Reading and Responding: Text Types, Cohesion and Inference
What this section tests
Reading and Responding presents authentic-style Turkish texts: notices, advertisements, emails, short articles, interviews, literary extracts and opinion pieces. Questions target main idea, specific information, vocabulary in context, author purpose and inference.
Concepts you must control
- Text-type conventions: a duyuru is impersonal and brief; an ilan uses persuasive adjectives; a resmî mektup opens with Sayın ... and closes with Saygılarımla; a köşe yazısı mixes opinion with evidence.
- Word building: recognition of -lik (abstract nouns), -ci (professions), -siz (without), -mek/-mak (infinitive), and the passive -il-/-in- which hides the agent.
- Relative clauses: -dığı, -acağı, -an/-en constructions, e.g. dün aldığım kitap (the book I bought yesterday). These pack information and are a frequent comprehension hurdle.
- Cohesion: pronouns bu, şu, o, kendisi, and connectors bununla birlikte, öte yandan, dolayısıyla, buna karşın. Track what each pronoun refers to.
- Vocabulary in context: choose the meaning that fits the sentence, not the most common dictionary sense.
Traps to expect
- True-but-not-asked: an option states a fact from the text that does not answer the question.
- Overstatement: options containing her zaman, asla, tüm, hiç kimse when the text says genellikle or bazı.
- Reversed causality: the text says A caused B; the distractor says B caused A.
- Pronoun drift: a question asks about o and two nouns precede it.
Rule of thumb
Read the question stems before the text, then read the text once for gist and once for the lines the question points to. Underline the sentence that justifies your answer. If no single sentence justifies it, the answer is an inference - check that it is the safest one supported by the text.
Worked example
Text: “Belediye, parklardaki bankların sayısını artırmayı planlıyor; ancak bütçe onaylanmadan bu çalışma başlamayacak.” Question: Çalışmanın başlaması neye bağlı? Option park sayısının artmasına reverses the logic; the correct answer is bütçenin onaylanmasına, signalled by ancak and -madan (without).