Running head: READING ON THE ACT COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAM
Reading on the ACT College Entrance Exam:
What can we learn from students’ practice test performance?
Rachel Matthews
Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education
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Abstract
This study investigated students’ strengths and weaknesses on the ACT reading subtest.
The study focused on how the existing curriculum of a school might be enhanced to
promote students’ performance on the assessment. The study addressed four domains of
education: learners, learning context, curriculum, and assessment. The participants in the
study were 21 African American, 12th grade students who lived in a small, rural Delta
town and attended a high-performing charter school. Students in the study took a
practice ACT examination, and item performance was analyzed to determine trends.
Based on this analysis, curriculum suggestions included support for reading
comprehension; instruction of question-answer relationships, questioning the author, and
text structure; and intensive vocabulary support.
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Reading on the ACT College Entrance Exam
I. Problem and Question
Before leaving the classroom to attend graduate school for education, I taught
English in a high school located in a rural town in southeast Arkansas. The population of
the town is less than 10,000. The average per capita income at the time of the last census
was $13,028, while the average per capita income for the U.S. was $21,587
(www.americantowns.com). 9.2% of the residents of the town live below the poverty
line (www.americantowns.com). 62% of the residents hold a high school diploma, and
17% have a Bachelor’s degree (www.americantowns.com). Both of these figures are
lower than the national average (www.americantowns.com). My students were
predominantly African American; all of them receive federal free lunch; and they
predominantly spoke African American Vernacular English.
Within the context of this school and this town, I became familiar with the assets
and “cultural funds” low-SES, minority students bring to school with them (Risko &
Walker-Dalhouse, 2007, p. 98). For instance, my students were extremely verbal,
expressing their thoughts in creative, rich language, and they each had various passionate
interests that, when accessed, made them highly engaged learners (Fink, 1996, p. 268).
My students’ parents continually demonstrated great care for them, and they placed much
value on the opportunities that education would afford their children. However, I also
became familiar with the challenges these learners may face in traditional school settings
and standardized testing situations. Many of my eleventh and twelfth grade students felt
daunted by the ACT, a widely-used college entrance exam. Upon their request, I began
giving ACT English and reading practice items as bell ringers and met with them on
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Saturdays to complete practice tests. To the joy of my students and myself, their scores
on the English subtest rose, but to our dismay, their scores on the reading subtest
improved only slightly, if at all, and remained below my students’ goals. Many students
who earned A’s and B’s in English class continued to earn low scores on the ACT
reading subtest. The mismatch between testing scores and class performance remained a
conundrum. Because poor test performance thwarted the college aspirations of my
hardworking students, I set out to pinpoint their strengths and weaknesses on the test by
conducting an item by item analysis of test questions and students’ responses. I hoped
my analysis of test items would indicate ways to infuse the curriculum with instruction
that supports their success on future ACT reading tests.
Critical theory, notably the work of Lisa Delpit, provides a foundation for my
inquiry into why my students perform at certain levels on the ACT and how instruction
can be modified to raise their scores. According to Delpit (1995) society operates by
codes of power; in order to maximize opportunities for children from low-income and
minority backgrounds, Delpit argues that teachers must make these codes of power
visible and accessible. She wrote,
I suggest that students must be taught the codes needed to participate fully in the
mainstream of American life…that they must be allowed the resource of the
teacher’s expert knowledge, while being helped to acknowledge their own
‘expertness’ as well; and that even while students are assisted in learning the
culture of power, they must also be helped to learn about the arbitrariness of those
codes and about the power relationships they represent. (p. 45)
While Delpit’s work focuses mainly on students’ language and literacy, the overarching
concept applies to students’ performance on the ACT. Assessment is always couched in
language and culture, and this context causes test results to more accurately reflect the
ability of test-takers whose home language and culture align to the writing of the test.
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Hillard (2002) illuminated issues of assessment reliability for speakers of nonstandard
English:
The results of standardized testing favor children who speak common American
English simply because these children are able to respond to questions that are
couched in a familiar language based upon familiar experiences. Since the ‘right
children’—upper class, wealthy—tend to get the top scores, it is assumed that the
I.Q., reading, speech, language acquisition, and other tests are valid. Test makers
have no way of taking the achievement results of a privileged child and separating
that part of the scores which is due to the student’s special skill and that part
which is due simply to growing up in the common white American culture. (p. 98)
Above and beyond understandings about the limits and biases of standardized
assessment, the ACT is part of the code of power described by Delpit insofar as it acts as
a gatekeeper for students’ ability to “participate fully in the mainstream of American life”
(Delpit, 1995, p. 45). Colleges and universities continue to use the test as criteria for
admission as well as class placement. Thus, teachers, who believe as Delpit does that
students deserve to call upon expertness in codes of power, must find ways to support
their students’ achievement on the ACT.
