Reading Part A: purpose stems versus true-but-irrelevant details
Zhang Yue is 14 minutes into the 18 she budgets for one Reading Part A text. The passage (about 420 words) describes a 2019 four-day-week trial at a firm's New Zealand office: output rose roughly 20%, staff turnover fell, and the trial was extended. Paragraph 3 ends: 'Yet even here, the gains depended on a reorganisation that few smaller firms could copy.' Question 39 asks: 'The 2019 trial is mentioned mainly to ___'. Option A: 'show that a shorter week can raise output.' Option B: 'introduce a case whose implications are limited.' She remembers the 20% figure and leans toward A. Question 40 asks which statement the author would agree with; C reads 'Shorter hours never raise productivity', D reads 'Shorter hours can raise output, but not in every setting.' Both feel defensible to her. Two further questions follow, and she has four minutes.
1. Should she choose A or B for Question 39? Set out the reasoning she should apply in the exam hall.
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Choose B. The stem asks for function ('mentioned mainly to'), not for content. A is factually supported - the passage does report a 20% output gain - but it answers a different question: what did the trial show? The exam is asking why the author put it there.
Two textual signals decide it:
- The concessive
Yet even hereimmediately after the example signals that the example is being qualified, not simply endorsed. - The following sentence about
a reorganisation that few smaller firms could copytells us the function: the trial is introduced to establish a result and then fence it off.
A useful in-exam heuristic: for purpose items, read the sentence before the mention and the sentence after it. If a contrast or limitation marker follows, the example's job is almost always to set up a caveat. Also note the weight of mainly: even if A is true of the paragraph, B describes its role, so mainly selects B.
2. How should she decide Question 40 between C and D without re-reading the whole passage?
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Use degree and scope, not memory of the passage as a whole.
- C contains
never, an absolute. The passage reports a measurable 20% gain, so C is contradicted by the very evidence she remembers. Absolutes (never,all,only,prove) are wrong unless the text states them outright. - D contains
can … but not in every setting, which matches the author's hedging:the gains depended on a reorganisation that few smaller firms could copy. That is precisely 'possible, but conditional'.
So the decision rule is: check the modality of the passage (may, can, in some cases, depended on) and pick the option whose strength matches it. She should also notice that A and D are compatible - this is a consistency check, since the author can hold that shorter hours can raise output while denying it generalises. C fails that consistency test, D passes.
3. With four minutes left for two questions, what should she read - and what should she deliberately not read?
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She should not re-read the passage. Locate-and-verify instead:
- Underline the keyword in each stem (
the 2019 trial,author would agree) and scan for its paragraph. - Read the target sentence plus one sentence on each side, and the topic sentence of that paragraph. That is the evidence unit for a Part A item.
- Answer in order of confidence; if an item is not settled in 60–70 seconds, mark the most plausible option and move on.
Four minutes for two questions is roughly two minutes each, with 30 seconds spare. The failure mode visible in her numbers is not comprehension but budgeting: she spends the surplus on re-reading what she already understands, then guesses on the last two. She should also record her choices as she goes rather than transferring answers at the end, which is where transcription errors happen.