When you have spent time preparing for the ACT, you will know what the directions are. They will not change between now and when you take the test, so you do not have to spend time re-reading directions you have already read with your tutor. Also, ask your tutor if you should even follow the directions. For example, the ACT English test directions give the test taker some really bad advice. Look in the directions, in the last paragraph of the directions, it says, “Read each passage through once before you begin to answer the questions that accompany it.” I do not want you to do that. What that’s telling you to do is read the whole passage, and then go back and start again, and do the questions — there’s not time for that. Not only that, you’ll be reading all these mistakes right, and you’ll be wanting to fix it up right then.

But look at the next line in the directions: “For many of the questions you must read several sentences beyond the question to determine the answer. So be sure you have read far enough ahead each time you choose an alternative.” That’s what you’re going to do instead.

The first thing you should do is read the sentence that the question is in and see if that’s enough information to answer it. 90% of the time, just reading the sentence that the question is, in is going to be enough to answer it, but every now and again you will need more context. In those cases, you will need to read above the sentence with the underline or below it, to get the context.