Reading Comprehension of Informational Texts
Reading Comprehension of Informational Texts covers articles, essays, textbook chapters, biographies, how-to texts and infographics. Questions test four skills: locating the central idea, tracking how a text is organized, using text features, and judging what the author is doing and for whom.
Central idea versus topic
- Topic: one or two words - road diets.
- Central idea: a sentence the whole text develops - narrower roads can be safer without reducing traffic.
- Supporting details prove or explain it. A detail can be fascinating and still not be the central idea.
Five organizational patterns
- Description - for example, characteristics, consists of.
- Sequence/chronology - first, then, finally, dates.
- Compare–contrast - both, unlike, whereas, similarly, on the other hand.
- Cause–effect - because, as a result, led to, consequently.
- Problem–solution - however, one answer is, therefore. If you can name the pattern, you can often predict where an answer sits.
Text features do real work
- Headings group information; bold and italics mark key terms; captions interpret images; sidebars add context outside the main line; diagrams show parts and processes; glossaries define; indexes locate. Answers frequently live in a caption you skipped.
Purpose, tone and bias
- Purpose: inform, explain, persuade, entertain, describe, instruct.
- Loaded word choice ("regime" versus "government"), selective statistics and missing voices all signal bias. Ask who is quoted, who is absent, and what the other side would say.
Worked example
Sample text written for this guide: "When the town removed two of its four traffic lanes and added a centre turn lane and bike lanes, drivers predicted gridlock. Six months later, the count of cars on the street had barely changed, and injury crashes had dropped by a third." Question: How is the paragraph organized? Reasoning: the first clause names a change, the second reports a prediction, and the third reports what followed - signalled by "six months later" and "had dropped." That is cause–effect. Compare–contrast is tempting because the prediction and the outcome differ, but nothing is measured against a second case; the passage explains consequences of one change. Choosing "problem–solution" would be defensible only if the text proposed a further fix.
Traps that cost marks
- Using one striking statistic as the central idea.
- Ignoring qualifiers: the text says "some" or "suggests," but the answer choice says "all" or "proves."
- Confusing the author's purpose with the text's structure.
- Skipping headings, captions and source lines, which often carry the answer.