ACT Reading Section

ACT Reading Test Outline

The ACT Reading test is a 40-minute section with 36 questions, each group tied to a passage or a pair of passages. Scores run from 1 to 36, along with three reporting category scores—Key Ideas and Details, Craft and Structure, and Integration of Knowledge and Ideas. Reading is the third required section, taken after the break that follows Math, and no break comes after it. Students who also sit the optional Writing test receive an English Language Arts (ELA) score from 1 to 36, calculated as the average of their English, Reading, and Writing scores.

ACT Reading Test Passages

The current Reading test is built on two passage types: Literary Narrative and Informational. Literary Narrative passages come from fiction or personal essays and memoir. Informational passages range across the social sciences, humanities, and natural sciences—history, political science, sociology, and psychology; film, music, theater, and art; biology, chemistry, physics, geology, and the other "hard" sciences. One set pairs two related passages and asks you to weigh them together. A passage or paired set typically runs several hundred words.

ACT Reading Test Question Types

All 36 Reading questions are multiple choice with four answer options, grouped by passage. When a set includes paired passages, its questions come in three clusters—those on passage A, those on passage B, and those that address both. Unlike the English test, the Reading passages contain no underlined text or boxed numbers, so you cannot immediately match a question to a spot in the passage as you read. The passages are numbered every five lines, though, and some questions point to specific line numbers. By reporting category, Key Ideas and Details accounts for the largest share of questions, followed by Craft and Structure and then the smaller Integration of Knowledge and Ideas group.

ACT Reading Test Skills

ACT frames the Reading test as a measure of reading comprehension, and each of the three reporting categories spans several skills. Key Ideas and Details covers close reading—locating and interpreting facts, drawing conclusions, and paraphrasing—together with central ideas and themes (identifying and summarizing topics, main ideas, and supporting points) and relationships (sequence, cause and effect, and comparison). Craft and Structure concerns word meaning and word choice, text structure, and point of view. Integration of Knowledge and Ideas takes up arguments (the claims a passage advances) and multiple texts (comparing passages and drawing conclusions from more than one source).

ACT Reading Test Scoring and Benchmark Data

Reading uses the same 1-to-36 scale as the other sections; a typical score lands near the middle of the range, and only a small share of test-takers reach the highest scores. The College Readiness Benchmark for Reading is 22—the score at which a student has roughly a 50% chance of a B or better in a comparable first-year course. A substantial share of students meets this benchmark, but averages, percentiles, and attainment rates move from year to year, so consult ACT's current national data for exact figures.

ACT Reading Test Scores, College Course Placement, and College Acceptance

Many universities use individual section scores to place incoming students, and a score above a given cutoff can excuse a student from remedial or even introductory coursework in that subject. Reading scores in particular are a common gauge of freshman reading readiness, and low scorers may be steered into remedial classes with names like "Introductory College Reading" or "Academic Success Strategies." The most selective schools seldom publish average Reading scores, but the high Composite figures they do release rest partly on Reading. Students aiming for these colleges should target a Reading score of at least 30 to stay competitive.