A general understanding of reading comprehension sets the backdrop for more
specific understandings of students’ performance on the ACT reading assessment.
According to Jennings, Caldwell, and Lerner, who view comprehension as an interactive
process between text and reader, “When people read, they actually construct their own
meaning of a text; in other words, people create their own mental version of what they
read. Three factors contribute to the process of constructing meaning: (1) the reader, (2)
the reading material, and (3) the reading situation” (2010, p. 13).
First, the reader impacts the act of comprehension insofar as the reader brings
various levels of background knowledge, engagement, purpose, and ability (Jennings,
Caldwell, & Lerner, 2010). In addition, the simplicity or complexity of syntax and
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diction in the text as well as the arrangement and structure of the text influence
comprehension (Jennings, Caldwell, & Lerner, 2010). Issues here may be the appearance
of low-frequency, esoteric vocabulary words, nominalization, or the telescoping effect
(Alvermann, Phelps, & Gillis, 2010). Beyond word knowledge and sentence
comprehension, readers use various strategies with different genres of text. Readers, for
example, need a different set of strategies when approaching a novel than they need when
approaching a chronologically-ordered social studies text (Alvermann, Phelps, & Gillis,
2010). Finally, Jennings, Caldwell, and Lerner (2010) explained that the reading
situation contributes to comprehension, as purpose for reading and levels of anxiety differ
by environment. A person, for instance, has very different purposes and anxiety levels
while reading a book on the beach than while reading a science textbook in preparation
for a final course examination.
Thus, each of these factors—reader, text, and situation—contributes to students’
comprehension on the ACT reading assessment. For example, each student possesses
varying comprehension abilities, including active reading, questioning, and fix-up
strategies, vary. Depending on the course selection of the high school and the range of
students’ personal reading and cultural experiences, students may possess or lack
background knowledge and vocabulary for ACT reading passages. The content of each
ACT reading passage may effect a student’s level of engagement, while the syntax and
diction of the passage may influence the student’s anticipated level of success, perhaps
impacting her motivation to try or not try. Finally students experience different levels of
test anxiety. Looking at the specific data set of this study, broader components of
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comprehension on the ACT reading assessment contextualize analysis of more specific
trends, including strengths, weaknesses, and general test-taking habits.
II. Context and Study Participants
The students selected for the study live in the town in which I taught, or they live
in the surrounding area. About 70% of the community is African American
(www.americantowns.com). The percentage of people living below the poverty index
exceeds the national average, and the percentage of residents who hold high school and
Bachelor’s degrees falls below the national average (www.americantowns.com).
The school where the study took place is a charter school that begins in the fifth
grade and ends with twelfth grade. Initial admission to the school is based on a lottery,
but anyone is eligible to enter the lottery. In high school grades, students are admitted to
the school on a first come first serve basis in accordance with availability. All students,
parents, and educators sign a form committing to excellence. Excellence is defined by
attendance, behavior, and commitment to an extended school day, week, and year. The
school focuses heavily on academic achievement and strongly promotes students’ goals
of college attainment.
In correspondence with town demographics, 85% of students at the school where
the study took place qualified to receive federal free lunch during the 2009-2010 school
year. 97% of students who attended the school from 2009-2010 were African American.
They predominantly spoke African American Vernacular English. During the 2008-2009
year, students passed state end-of-course tests in English, biology, geometry, and algebra
at rates that exceeded the traditional public school in the town as well as the statewide
pass rate.
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The 21 students who participated in the study were twelfth graders at the time of
data collection. 14 of the students were female, and 7 were male. They were all African
American. Each of them was on track to graduate in the spring of 2010 in compliance
with state education requirements. Each of them professed a desire to obtain admission
to and attend a four-year college or university.
English curriculum at the school was based on Arkansas state standards. These
standards focus on the same general content from ninth to twelfth grade but scaffold
students’ understanding from the knowledge level of Bloom’s Taxonomy through the
evaluation level of Bloom’s taxonomy. At the eleventh grade level, students are expected
to analyze literature and literary elements as well as nonfiction texts, and at the twelfth
grade level, standards emphasize evaluation of texts. Within the Arkansas frameworks,
the school gives teachers the autonomy to prioritize or de-prioritize standards. Teachers
write the curriculum, including year-long plans, unit plans, and lesson plans. Curriculum
at the school is literature-based. Teachers predominantly use novel-sets and may choose
which texts they wish students to read; teachers do not use reading textbooks. Thus,
students’ exposure to literature varies from year to year. Vocabulary words are drawn
from literature texts, and for grammar instruction, a grammar and writing textbook is
used.
