Many students have not read a book that wasn’t required after entering high school. There are some exception for students who just can’t put a book down, but the majority of non-readers are still high. The only books many students buy or read are the ones required by the school.

What these non-readers don’t know  are the benefits of reading a book. Reading can raise ACT reading scores exponentially, improve writing skills and reduces stress.

The Reading portion has always been the hardest part of the ACT. This is why many teachers have to sacrifice their teaching time and review reading strategies that most students don’t even care or need. What students need to do to improve their reading scores is to READ!

Students can read all kinds of genres that can range from fiction to nonfiction, may it be romance or a simple biography. Student need to focus on understanding the text while also enjoying a good read. This can help the boredom that comes from reading four passages during the ACT. Pick up any kind of book, read and start looking for the main ideas in paragraphs, sections, or chapters.

Just reading school related books already help students raise their ACT scores. Why do you think students are asked to take notes and are given tests? No, it’s not because the teachers want to make you suffer. It’s because teachers are making sure that you can find the main ideas and pinpoint the supporting details.

Finding main ideas and supporting details require students to use their analytical thinking and actually soak up some information and process it in their brains. Analytical thinking is basically asking, “How can I connect this to that?”

This skill can help on most of the ACT, with the exception of math. Students need to know how to connect questions from the test to the passage so that it creates a better understanding of the passage and students have a higher chance of getting that question right.

In any English course, students are required to write all kinds of essays. Even in social science courses, students are required to write essays. Writing does not end after you graduate from high school. Writing is a basic skill that we need in the future, whether you are writing your resume, a business report, or even a newspaper article.

To write an essay, students need to read a nicely-written essay. It’s not rocket science that to be better at something, you need to look at good examples. Why do you think art students look at other art pieces?

To write an essay, students also need to extract information from a passage read earlier. That means being able to find and remember important ideas or details. Remembering details can help a student’s memory skills too because that student will be able to judge which detail is best to use in certain essays or prompts.

Stress is present in every human being because of work, school, or even just those little things in life like an important game or picking out the right outfit for the day. Stress can be reduced in many ways, but here, we need to know that reading can also relieve stress.

Many readers have experienced being part of a different world when reading a book. They are hooked onto the plot and can easily imagine the it when they are reading. This helps many readers forget about reality and let them easily jump into the world of imagination with few worries.

Reading a book during your free time can easily calm you from your day’s stress.

Even if you’re dead tired from your day, take your time with reading your favorite book. Sometimes, readers cannot even put a book down when in the latest hours of the night.

It’s not hard to realize that reading helps your ACT scores, improves writing skills and is a good stress reliever. No, you don’t have to pick books written by Shakespeare or Mark Twain. Pick books at your level or higher or genres that you love. I know girls cannot stop reading Nicholas Sparks books, even if some of them were already turned into movies.

Any student can read a fiction or nonfiction novel. Why not start there?

By: Abbie Gail Lim