The Two Reading Passages
A placement test gives two short reading texts. Text A (120 words): a notice about a library's new opening hours, with a table of times and one sentence: "Members may borrow up to eight items for three weeks; renewals are not permitted during the final week." Text B (150 words): an opinion column arguing that city centres should ban cars, containing the sentence: "While critics claim the ban would harm business, the evidence from three European cities suggests the opposite." A candidate answers all four Text A questions correctly in 90 seconds but gets two of three Text B questions wrong. On the wrong items, the candidate chose options that quote phrases from the passage but misstate the author's attitude (e.g., selecting "The author believes the ban would harm business").
1. What does the pattern of errors on Text B reveal about the candidate's reading level, compared with the perfect score on Text A?
Read the worked answer
The split is diagnostic, not random:
- Text A is literal, locally answerable information (times, numbers, a stated rule). Getting all four right shows solid scanning and literal comprehension - a foundation level.
- Text B requires inference and attitude recognition. The wrong answers are distractor traps: they reuse exact wording from the passage ("harm business") but invert the author's stance. The candidate is matching surface words rather than tracking who believes what ("critics claim... the evidence suggests the opposite").
So the candidate reads at a literal level but does not yet reliably distinguish the author's position from a quoted opposing view - a classic mid-level gap. Placement should reflect literal comprehension secured, inferential/attitude reading not yet secure.
2. The candidate insists they "read every word." Explain why careful word-by-word reading still produced wrong answers, and give one concrete strategy.
Read the worked answer
Reading every word is not the same as tracking argument structure. The passage signals contrast explicitly: "While critics claim X, the evidence suggests the opposite." A word-by-word reader registers both "harm business" and "opposite" but may not assign them to the right speaker: the harm claim belongs to critics, not the author. The distractor exploits exactly this - it lifts the phrase but drops the attribution.
Concrete strategy: before answering attitude questions, locate the reporting verbs and contrast markers ("critics claim", "while", "the evidence suggests") and label each claim as author's view vs someone else's view. A quick "who says this?" tag beside each quoted phrase prevents choosing an option that merely echoes vocabulary.