Reading Comprehension and Text Analysis
What is tested
Items ask for main idea, author’s purpose, tone, supporting detail, inference, vocabulary in context, and recognition of a paraphrase. Legal texts add their own shapes: a statute’s elements, a holding versus dicta, a dissent’s reasoning, a contract clause whose effect depends on one proviso.
Concepts to master
- Distinguish the claim the passage establishes from material that merely sets it up.
- Track connective markers (however, therefore, provided that, notwithstanding, except) which flip, limit, or condition meaning.
- Separate what the text states from what a reasonable reader could infer, and from what is merely plausible in the real world.
- Watch scope words: all, some, only, unless, except, at least.
- In legal passages, identify who is speaking: the court, a dissenting judge, the legislature, or a commentator.
Traps
Distractors are often true statements that do not answer the question asked. Others overreach with absolute language (“always,” “never,” “proves”) or import outside knowledge. In vocabulary-in-context items, the word’s most common everyday meaning is usually the wrong choice.
Rule of thumb
Answer the question in your own words before reading the options, then eliminate any choice that adds a claim, a cause, or a degree the passage does not supply.
Worked example
Passage: “Although the statute is silent on electronic service, the court held that e-mail satisfies the notice requirement when receipt is acknowledged.” Asked for the main idea, the best answer is that the court filled a statutory gap by requiring acknowledged receipt. A tempting wrong answer - “the statute permits e-mail service” - contradicts the passage, which says the statute is silent.