Reading Comprehension and Analysis of Literary and Informational Texts
What this domain tests
You must show you can read a passage closely and reason about it: identifying main idea and supporting details, tracing theme and character development in literature, and evaluating arguments and text structure in informational text. Know the difference between main idea (what the whole passage is about) and theme (a universal insight about life, stated as a sentence, not a topic word). Know text structures-cause/effect, compare/contrast, problem/solution, chronological, description-and how signal words reveal them. For informational text, distinguish claim from evidence and recognize when evidence is anecdotal versus systematic.
Traps to watch for
Questions often offer a true statement that is too narrow (a detail, not the main idea) or too broad (beyond the passage). Theme options that are single words ("friendship") are usually wrong because a theme must be a claim. For inference items, the correct answer is supported but not directly stated; distractors may be plausible but unsupported. Watch for tone and point of view: a narrator's attitude is not always the author's. When asked about an argument's strength, the trap is confusing emotional appeal with logical support.
Rule of thumb
Before choosing, locate the sentence(s) that justify the answer. If you cannot point to textual support, the option is likely a distractor. For theme, ask: "Could this be stated as a full sentence about people in general?" If not, reject it.
Worked example
A passage describes a farmer who ignores neighbors' warnings, plants early, and loses crops to frost, then plants later the next year and succeeds. A distractor says the theme is "farming." The correct theme is closer to "Experience teaches lessons that advice alone cannot." It is a full sentence about human life, supported across the whole passage.