Reading Comprehension of Literary Texts
What This Domain Tests
Passages on this exam are short stories, poems, essays, or drama excerpts. You are asked what the text says, what it implies, and how one part relates to another. The core skill is disciplined close reading: locating the sentence that answers the question rather than answering from memory or personal opinion.
Concepts to Master
- Main idea vs. supporting detail. The main idea covers the whole passage; a detail is one fact inside it.
- Inference. A conclusion the text strongly supports but does not state outright.
- Sequence and causality. What happens first, and what causes what.
- Referents. What "it," "this," or "she" points to in a given sentence.
- Comparison. How two characters, passages, or attitudes differ.
Traps to Watch
- True but irrelevant. An answer choice may be accurate yet not answer the specific question.
- Too broad or too narrow. Extreme words like always and never often signal a wrong main idea.
- Emotion mistaken for fact. A character's feeling is not the same as an event in the plot.
- Outside knowledge. Use only what the passage provides.
Worked Example
Question: "The narrator says the house 'seemed smaller than she remembered.' What does this suggest?" The literal words describe size, but the phrase seemed signals perception. The correct answer is that her memory and present experience differ - not that the house was physically altered. Rule of thumb: when a verb like seemed, felt, or appeared appears, look for the character's perception, not objective fact.
Strategy
Read the question first, predict an answer in your own words, then eliminate choices that contradict the passage.