Information Sources on the ACT® Reading Test

Questions about the source of information are infrequent on the ACT® Reading. They do appear, just not very often. Some students have trouble understanding these questions. It's worth reviewing how to comprehend and solve this particular type of question.

How These Questions Appear

This question type can show up in many different ways. The ACT® will make it clear that they are asking about where a certain source of knowledge came from. They can be as explicit as saying "where did the narrator gain this knowledge?"

You can look for how the narrator might know something, whether it's gossip, a fact he or she read, or a publication he or she is quoting. Sometimes this is easy to deduce, other times it takes longer to find the relevant evidence.

However, it's important to remember that the answer is always in the text.

Effective Strategies for Solving

Make sure you find the relevant source of information. In this case, you should rely on your skimming skills, less so than your scanning skills.

These questions are rarely accompanied by specific details you can scan for – though that certainly can be the case. It just doesn't happen very often. Instead, you should skim through the passage to find the relevant context, then focus on a certain section until you know the answer to the question.

When to Consider Answer Choices

This type of question is one of the rare types when it may be advantageous to look at the answer choices. However, it's unwise to do so until you have some familiarity with the question by trying to answer it for yourself first.

If that's taking too much time, you might look through the answer choices and try to use Process of Elimination to find different details to delete or select an answer choice.

By following these strategies, you'll be better prepared to answer information source questions when they appear on the ACT® Reading section.