The Enhanced ACT has lots of tricky “strategy” questions. Memorizing content—or being naturally sharp—isn’t enough to get them right. Indeed, you might get these sorts of problems wrong UNLESS you’ve learned an ACT-specific strategy...and practiced it until it’s second nature.
Among these challenging question types, few trip up more students than the “Big Picture” question. MOST students tend to approach these questions the wrong way—even if they’re using a prep book!
That’s why I always teach my one-on-one test prep clients my hack for moving through these perilous questions quickly and accurately.
And today’s your lucky day, because I’m going to share my Big Picture Question shortcut with you, too.
ARTICLE CONTENTS
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Recognizing a “Big Picture” question on the Enhanced ACT
Let’s review what these questions have looked like on past ACT Reading sections. Can you figure out what they all have in common?:
“The central claim of the passage is that…”
“The purpose of the passage is to…”
“The passage as a whole can primarily be characterized as…”
“The author uses the word ‘we’ throughout the passage in order to…”
“Which choice best describes what happens in the passage?”
“The author’s attitude towards the subject of the passage can best be described as…”
“Which choice best describes the developmental pattern of the passage?”
Any ideas as to the shared theme here? Yup: each of these “Big Picture” questions asks about the passage overall.
There are no specific line numbers provided to help you know which sentence(s) to hone in on. Instead, each Q calls upon your holistic understanding of what the entire passage is about, what the main idea is, what the author thinks of it, what the general structure is, and what the principal rhetorical devices employed by the author are.
In that last sentence I used terms like “holistic,” “general,” “principal”—terms that ask you to zoom out and take a global view.
In this blog post, I’m first going to explain what most OTHER test prep companies and even highly respected books will advise you to do. BUT stick around after that! Because then I’m going to show you a better way to approach these questions—a hack that has worked far better for my students when they actually sit down to take the test.
It’s like an episode of “Kristina Ruins Everything,” but one where I ruin it, THEN repair it…so that it’s stronger than ever before!
Popular (and less effective) Strategies for Big-Picture Reading Qs
Here are some common methods of approaching this type of question—the choreography that other tutors or test prep books might advise. (Remember: these are NOT what I have found to be the best method, over the course of 16 years of experience—so make sure to keep reading through to the next section to get my more reliable approach!)
1) Create a title for the passage.
The core idea here is to craft a headline for the passage as if you were placing it on the front page of a newspaper (well, back when people still read newspapers, that is…I guess today you’d be told to imagine the title of the TikTok video that would be made about the passage!).
What’s the downside? While this may serve as a great drill for study/prep times when you want to hone your “main idea” skills for 30 minutes (or more), this hack is NOT time-efficient when you’re taking the test itself! You have just 10 minutes to answer 9 questions about each passage you’ll see on the ACT. You simply don’t have time to slowly make your way through the passage, then write a headline.
2) Pick the broadest/vaguest answer.
The assumption here is that “general” questions should have “general” answers. So in theory, all you have to do is to eliminate any answers that are too detailed, and you’ll sail smoothly on to your answer.
Except…that’s all only somewhat true. Sure, the answer to a “main idea” question should ideally be an answer choice broad enough to contain the details of the body paragraphs. BUT the test writers are usually too smart to include only one of those—meaning you could still be left with two or more valid-seeming answers if you use this method! Whoops.
3) What’s the topic/subject that the passage is talking about? Pick the answer choice THAT includes that topic.
We’re getting closer to the correct approach now. However, this is still just a shallow rule of thumb that doesn’t offer real pointers as to how you’re supposed to actually grasp what the passage is about in the first place! Next.
4) Spend hours upon hours with your tutor dissecting the “topic” vs. “central claim” vs. “main idea” vs. “general structure” vs. “purpose” vs. “author’s attitude” vs. “author’s tone.”
If you’re studying for an AP Literature or AP Composition exam, then be my guest!
