ACT® · Reading: Pace, Scoring, and Text Complexity
The 40-Minute, 36-Question Section
The reading section gives you 40 minutes for 36 questions across four passages, which works out to about 67 seconds per question only on paper — in reality that time also has to pay for all the reading, not just the answering.
Divide 40 minutes by 36 questions and you get roughly 67 seconds a question. That number feels workable until you remember it has to cover more than answering. You still have to read four passages first, and that reading eats a real chunk of the 40 minutes before you answer anything. So the actual time available per question, once reading is paid for, is much smaller than 67 seconds suggests.
This is why reading faster is not the fix people think it is. Speed-reading a passage to save time usually costs comprehension, and the questions ask about details, inference, and structure that a rushed read misses. The real lever is pacing across the whole section: how you split 40 minutes among four passages and their questions, not how many words a minute you can push through.
The section is built from four sets, each tied to one passage and its own block of questions. Time is shared, not personal to each set — spend too long on the first passage and you are not just slow on that one, you are borrowing minutes the later three sets needed. That connects directly to scoring: every question is worth the same, so a passage you never reach costs you exactly as many points as one you answered wrong. Pacing decisions early in the section are really scoring decisions for the whole thing.
Key terms
- Scored question
- A question that counts toward the raw score, as opposed to any unscored questions mixed into the section.
- Pacing
- Deciding in advance how many minutes to spend on each passage and its question set.
- Set
- One passage plus the block of questions that go with it.
- Words per minute
- A reading speed measure used to estimate how long a passage of a given length will take to read.
Watch it explained
- How it worksHow does the enhanced ACT's 67 seconds per reading item compare with the old test's 53?
- Worked exampleFind how many minutes are left for questions if reading three texts at 240 words a minute eats part of 40.
- Common mistakeWhy isn't reading faster the fix for running out of time on the reading section?
- Going furtherWhat happens to your score when you spend 18 minutes on the first set of nine?
Check yourself
End of topic.