III. Overview of ACT Assessment and Reading Subtest
The ACT, originally American College Testing, was founded by E.F. Lindquist in
1959; Lindquist also developed the widely-used Iowa Test of Basic Skills (Lemann,
2000). The ACT contains five sections: math, English, reading, science reasoning, and
an optional writing section. Test takers receive a score for each section, from 13 to 36, as
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well as a composite score (ACT, 2008). The reading subtest, which is the focus of this
study, includes four types of passages—prose fiction, humanities, social sciences, and
natural sciences (ACT, 2008). Each passage is 750 words in length and has ten
corresponding questions (ACT, 2008). Students receive a total of 35 minutes for the
reading section (ACT, 2008). A sample passage and test items are presented in Appendix
A.
The ACT, unlike its competitor SAT, is a criterion-referenced test. This means
that ACT questions align to a set of descriptive statements, or standards, about the skills
and knowledge of test takers. Alternately, the SAT is a norm-referenced test, meaning
that it projects a tester’s aptitude in comparison to other test takers. Because of its
classification as a criterion-referenced test, ACT purports to assess whether or not high
school students have acquired a set of skills and knowledge “essential to college and
workforce training readiness” (ACT, 2009, p. 2).
Based on the outline of essential skills and knowledge, the ACT prescribes what
score students must earn in each section to demonstrate they are prepared for college; a
score of 21 on the reading test is the benchmark for college readiness (ACT, 2009). As
colleges have different levels of selectivity and different qualifications for admission,
some deny admission to students who score below 21 on the reading test, while others
require that students who score below 21 enroll in remedial English.
ACT outlines the skills and knowledge required to earn a 21 in its College
Readiness Standards for reading. ACT presents the College Readiness Standards in
downloadable PDF format on their website at www.act.org. These standards are
presented in chart format; in order to make them easier to manipulate, I arranged them in
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list format, using general principles of unpacking standards informed by Wiggin’s and
McTighe’s (2005) Understanding by Design. (See Appendix B.) These College
Readiness Standards contain five categories: 1) main ideas and author’s approach; 2)
supporting details; 3) sequential, comparative, and cause-effect relationships; 4)
meanings of words; and 5) generalizations and conclusions. The wording of the College
Readiness Standards increases the rigor of these knowledge and skills sets across texts of
increasing difficulty. Additionally, skills range from the identification level of Bloom’s
Taxonomy to the analysis level of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
IV. Analysis and Results
For the purposes of this study, I analyzed a data set containing students’ item by
item performance on the reading subtest of a practice full-length ACT administered in the
fall of 2009 to seniors attending a charter school in the rural Delta town (see description
of the setting and students provided above). The test was selected from The Real ACT
Prep Guide (Peterson’s, 2008). All student-identifying information was removed from
the report by school administrators prior to giving it to me for analysis. I analyzed items
from the reading section of the test to identify trends of understanding and
misunderstanding. First, I looked at trends within each type of passage; then, I analyzed
trends of standard mastery and non-mastery salient across all four passages; finally, I
focused on specific analysis of items that seemed to be outliers in students’ performance.
In order to analyze the trends, I paired test items with the respective ACT College
Readiness Standard for reading. For example, the first questions for the prose sections
reads, “Fran would most likely agree with which of the following statements about her
relationship with Linda Rose?” This question matches with the College Readiness
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Standard that requires students to make generalizations about characters and character
relationships.
As described above, the ACT reading subtest is divided into four passages, and
each passage is a particular genre. Every reading subtest contains a prose fiction passage,
a social science passage, a humanities passage, and a natural science passage. The order
and arrangement of these passages may vary, but on this particular practice test the order
was first prose, then social science, then humanities, and finally natural science.
Table 1 below shows students’ rates of accuracy by test item. Items are listed in
the order they appeared on the practice ACT reading test, and they are grouped by
passage type. The raw number column shows the number of students out of the sample
of 21 who answered that item correctly, while the percentage column shows the
percentage of students who answered that item correctly.
Generally, the students responded with greater accuracy on questions about
characterization, demonstrating their ability to make generalizations about characters and
characters’ attitudes, as well as drawing conclusions and inferences about the
relationships between characters. On the prose passage, students showed higher mastery
on questions about specific details and main idea than on subsequent content passages.