Don’t get me wrong: these are solid skills to have in AP courses, in college, and in life. Plus, it’s true: if you’ve practiced these long-term skills and have a handle on them, you WILL be able to handle “Big Picture” questions with more ease and speed than if you haven’t.
But the hard truth is: you don’t have a whole year to dedicate to analyzing the whole literary canon just so you can slam-dunk those 3 to 6 “Big Picture” questions. That’s just not a time efficient approach to your standardized test prep timeline!
4) Read the introductory and concluding paragraphs.
When in absolute doubt—or if I were truly running out of time—these are the exact spots in the passage that I would skip to! That said, we don’t want you to ONLY have worst-case scenario fixes in your toolkit, right?
So, those are the tactics you may already be familiar with.
They appear in your test prep books/websites, your study guides, and the playbooks of many tutors and test-prep professionals. But come with me, won’t you, because I’m going to walk you through an approach you have NOT seen before…but one that’s going to fly you to the right answer more quickly and smoothly than a private jet.
The best way to answer ACT “Big Picture” questions
My method may surprise you, in some ways. But this I promise you: for the vast majority of my students, it’s a miracle cure that gets them swiftly to the right answer…AND saves them hours upon hours of prep time.
First, let me ask you: where do “Big Picture” questions usually crop up? As in, for the cluster of 9 questions posed about a given passage, in what part of the sequence do main-idea Qs appear?
(Drumroll, please….)
These Qs tend to be the first question posed about a given passage.
Yup, when the ACT includes “Big Picture” questions, they usually appear as roughly the first question (or two) of your long list of questions attached to a given passage. And if you’re like all of my students when I first meet them, you’ll attempt to answer them first, as well.
But not any more! Because the truth is: it is NOT efficient to try and answer a question concerning the entire passage when you’ve only just read the passage for the first time…and might still be struggling to process that wall of text you just read.
Not very efficient at all. Because in order to answer the big-picture question first, you’ll need to return to the passage, reread chunks of it (if not, eep, the entire thing!), waste precious time…only to STILL risk getting the answer wrong. Oh yeah, and then you’ve STILL got 8 more questions to answer for that passage!
So here’s your secret edge over all the other students taking the test: you’re NOT going to waste another moment going over that passage with a fine-toothed comb multiple times. Instead, you’re going to answer the “Big Picture” question(s) last.
Here’s what this practice looks like in action:
You’ll read your passage however you read a passage (I’ve created four core strategies for doing so, out of which I guarantee that at least one will “click” for you).
Then you answer the questions in whichever way you’ve worked on answering questions (in my private tutoring sessions, I come up with a custom gameplan for each student as to what order he/she should answer the rest of the Qs in). For our purposes here, what’s important is that you NOT answer any “Big Picture” questions until you’ve completed all the rest!
Finally, answer any “Big Picture” question—LAST!
Here’s why it works:
Instead of spending even more time processing what the passage is about in order to answer this question type separately, you’re killing two birds with one stone. You’re processing and digesting what the passage is about…by working through and answering the other 7-8 questions! After you’ve pondered and answered those Qs, you will have a MUCH deeper understanding of the passage as a whole.
Now, when you go back to answer the “Big Picture” question(s), you probably won’t need to refer back to the passage at all! The answer will likely seem pretty clear as soon as you read it.
Woohoo!
An added bonus: you didn’t have to spend 5-10 tutoring sessions learning a different way to interpret material you read. You can save those subtler literary conversations for Honors English class when your class tackles the theme of slavery in Huck Finn.
Conclusion
There you have it: the technique that helps my students soar through big-picture questions accurately and rapidly!
And it’ll do the same for you, too.
If you’re on the hunt for even more ACT Reading section tips, my one-on-one tutoring clients get access to all of them….as well as to strategies and study timelines customized to their needs and strengths. Learn more about working with me here, or opt for my fully digital, fully bingeable ACT Reading Guide.
