Reading Comprehension - Informational and Literary Texts
Reading Comprehension - Informational and Literary Texts asks you to do two related jobs: extract what a passage says and explain how it says it. Literary passages reward attention to character, conflict, setting, point of view, imagery, and theme. Informational passages reward attention to central idea, supporting evidence, text structure, author's purpose, and tone. The exam favors questions that ask for the best answer, so every choice must be tested against the passage rather than against your general opinion.
Literary texts: track change and perspective
Read for change: what does the protagonist want, what blocks them, and what shifts by the end? Characterization is direct when the narrator states a trait and indirect when speech, action, appearance, or other characters' reactions reveal it. Point of view controls what you can know; a first-person narrator may be reliable or limited, and an omniscient narrator may judge characters. Theme is a claim about human experience, not a one-word topic. 'Loneliness' is a topic; 'isolation can make people mistake memory for company' is a theme.
Informational texts: map the argument
Identify the central idea, then the function of each paragraph: example, cause, comparison, problem–solution, or counterargument. Text features such as headings, captions, and charts are evidence, not decoration. Distinguish fact from opinion and notice qualifiers ('some,' 'often,' 'may') that make a claim defensible.
Worked example
Passage sentence: 'The council approved the bike lane 4–3 after a two-hour hearing in which 31 residents spoke; 22 supported the lane.' Question: Which inference is best supported? A. Most residents in the town support bike lanes. B. The council was divided, and most speakers at the hearing supported the lane. C. The bike lane will reduce traffic accidents. Reasoning: A overgeneralizes from hearing speakers to the whole town. C adds an outcome the sentence never states. B stays inside the evidence: the 4–3 vote shows division; 22 of 31 speakers supported the lane. The correct answer is B.
Traps that cost marks
- Matching a word in the passage instead of the meaning of the choice.
- Choosing an extreme or absolute answer when the passage qualifies its claim.
- Confusing topic with theme, or narrator with author.
- Ignoring the question stem's focus: 'the function of paragraph 3' is not 'the main idea of the passage.'