Reading: Craft and Structure
What this domain tests
Craft and Structure questions examine how a text is built: word choice, tone, text organization, point of view, and the function of particular paragraphs or sentences. You are analyzing the author's moves, not just the content.
Concepts to master
- Connotation: words carry emotional color. "Thrifty" and "stingy" describe similar behavior with opposite approval. Questions often ask why the author chose one over the other.
- Tone and attitude: identify the author's feeling (critical, cautious, admiring, neutral) from modifiers and rhetorical questions, not from the subject alone.
- Text structure: comparison-contrast, cause-effect, problem-solution, chronological, and claim-evidence are common organizational patterns. Recognize signal words for each.
- Function of a sentence: a sentence may introduce, illustrate, qualify, or transition. Ask what would be lost if it were deleted.
- Point of view: first person (I, we), second person (you, instructive), third person (he, she, it). Perspective shapes what the reader can know.
Traps to expect
- Tone confusion - mistaking the topic's seriousness for the author's tone, or reading sarcasm as sincerity.
- Structure mismatch - labeling a passage cause-effect when it merely lists examples.
- Function errors - calling a transitional sentence the main argument.
- Vocabulary in context - choosing a common meaning of a word when the passage uses a technical or figurative one.
Rule of thumb
For word-in-context questions, substitute each answer choice into the original sentence and reread it. Only one substitution preserves the sentence's logic.
Worked example
Sentence: "The committee's report was thorough, if somewhat tardy." Question: What does "if" signal here? Substituting shows "if" means "although" - the author concedes lateness while praising thoroughness. A choice reading "if" as a condition ("only if it is tardy") misreads the concession structure.