Across all passages, student struggled with identifying and analyzing cause-effect; in
addition, students performed poorly on questions that asked them to use context clues to
infer the meanings of words and the meaning of figurative language. Table 2 presents
another representation of trends, illustrating students’ percent accuracy by skill.
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TABLE 1
ACCURACY OF RESPONSES ON READING ASSESSMENT BY ITEM* (n=21)
Passage type
Item
Raw number
Percentage
Prose Fiction
1. Character Generalization
2. Character Generalization
3. Supporting Detail
4. Main Idea
5. Main Idea
6. Supporting Detail
8. Cause-Effect
9. Generalization
10. Character Generalization
10
14
13
8
15
16
9
13
9
48
67
62
38
71
76
43
62
43
Social Science
11. Main Idea
12. Supporting Detail
13. Supporting Detail
14. Word Meaning
15. Supporting Detail
16. Word Meaning
17. Generalization
18. Cause-Effect
19. Word Meaning
20. Cause-Effect
9
3
10
6
8
13
8
6
10
11
43
14
48
29
38
62
38
29
48
52
Humanities
21. Main Idea
22. Supporting Detail
23. Supporting Detail
24. Supporting Detail
25. Word Meaning
26. Word Meaning
27. Cause-Effect
28. Supporting Detail
29. Word Meaning
30. Word Meaning
2
3
8
3
9
4
2
4
5
5
10
14
38
14
43
19
10
19
24
24
Natural Science
31. Word Meaning
32. Cause-Effect
33. Supporting Detail
34. Word Meaning
35. Supporting Detail
36. Word Meaning
37. Supporting Detail
38. Main Idea
39. Supporting Detail
40. Word Meaning
5
4
4
5
1
2
5
3
6
5
24
19
19
24
5
10
24
14
29
24
*Note: Items are identified broadly by topic rather than a specific ACT College Readiness Standard. For instance, “main idea” is a
more general label than the actual ACT College Readiness Standard. For an exact list of College Readiness Standards, see Appendix
B or visit www.act.org.
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TABLE 2
ACCURACY OF RESPONSES ON ACT READING ASSESSMENT BY SKILL*
Skill
Percent accuracy
Character Generalization
Generalization
Main Idea
Supporting Details
Cause-Effect
Word Meaning
53
50
35
30
30
30
*Note: Skills are identified broadly by topic rather than a specific ACT College Readiness Standard. For instance, “main idea” is a
more general label than the actual ACT College Readiness Standard. For an exact list of College Readiness Standards, see Appendix
B or visit www.act.org.
In examination of Tables 1 and 2, test items 4 and 16 act as outliers from more
general trends. Item 4 is a main idea question within the prose fiction section on which
students showed noticeably less accuracy, and at a rate of 62% accuracy, item 16 is the
only test question about word meanings on which students responded with greater than
50% accuracy. There are a few possible explanations about why these items deviate from
overall trends. Item 4 refers to a paragraph that contains an extended metaphor about
honing pigeons, a topic about which students may lack background knowledge. Lack of
background knowledge could have contributed to a lower rate of accuracy. Meanwhile,
item 16 arguably is the most straightforward test item about word meaning, as it directly
asks the meaning of a single vocabulary word and the passage provides many context
clues.
Finally, Table 3 below illustrates the students’ accuracy by subject area and genre.
This view of data roughly illustrates that students performed better on prose fiction than
on content passages.
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TABLE 3
STUDENTS’ ACCURACY BY PASSAGE TYPE
Passage
Overall percent correct
Prose Fiction
Social Science
Humanities
Natural Science
57%
40%
22%
19%
An additional factor that may have influenced performance is the sequence of
passages and the length of the test. The class averaged 57% accuracy on questions
corresponding to the first passage of the practice assessment, 40% on the second passage,
22% on the third passage, and 19% on the fourth passage. It is unclear whether this
decline in performance can be explained entirely by the fact that students find content
texts more challenging than fiction texts. Poor pacing or students’ decreasing stamina
may cause some of the decline in accuracy at the end of the test. More students left items
blank on the last section of the test.
V. Instructional Suggestions
Looking across the data, students exhibited greater success on the prose fiction
passage. This trend is supported by the literature-based curriculum of the school.
