Frequently Asked Questions

The passages you'll frequently encounter in your classes and on standardized tests, such as the SAT and ACT, may differ in style and content from novels and stories. To improve your comprehension of academic writing, you have to practice reading and analyzing nonfiction every day. Our daily nonfiction reading practice will give you the comprehensive critical reading skills you need to be an outstanding student.

Most of the English tests you take at school are knowledge-based: as long as you memorize the information that your teacher gives you, you can probably get good grades even if you don't have great critical reading skills. By reading new passages every day, however, you can develop your ability to understand a variety of reading materials on your own. Our quizzes are specially designed by experts to measure your reading comprehension, so you can ensure that you really are making progress.

Not necessarily. As schools across the country race to meet Common Core Standards in their classrooms, students are being asked to read more newspaper and magazine articles outside of school hours. This is definitely a step in the right direction.

We've seen that most students, however, wind up reading easy articles that rate very low in sentence complexity-perhaps video game reviews, or posts from a celebrity blog. It's hard to make yourself read articles that may be less fun and more challenging; on the other hand, it's easy to become frustrated and give up when you're faced with material that's hard to comprehend with a quick skim.

In our informational nonfiction reading programs, helpful tutorial notes accompany each of the passages, allowing you to steadily develop your reading comprehension skills without getting discouraged. Plus, you'll be able to practice your test-taking skills by answering the SAT-level questions that accompany the passages.

In each nonfiction reading program, the passages are posted at three different sublevels of sentence complexity. For example, in the informational nonfiction reading program for 6^th - 7^th - 8^th grades, the levels are classified into three sublevels of E (easy, 6^th grade), M (medium, 7^th grade), and H (hard, 8^th grade), while the three sublevels in the expository nonfiction reading program for 9^th - 10^th grades are classified as E (easy, 9^th grade); M (medium, 10^th grade); and H (hard, 11th grade).

Since every standardized test includes various sublevels of sentence complexity, we strongly recommend you to read all the posted articles or passages regardless of their sublevels. But don't worry: even the hardest passages won't be too difficult to tackle, thanks to the tutorial sections attached to each one.

We select our passages and graphics from high-quality sources such as The National Archives, Project Gutenberg, and various publications by the U.S. government and news media. Test writers for the SAT/ACT reading tests get their passages from similar sources.

The three programs cover subjects in the social sciences that include anthropology, communication studies, economics, education, human geography, law, linguistics, political science, psychology, sociology, and their subfields. Science selections cover both foundational concepts and recent developments in the natural sciences, including earth science, biology, chemistry, physics, and their subfields.

No. The unread main passages will be saved on your member site for four weeks. You can retrieve them at any time for this period but before your subscription expires, by clicking on "My Reading Passages" in the menu located on the left side of your homepage.

"Repeated reading" is a classic technique for improving both your reading and writing skills. There's a lot of evidence that repeated reading trains your sense of intuition, so that in time, your brain can process a continuous influx of words more efficiently.

Although it might feel like you're "wasting time" at first, in the long run, you're actually saving yourself a lot of trouble, because you're training your brain to absorb information much more effectively. Plus, since you're processing what you read more quickly each time you read it, the second and third reads don't take very much time at all.

Since the required length of time may vary with your current level of reading comprehension skills, it can take you about 15 minutes to read a passage with tutorials and finish the reading comprehension test. However, it will get shorter as your reading skills improve.

On the other hand, if you repeatedly read each passage to develop your intuitive reading skills more quickly, it may take a little longer.

Yes, the Nonfiction Reading for New SAT/ACT program includes literature passages. Every other week, ReadingCare students in the New SAT/ACT program prepare for the SAT by analyzing one classic work of fiction from the United States or abroad. Questions focus on theme, mood, and characterization.

The tutorial sections and quizzes are created by graduates of Harvard and Yale. These specialists use their extensive knowledge and educational skills to provide the best learning experience possible.

Common Core Standards, adopted by 46 states across America, have caused teachers to increase the amount of nonfiction reading in their curricula significantly. This increase is a result of the observation that many students' reading comprehension skills are insufficient for success in college and beyond.

ReadingCare's daily nonfiction reading exercise provides students with great training for the new and challenging Common Core curricula.

Reading for reading's sake isn't the point of ReadingCare: we want to make sure that students are improving their comprehension skills.

The reading comprehension questions are the best way for parents and teachers to not only ensure that students put their best effort into reading the passages, but also to verify, with measurable results, that these efforts are leading to real improvement.

To accurately evaluate the students' skills, we craft questions that match the difficulty levels of actual SAT tests and other national standardized exams.

No matter how good our programs are, they will produce good results only when students really engage with the material. Your role is simple: let your child know that you will be checking his or her ReadingCare activities, including the online progress report, every day. Keeping track of your child's progress will ensure that your child sees good results from the Informational Nonfiction Reading program.

Making sure that your child reads each passage at least three times before taking the reading comprehension test is also important.

Finally, you should establish ReadingCare as a top priority for your child; making it a daily task to be completed right after school is advisable.

Yes. Teachers and administrators can access free two-week trials for each level. When creating an account, please select Teacher in the Job dropdown for access. Once enrolled, you can also create unique codes for each of your classes.

Once your students have enrolled in the program, you can monitor your students' activity at a glance through the Class Admin portal.

Creating a class is easy using the steps below:

1. Register here, selecting Teacher in the Job dropdown.
2. Log in. Click on Class Admin and create as many classes as needed.
3. Share with your students the corresponding class code, which can be entered in their My Account pages.

Once the accounts are linked by a class code, you can access each virtual classroom through Class Admin and then Student Admin for a snapshot of overall performance of your students. And you can drill further down to view each student's progress report.

If you have any trouble creating, linking, or accessing our virtual classrooms, please reach out to [email protected].

Yes. Anyone who teaches English or works as a consultant for college admission is eligible to create a teacher's account, and we encourage the adoption of our programs to holistically improve your students' reading skills, whether one-on-one or in a group setting.

Aside from your regular curriculum, no. Think of ReadingCare as a daily supplement to boost your students' reading comprehension abilities over time. Our daily reading assignments are designed to be self-sufficient, thanks to detailed tutorial notes and quizzes that your students can fit into their individual schedules. You can monitor your students' ReadingCare activities by glancing over the Class Admin portal, which provides progress reports updated in real time.