in the story right now based on what we just read right okay so who just got back from a trip the mom of the chattel so the child just got back from a trip mom and dad are there waiting on them okay so let's start putting a profile of these people together this child that you're talking about you think we mean like a toddler why not right because that's very negligent parenting little three-year-old golf on a trip by themselves this is also a very articulate child if that's the case so it's at least like a teenager or a young adult just got back from a trip mom and dad are they're waiting on ok so we got that part so far now remember how you underlined those proper nouns earlier just start yelling them out to me what you find ok yeah portage Wynonna Detroit Lakes Minneapolis ok Las Vegas but ok I can't help noticing that I'm hearing a lot of people say names of cities so if you had to take a wild guess only based on what we know so far what do you think these cities relevance is gonna be to this story right probably places that the child travel to on their trip right ok so now if you have to take another wild guess what would you say was most likely their mode of transportation ok train car bus plane right okay read the blurb read the blurb was it safe from aboard the night train right ok so train now I want you to notice something we've been talking about this same passage like 10 to 15 minutes how much have you really read barely anything right you read the blurbs the proper nouns and the quotes yeah somehow you were able to start piecing together this story with all these details so it's not about how much you read how much you remember it's just about being way more intentional about what you read so you can start piecing together this story without having to read everything this is how you skim this is exactly how you skim ok and now we know how to skim whether it's a fiction or nonfiction passage and once we have skimmed correctly and we get the main details that we need to know about our story then we want to do is go directly to your questions go to to your questions and when you go to your questions you want to answer your questions in easy to heart order okay now on the math section like we told you it's already gonna be an easy to heart order for you but on the reading science and English section we have to be able to decipher which ones are easy which one's am eating which ones are hard here's how you do that on the a CT reading section the easiest questions are going to ask you about one word and they will tell you exactly where to look to find it they'll ask about one word and it will tell you where to find it in line 28 the word shoestring means what in line 47 the word Thermostat most closely refers to what they're gonna ask you about one word and tell you exactly where to look to find it okay the next easiest questions I ask you about one phrase or one sentence and they'll tell you where to look to find it the next easiest question is I asked about a whole paragraph and then the hardest questions on the a CT reading section we're gonna ask you about the entire passage or their a stuff that's more critical thinking like what is the author's tone what is the author suggests or imply or infer any words like that that are more critical thinking those are gonna be the harder questions on the a CT a reading section if it's too hard or if it's taken to taking you too long you're just gonna do what anyway right you're gonna use your spot of the day okay so that's how you order your questions one word then one phrase one sentence one paragraph whole passage okay now another thing that I want you to look out for is something called trap answers trap answers okay so we're gonna read this together do not yell out your answer out loud once you think you got it okay miss Nelson came to class this morning with wet hair what can be inferred from the preceding statement do not yell out your answer out loud miss Nelson came to class this morning with wet hair what can be inferred from the preceding statement okay raise your hand if you say eh anybody else you sure okay B C okay couple of people four C D alright you can put your hands down mrs. Nelson came to class this morning with wet hair what can be inferred from the preceding statement we have no proof that miss Nelson has a house a front yard and definitely not a sprinkler system she could be the biggest slob we know she may not have ever stepped into a gym in her entire life she may not even bathe regularly we can assume that she does like hopefully everybody in this room maybe miss Nelson just happens to be a nasty woman and doesn't believe in taking showers the only thing that we can prove from this one sentence is what then her hair is not dry why because it says she has wet hair that is an example of a trap answer the acct will try to get you to assume stuff that does not have direct support from the passage but if you cannot back it up with something directly from the text it's probably not going to be the correct answer when we asked what these characters relationship to one another some people said mother and son was there any proof in there at all that it was a male child no okay so you have to have direct support from the past in order for that to be correct that's called a trap answer you will see questions like that on the AC t reading section okay once again those are called trap answers now based on what I told you just a second ago let's go through this ordering the questions drill I just want you to look at the questions and tell me which ones we would do first which ones would we do first right okay the first one says according to the passage in line now why would I start with that one right because asking them asking you about one word it's telling you where to find it right okay what's another one we danced the first right in line seven harassing why that one is asking you about one word and telling you where to find it exactly what's another one we danced the first right the good walk spoiled line 32 why because asking you one phrase and tell you where to find exactly okay so you're getting the hang of this all right now what's one that we would save for less then okay the author suggests that athletes why would I save that one for last because it's asking about the entire passage he's asking about the entire passage exactly and what's enough and there's another word I told you to look out for right the author's tone in line right because that's more critical thinking okay so this is how you order your questions exactly this is how you already questions you've got the hang of it so we still have a problem though which they have a problem because this whole time I've been saying don't read don't read read as little as possible you're wasting your time reading okay I keep saying that but you know you're gonna have questions that ask you about the whole passage so how you're supposed to answer a question about the whole passage if you have them read the whole passage here's how you do it let's say I were to walk over to this person and I gave them a plate of broccoli okay then they give you a plate of peas then they give you a plate of green beans and then I give you a plate of asparagus they give you a plate of spinach when I give this person cake no why would I not give them cake right because I've been giving everybody green vegetables and I noticed I didn't have to say this is your vegetable this is your vegetable this is your vegetable what each person I went she said okay I'm starting to see the trend in what he's doing he's giving everybody green vegetables so it wouldn't make sense for him to get to this person here give them something totally different well guess what as you answer questions about one word and then one word and then one phrase and then one sentence what you're actually doing is putting together pieces to this puzzle so now I have to read the entire passage to know what it's talking about I just answer four or five questions about it I'm starting to get the gist of what the author is trying to say that's called correct answer puzzle fit so if you answer the easy questions first it gives you insight on how to answer the entire question to ask you about the whole passage okay answer the easy questions first gives you insight on how to answer the harder questions that ask you about the whole passage so something that's happening here as you read through this problem and it says in line 22 so Yuri line 22 you answer that question but now you know what that paragraph is talking about and any other questions that deal with that aspect of the topic you know exactly where to go then you read another one that says in line 82 you read line 80 to answer that question you now you know what that paragraph is talking about any more questions about that aspect you know exactly where to look so the questions are helping you to map out the passage so you know exactly what to read rather than reading everything you know exactly where to go okay once again that's called correct answer puzzle fit so then when I go back to all the things that I hate so much about the a CT reading section okay the passages are too long what if I've been saying this whole time like who told you to read the whole passage okay you're being way more intentional about what you read so you're not wasting your time doing unnecessary reading I don't like to read what have I been saying this whole time read as little as possible okay you're just being more intentional about what you read I always run out of time how long did it take you to find the blurbs the proper nouns the quotes the thesis statement right each one of those only taking you a matter of seconds so you're not wasting your time doing unnecessary reading okay the questions are confusing you know why the questions are confusing because you're doing them in numerical order instead of in easy to heart order because you answered the easy questions first is your insight on how to answer the harder questions that are asking about the whole passage this card is hard to comprehend you know the reason why is because you're trying to digest too much information at once are you being graded on how much you read are you being graded on how much you remember are you being great on how much you comprehend no what are you being graded on the answers to the questions you only need to know enough to answer the questions so if you don't try to digest too much information at once then you'll be fine okay now as far as it being boring and you're being tired there's nothing I can do about that it's gonna be boring until the end of time that's just the way it is it's only about thirty five minutes of your life just get it over with deal with it okay so that sums up the reading section