Particularly trends within the prose section show the students are generally more
successful on questions about characterization, answering them with 53% accuracy. In
the language of ACT’s College Readiness Standards, the sample of students
demonstrated a beginning proficiency in “[drawing]…generalizations and conclusions
about the main characters in…literary narratives” and “[combining] several pieces of
information to make a reasonable generalization about a specific character” (ACT, 2008,
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p.9). The language of this particular College Readiness Standard approximately aligns to
Arkansas state standards for tenth and eleventh grade English. Thus, the Arkansas
curriculum guidelines and the instruction at the school provide time for students practice
these skills with literature they read in class. As students continue to practice these skills,
their mastery of aligned ACT reading questions should continue to grow.
In addition, students performed with a greater rate of success on questions about
supporting details and main ideas within the prose fiction section. On the prose fiction
section, students answered questions about supporting details with a rate of 69% accuracy
as compared to an overall rate of 30% accuracy; meanwhile, students’ rate of accuracy on
main idea questions within the prose fiction section was 55%, compared to 35% overall.
In the midst of this trend of student success with prose, item 4 acted as an outlier.
Question 4 from the prose fiction section addressed main idea, and students’ accuracy
was only 38% as compared with 71% accuracy on question 5, which was also a main idea
question. Two theories may explain why item 4 diverges from the trend. First, item 4
addresses the opening paragraph of the passage, while question 5 addresses the last
paragraph. At the beginning of the passage, students would have developed less
knowledge of the passage, and their lack of schema for the content of the paragraph may
have made this question seem more difficult. A second explanation is that understanding
of the first paragraph relies on students’ prior knowledge of honing pigeons, as the
passage builds on a metaphor comparing a character in the passage to a honing pigeon.
Regardless of outliers, analysis of the salient trends of greater student accuracy on the
prose fiction section points to the rigor of the literature-based curriculum at the school.
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While prose is a demonstrated area of strength, declining success on content
passages indicates that students need more support in content area literacy. The sample
group of students revealed a few particular areas of weakness on content texts. As
mentioned above, they showed less mastery on questions about identifying the main idea
and supporting details on social science, humanities, and natural science passages. In
addition, they struggled with inferring the author’s approach. A few additions may be
made to direct comprehension instruction that will yield higher mastery of these skills.
First, students can be asked to use questioning while they read. Alfred Tatum,
whose work focuses on African American learners and struggling readers, suggested the
following objective for during reading activities: “Students will identify the key
characteristics of each paragraph and create a question that is answered by each
paragraph (self-questioning strategy)” (2005, p. 62). Explicitly modeling this strategy for
students and then asking them to use it independently promotes an awareness of main
idea and author’s purpose.
In addition, it may be helpful to teach students question-answer relationships, also
known as QARs (Alvermann, Phelps, & Gillis, 2010). Developing students’ awareness
of the relationship between questions and answers fosters metacognition about test items,
giving them a greater sense of how to answer questions about main idea, author’s
approach, and how details function within a passage. Research by Taffy Raphael
demonstrated, “Students can be taught about QARs and that this knowledge of where
answers come from can actually improve students’ ability to answer questions”
(Alvermann et al., 2010, p. 208). Pearson and Johnson (1978) defined three types of
QARs: textually explicit, textually implicit, and scriptally implicit. Textually explicit
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answers are stated directly in the passage, while textually implicit answers are implied
and require an inference. ACT asks readers to answer both types of question; however,
ACT does not ask readers to answer scriptally implicit questions, as scriptally implicit
questions require the reader to access personal beliefs. In order to instruct students on
QARs, research recommends a scaffolded approach, beginning with the teacher’s
explanation and modeling and continuing with time for students to practice reading
passages and labeling questions. Class discussion of students’ work reinforces students’
understanding of QARs (Alvermann et al., 2010).
A technique called Questioning the Author (QtA) provides a final instructional
method for supporting students’ ability to identify main ideas, author’s approach, and
how details function (Beck, McKeown, & Kucan, 1997). QtA makes transparent to
students that a text’s “content is simply someone’s ideas written down, and that this
person may not have always expressed things in the clearest or easiest way for readers to
understand” (Beck et al., 1997, p. 18). This strategy encourages students to evaluate
texts. Evaluation of texts enhances students’ comprehension of both expository and
narrative texts, and Arkansas twelfth grade standards for English emphasize such
evaluation. Beyond these benefits, QtA supports students’ ability to “understand the
overall approach taken by an author or narrator” and to “discern which details…support
important points” in passages (ACT, 2008, pp. 10-12). Thus QtA may yield benefits for
students who struggle to identify and analyze author’s approach.
