ACT Practice Drills | Free ACT English, Math, Reading & Science

By Brian Stewart, Barron’s Author & ACT Perfect Scorer

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The ACT rewards careful readers who can stay on pace. After 20+ years of tutoring, I’ve found that my biggest score-gainers usually aren’t the students with the deepest content knowledge. They’re the students who learn to read each question carefully, work with what the test gives them, and pace themselves well across all three sections. This guide covers how the test is structured, the strategy that matters most, and how to get the most out of these drills.

For full content review and complete practice tests, check out my book Barron’s ACT Study Guide Premium, 2026. First, the strategy.

How the ACT Is Structured

The enhanced ACT, which rolled out nationally in 2025, has three core sections and two optional ones. The three core sections take about two hours total, roughly an hour shorter than the previous version of the test.

Section	Questions	Time	Pace
English	50 questions	35 minutes	~42 sec/question
Mathematics	45 questions	50 minutes	~67 sec/question
Reading	36 questions	40 minutes	~67 sec/question
Science (optional)	40 questions	40 minutes	60 sec/question

* The Writing (Essay) section is also optional: 1 essay, 40 minutes. Science costs an additional $4 to add; Writing costs an additional $25.

The ACT is not adaptive: everyone gets the same test. There’s no penalty for wrong answers, so always fill in every bubble, even when you’re guessing. Your composite is the average of your three core section scores (English, Math, Reading), each scored 1–36. Science and Writing are reported as separate scores and don’t affect your composite. Whether to take the optional Science section depends on your target schools, so check each college’s policy. Some STEM-focused programs still require or recommend it.

Students who switch over from SAT prep are often surprised by how much content the ACT covers. ACT Math includes logarithms and matrices, which the SAT doesn’t touch. ACT English leans hard on parallel structure and conciseness, which the SAT mostly ignores. If your prep so far has been SAT-only, plan to broaden your content base before the ACT.

The Biggest Mistake I See on the ACT

The most common mistake I see is students going after the answer choices before they actually understand the question. They skim the question, jump to the options, and start evaluating without ever being sure what the question is asking them to do.

In Reading, this often looks like confusing a “main idea” question with a “detail” question and picking an answer that’s accurate but irrelevant. In Math, it can mean calculating the wrong thing: finding area when the question asked for circumference, or solving for x when it asked for 2x. English questions get missed when students start editing for grammar even though the question was really about organization.

The fix takes discipline: read the question carefully and know exactly what it’s asking before you even glance at the answer choices. The few extra seconds you spend up front save you far more time than they cost.

Four Things That Actually Move Your ACT Score

1. Use All the Time You’re Given

Move through each section at a pace that lets you do each question once and do it right. Rushing to bank time for review at the end usually backfires. Careless errors pile up, misread questions slip past you, and the review time you saved rarely recovers as many points as careful first-pass work would have.

Your time is for spending on quality answers, not for hoarding. When you’re working at the right pace, unhurried but focused, you’ll need less review time anyway, because you made fewer mistakes the first time through.

2. Use All the Information in Front of You

Every section gives you information to work with, and most students don’t use enough of it. On Reading and English, get enough context before you commit to an answer. Read the surrounding sentences and understand what the passage is doing overall instead of answering based on one isolated phrase. For Math and Science, use the graphs, tables, figures, and any setup the problem provides. Students who ignore the visuals on Science or skip the notes on a Math problem are throwing away free information.

In one sense, the ACT is an open-book test. Everything you need to answer correctly is right in front of you. The skill is finding it and using it efficiently.

3. Write Out Your Work

Don’t try to do too much in your head. In Math, write out your calculations, set up equations on paper, and sketch the geometry. Reading and English questions get easier when you circle the key words so you stay anchored to what’s being asked. For Science, lightly annotate the figures as you read them.

Writing out your work cuts down on careless errors and helps you see the solution path. Students who keep everything in their heads make more mistakes and have a harder time checking their work. If you’re taking the paper test, write directly in the booklet; it’s yours to mark up. On the online version, use the scratch paper provided at the testing center. The space is there for a reason.

4. Balance Speed with Thoroughness

The students who improve the most are the ones who find their pace: not too fast, not too slow. Move too quickly and you’ll make careless errors and misread questions. Move too slowly and you’ll run out of time before you reach questions you could have nailed.

The right balance looks different for each student and each section. On English, you have about 42 seconds per question, which is brisk but workable if you aren’t overthinking. Math gives you about 67 seconds per question, enough to set up and solve most problems if you’re organized. Practice with timed drills to find your natural pace, then adjust from there.

How to Use These Drills

The drills below are organized by section. Each one is five questions with a full explanation for every answer choice.

The most valuable thing you can do after a drill is review your mistakes carefully. Checking the answer key isn’t enough; you need to figure out why you got the question wrong. Was it a misreading? Were you missing context? Was it a careless calculation? Spotting patterns in your mistakes is what drives real improvement.

Also go back over the questions you got right but weren’t sure about. If you guessed correctly, figure out why the right answer was right, so you can do it deliberately next time instead of relying on luck.

For full ACT content review and complete practice tests, see Barron’s ACT Study Guide Premium, 2026.