Key ideas and details
Practice identifying central ideas, locating evidence, understanding relationships, and making reasonable inferences from the passage.
Craft and integration
Review author choices, word meaning in context, point of view, structure, and the way information works across a passage or paired texts.
Use the passage as your evidence
When choices seem close, return to the text. Eliminate answers that are unsupported, too broad, too narrow, or inconsistent with the passage.
By the Numbers
The ACT Reading question bank on this site includes 82 original questions, covering key ideas and details, and craft and integration of knowledge.
Worked Example
Passage: When the small town's only movie theater closed in 2019, many residents assumed it would remain vacant. Instead, a group of local volunteers transformed the building into a community center that now hosts everything from job-training workshops to weekend farmers markets. The transformation required months of fundraising and renovation, but organizers say the response from the community made the effort worthwhile.
Question: It can reasonably be inferred from the passage that the organizers of the community center project:
- A) regretted the time and money spent on the renovation
- B) were surprised that the town wanted a new movie theater instead
- C) considered the community's support to be a meaningful outcome of their effort
- D) planned from the beginning to replace the theater with a farmers market
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: C. The passage directly states that "organizers say the response from the community made the effort worthwhile," which supports the idea that community support was a meaningful, positive outcome. Nothing in the passage suggests regret (A), a desire for a new movie theater (B), or an original plan built around a farmers market specifically (D).
Related Practice
Frequently Asked Questions
Is ACT Reading practice free?
Yes. You can use the ACT Reading practice tools without a paid subscription.
What reading skills are included?
Practice includes key ideas, details, inference, word meaning in context, author choices, and integration of information.
Can I review why an answer was wrong?
Practice review is designed to explain the reasoning behind the correct answer and help you identify common traps.
How many ACT Reading practice questions are on this site?
The ACT Reading bank includes 82 original questions, covering key ideas and details, and craft and integration of knowledge.
What does an ACT Reading inference question look like?
See the worked passage-based example above, which shows how to support an inference using evidence directly stated in the text.