Another noticeable area for growth in students’ scores is their ability to recognize
cause-effect relationships. Implementing instruction on common text structures may
support students’ comprehension across the curriculum as well as support their ability to
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identify cause-effect relationships in ACT reading passages. Alvermann, Phelps, and
Gillis reported, “Teachers can aid student comprehension both by teaching students about
text structure and by using the structures inherent in text to help students organize the
information that is presented” (2010, p. 223). Common text structures include lists,
descriptions, definition/example, chronological/sequential order, compare and contrast,
cause-effect, and problem-solution (Alvermann et al., 2010). In addition, knowledge of
signal words proves helpful to students because signal words often indicate text structure
patterns. For instance, signal words for cause-effect include: because, since, therefore,
if…then, due to, hence, thus, as a result, consequently, subsequently, accordingly,
eventually, initiated, precipitated, the outcome, the aftermath (Alverman et al., 2010).
Teacher modeling and think-alouds, once again, may be used to support students’
understanding of how to identify and use knowledge of text structure and signal words to
deepen comprehension. Along with teacher modeling and think-alouds about text
structure patterns, graphic organizers may be useful to help students comprehend how
awareness of text structure supports their comprehension, as well as their recognition of
cause-effect relationships.
Perhaps students’ greatest area of demonstrated weakness on the ACT practice
test was vocabulary. As mentioned in the section above, students generally answered
with less than 50% accuracy on questions regarding vocabulary. Only text item 16 acted
as an outlier from this trend, and upon further examination, question 16 was the most
straightforward word meaning question on the test, as it asked students to identify a
synonym for circumscribed using context clues about the overall meaning of the passage.
While item 16 shows an area of strength within the standard of identifying word
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meanings, it seems clear from students’ performance on other word meaning questions
that they need more comprehensive vocabulary instruction. The language of the College
Readiness Standards asks that students demonstrate a number of skills in the area of word
meanings, including understanding connotations of words and using context clues to
define words and understand figurative language. Current vocabulary instruction at the
school is based in the literature that students read; while this curriculum choice is a
supported method for selecting words to introduce to students, research suggests many
ways to enhance and build upon this foundation.
After words are selected for study, students need to be provided with rich
instructional experiences in order to develop a deep understanding of meanings and
integrate vocabulary into their language and writing. Beck, McKeown, and Kucan
wrote, “Multiple encounters over time are called for if the goal is more than a temporary
surface-level understanding and if new word are to become permanently and flexibly
represented in students’ vocabulary repertoires” (2002, p. 32). Consequently, teachers
must carefully introduce words. When introducing words, research proves dictionary
definitions insufficient (Beck et al., 2002). In order to provide more student-friendly
explanations, Beck, McKeown, and Kucan suggested that teachers “characterize the word
and how it is typically used” and “explain the meaning in everyday language” (2002, p.
33). Because the College Readiness Standards emphasize connotation as well as
denotation, teachers should keep in mind the multidimensionality and polysemy of words
when introducing them to students (Pearson, Heibert, Kamil, 2007). Beyond these broad
guidelines, many instructional techniques can be used to help students integrate new
words into their existing schema. Alvermann, Phelps, and Gillis (2010) suggested
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concept maps, visual associations, and frayer models among other strategies. After initial
interactions, students need opportunities to experience the words in texts and use the
words in their own language and writing.
In addition to providing instruction on specific vocabulary words, strategy-based
instruction on use of context clues and use of morphemic analysis fosters students’
independence. Bromley (2007) reported that 60% of meaning of English words could be
derived from analysis of word parts. Meanwhile, teachers almost unanimously suggest
context clues as a means for identifying the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary (Beers,
2003). Students’ ability to independently identify meanings of unfamiliar words in
reading is essential to their success on the ACT.
As with other instructional strategies, teacher think-alouds and modeling are best
practice in teaching students the skill of identifying word meaning from context. Kylene
Beers (2003) suggested that teachers focus on four types of context clues: definition or
explanation clues, restatement or synonym clues, contrast or antonym clues, and gist
clues. Definition clues provide the most specific explanation of word meanings, while
restatement puts word meaning in simpler terms; contrast clues often provide an antonym
in a following sentence, and gist clues are the “most subtle type of clue” (Beers, 2003, pp.
186-187). Because gist clues are the most subtle, they may not lead to a full
understanding of the word, but they enable students to understand the gist of the passage
or sentence. Therefore gist clues may deserve more time during instruction to ensure
students master their use.
