Reading and Viewing
What this domain tests
Reading and Viewing asks you to make meaning from texts and from visual or multimodal material - print passages, charts, advertisements, web pages, infographics, and paired texts. The exam rewards evidence-based comprehension: locating information, inferring what is implied, tracking how an argument or narrative develops, and judging how visual choices shape meaning. You are tested on how you know, not just what the answer is, so every claim you make should be traceable to a specific word, line, or design feature.
Core rules and concepts
- Literal vs. inferential questions. Literal answers sit on the page; inferential answers require combining clues. For inference, name the clues and the conclusion they support.
- Main idea vs. supporting detail. The main idea is the claim the whole text serves; details support it. A true statement is not automatically the main idea.
- Text structure. Notice comparison/contrast, cause/effect, problem/solution, sequence, and description. Structure signals where key ideas live.
- Author's purpose and tone. Ask whether the text informs, persuades, entertains, or instructs, and how word choice reveals attitude.
- Visual literacy. In images, examine subject, composition (what is centred, foregrounded, cropped), colour, text placement, and what is omitted. Multimodal texts combine modes, and meaning often comes from the interaction between caption and image.
- Paired texts. Compare perspective and purpose, not just topic. Two texts on one subject may disagree in emphasis or reliability.
Worked example
A poster shows a smiling farmer holding a tomato, with a small caption: "Grown 40 km from your table." Question: What is the poster's main persuasive technique?
Reasoning: The smile and close-up build trust and freshness; the distance detail supplies a concrete, checkable claim (local, low food miles). The combination links an emotional cue to a factual appeal. The best answer names both the emotional image and the locavore claim, not merely "it uses a picture of a farmer." A distractor saying "it uses statistics" fails because a single distance is not a statistical argument.
Traps that cost marks
- Choosing a true statement that does not answer the specific question asked.
- Ignoring qualifiers such as mainly, best, most likely, which change the task.
- Treating a visual as decoration rather than as evidence.
- Over-reading: inferring beyond what the clues support.
- Missing the shift when a text changes tone or direction (e.g., "However…").