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Dear Academic Approach Families and Colleagues:

Today, weu2019re looking at one of the biggest challenges of the ACT and SAT: evidence-based reading. Among the more challenging reading tasks students will face on the SAT and ACT is not just making a claim about a text but also supporting that claims with evidence. Take the below two questions:

Students often struggle with items like these. While they may be used to selecting evidence, the rigor of selecting the best evidence of many correct options is often unfamiliar. Each piece of evidence they can choose from in question 13 is loosely related to the particular claim in question 12, but a truly adept logical thinker will learn a process and criteria to assess the specific relevance of a section of text to the particular claim. They will then note that only choice (D) to question 12 is supported by the text, and only choice (D) to question 13 relates to that specific claim. You can see the evidence in this paragraph of the original text below:

Becoming a critical reader and thinker is perhaps the most important achievement a student can accomplish in high school. The skills required here will help them analyze news and current events. Additionally, these efficient and careful reading skills will allow them to succeed in the challenging texts theyu2019ll encounter at the college level.

Be well,
Matthew Pietrafetta, Ph.D., Founder & CEO

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