Another powerful word identification strategy that fosters students’ independence
is morphology or morphemic analysis. Morphemic analysis provides students with
READING ON THE ACT COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAM
21
knowledge of word parts, such as roots, prefixes, and suffixes; in turn, students may use
these word parts to infer meanings of unfamiliar words. (Alvermann et al., 2010).
Kieffer and Lesaux (2007) found that teaching morphology to urban students positively
influenced their vocabulary ability and comprehension. Morphology instruction is most
effective in the context of “rich, explicit vocabulary instruction,“ but in order to help
students transfer knowledge of morphology from class work to independent settings like
the ACT reading exam, teachers need to model how to use morphology to infer word
meanings in context and provide students time to practice this skill (Kieffer & Lesaux,
2007, pp. 138-140).
A final way the school might support vocabulary growth is by adding a
technology component to the curriculum. Digital reading environments provide support
for vocabulary through hypertext links to dictionary and thesaurus entries. Proctor,
Dalton, and Grisham (2007) found that using tools like digital reading environments
support both students’ vocabulary growth and reading comprehension.
Finally, multiple factors might cause students’ declining rate of accuracy from the
first passage to the last passage of the test. One possible cause is lack of familiarity with
the test and therefore a lack of awareness about pacing. Hughes explained, “If any aspect
of a test is unfamiliar to candidates, they are likely to perform less well than they would
otherwise…For this reason, every effort must be made to ensure that all candidates have
the opportunity to learn just what will be required of them” (2002, pp. 47-48). Thus,
students’ accuracy may increase if they understand the format of the test, number of
questions per passages, and time limits. In the testing environment, reminding students
of time limits may positively influence students’ performance.
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VI. Concluding Thoughts
Last year, my classroom environment featured an inspiration wall, or a wall of
quotes and pictures collected by my students to inspire our hard work and tenacity in
pursuit of academic excellence. One of my girls added the following quote, from rapper
T.I. (2008), to our wall: “Make impossible possible. Even when winning’s illogical,
loosing’s still far from optional.” Looking at the words of this quote, I think about my
students’ educational journeys. My students’ success is far from impossible, but they
need great teachers who build relationships upon respect and trust and who work hard to
continually implement and modify the curriculum to support every student’s
achievement. I argue a great curriculum begins with literacy. The strategies and support
described in this paper have potential benefits beyond success on the ACT reading
subtest; the strategies and support described in this paper will makes students better
readers across the curriculum.
The journey out of generational poverty, the same journey T.I. speaks of, is a
difficult one. I agree that at first glance it might seem illogical to teach students how to
speak Standard English or to modify curriculum explicitly to support students’ success on
culturally biased assessments like the ACT. However, my reasoning always returns to
the arguments of Delpit (1995) and the idea of empowering students to succeed in
multiple social spheres by giving them access to different cultural codes. To borrow
from the ambiguous advice of the narrator’s grandfather in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
(1952, 1995), we will “overcome ‘em with yeses, undermine em’ with grins, agree ‘em to
death and destruction” (p. 16). Like the unnamed protagonist, when my students are
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empowered with the ability to assimilate, deviate, and advocate in any sphere of society,
then the world, indeed, will be a better place.
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Appendix A
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Appendix B
ACT COLLEGE READINESS STANDARDS: READING
(WORDING FROM ACT, REORGANIZED BY BLOOM’S LEVEL AND TEXT
DIFFICULTY)
Strand 1: Main Ideas and Author’s Approach (a.k.a. Author’s Purpose)
MI.13.15.1 Recognize a clear intent of an author or narrator in uncomplicated literary
narratives.
MI.16.19.1 Identify a clear main idea or purpose of
 Straightforward paragraphs in uncomplicated literary narratives (16-19)
 Identify a clear main idea or purpose of any paragraph or paragraphs in
uncomplicated passages (24-27)
 Identify clear main ideas or purposes of complex passages or their paragraphs
(33-36)
MI.20.23.1 Infer the main idea or purpose of
 Straightforward paragraphs in uncomplicated literary narratives (20-23)
 Straightforward paragraphs in more challenging passages (24-27)
 More challenging passages or their paragraphs (28-32)
MI.20.23.2 Understand the overall approach taken by an author or narrator (e.g., point of
view, kinds of evidence used) in
 Uncomplicated passages (20-23)
 More challenging passages (24-27)
 Virtually any passage (28-32)
MI.24.27.3 Summarize basic events and ideas in
 More challenging passages (24-27)
 Virtually any passage (28-32)
Strand 2: Supporting Details
SD.13.15.1 Locate within the text
 basic facts (e.g. names, dates, events) that are clearly stated (13-15)
 simple details at the sentence and paragraph level in uncomplicated passages
(16-19)
 important details in uncomplicated passages (20-23)
 important details in more challenging passages (24-27)
SD.16.19.2 Recognize a clear function of a part of an uncomplicated passage
o How I would say it: Identify function of a part of a passage
 And understand the function of a part of a passage when the function is subtle or
complex (33-36)
 And make simple inferences about how details are used in passages (20-23)
o How I would say it: Infer function of a part of a passage
 And discern which details, though they may appear in different sections
throughout a passage, support important points in more challenging passages (2427)
READING ON THE ACT COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAM
34
o How I would say it: Analyze how details are used to support the main idea
in more challenging passages
 And use details from different sections of some complex informational passages
to support a specific point or argument (28-32)
o How I would say it: Synthesize details from different parts of the passage
to support specific points and arguments
SD.24.27.2 Locate and interpret minor or subtly stated details in
 uncomplicated passages (24-27)
 more challenging passages (28-32)
 in complex passages (33-36)
Strand 3: Sequential, Comparative, and Cause-Effect Relationships
SCCE.13.15.1 Determine when (e.g., first, last, before, after) or if an event occurred in
uncomplicated passages
 And order simple sequences of events in uncomplicated literary narratives (2023)
 And order sequences of events in uncomplicated passages (24-27)
 And order sequences of events in more challenging passages (28-32)
 And order sequences of events in complex passages (33-36)
SCCE.13.15.2 Recognize clear cause-effect relationships described within
 a single sentence in a passage (13-15)
 a single paragraph in uncomplicated literary narratives (16-19)
 uncomplicated passages (20-23)
 more challenging passages, and (24-27)
 understand implied or subtly stated cause-effect relationships in uncomplicated
passages, and within (24-27)
 more challenging passages, and (28-32)
 understand implied, subtle, or complex cause-effect relationships in virtually
any passage (33-36)
SCCE.16.19.1 Identify relationships between main characters in uncomplicated literary
narratives and within
 more challenging literary narratives (24-27)
SCCE.20.23.2/SCCE.24.27.2 Identify and understand clear relationships between people,
ideas, and so on in uncomplicated passages and within
 more challenging passages (28-32)
 virtually any passage (33-36)
Strand 4: Meanings of Words
W.13.15.1 Understand the implication of a familiar word or phrase and of simple
descriptive language
W.16.19.1 Use context to understand basic figurative language
W.20.23.1 Use context to determine the appropriate meaning of some figurative and
nonfigurative words, phrases, and statements in uncomplicated passages
W.24.27.1 Use context to determine the appropriate meaning of virtually any word,
phrase, or statement in uncomplicated passages
READING ON THE ACT COLLEGE ENTRANCE EXAM
35
W.24.27.2 Use context to determine the appropriate meaning of some figurative and
nonfigurative words, phrases, and statements in more challenging passages
W.28.32.1 Determine the appropriate meaning of words, phrases, or statements from
figurative or somewhat figurative language
W.33.36.1 Determine, even when the language is richly figurative and the vocabulary is
difficult, the appropriate meaning of context-dependent words, phrases, or statements in
virtually any passage
Strand 5: Generalizations and Conclusions
GC.13.15.1 Draw simple generalizations and conclusions about the main characters in
uncomplicated literary narratives, and
 draw subtle generalizations and conclusions about characters, ideas, and so on in
uncomplicated literary narratives (24-27)
 understand and generalize about portions of a complex literary narratives (33-36)
GC.16.19.1/GC.20.23.1 Draw simple generalizations and conclusions about people,
ideas, and so on in uncomplicated passages, and
 using details that support the main points of more challenging passages, and (2023)
 in more challenging passages, and (24-27)
 use information from one or more sections of a more challenging passage to
draw generalizations and conclusions about people, ideas, and so on, and (28-32)
 draw complex or subtle generalizations and conclusions about people, ideas, and
so on, often by synthesizing information from different portions of the passage
(33-36)
How I think about the Generalizations and Conclusions Standards:
Passages
Literary Narratives
Students need to be able to make simple,
Students need to be able to make simple,
subtle and complex generalizations
subtle and complex generalizations
about…
about…
1. people
1. main characters and their
relationships
2. ideas
2. ideas
3. main points
4. aspects of the passage using details
Students need to be able to synthesize
information and details from different
parts of the passage.
*Reading level/difficulty of the text is also scaffolded for both non-literary and literary
passages.
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36
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