Reading Across Genres
What the questions test
This domain asks you to read more than one text, often in different genres, and compare how each handles the same idea. You also need the vocabulary of poetry (line, stanza, rhyme scheme, rhythm, repetition, refrain, speaker) and drama (cast of characters, dialogue, stage directions, scenes, acts).
For paired passages, ask: What is each text mostly about? What does each author emphasize? How do the structures differ? A poem may compress an idea into images, while an article explains it with facts. Comparison questions reward specific evidence from both texts - one quotation from each.
Traps
- Treating the speaker of a poem as the poet. A poem can be spoken by a mouse, a river, or a soldier.
- Assuming rhyme proves a poem is happy. Rhyme is sound, not mood.
- Skipping stage directions, which often reveal setting, action, or a character's feelings.
- Answering a comparison question with evidence from only one text.
- Confusing paraphrase (same ideas, new words, similar length) with summary (main ideas only, much shorter).
Worked example
Text A is a poem about a river: "I carry the mountain's cold / and never stop to rest." Text B is an article explaining how rivers erode rock and carry sediment downhill.
A weak comparison says both are "about rivers." A strong one says: both show a river's constant motion, but the poem personifies the river to suggest power and persistence, while the article uses cause-and-effect structure to explain erosion. Note the genre difference and cite evidence from each text.
Rule of thumb: compare the idea, then the method - what each author does that the other doesn't. Name the genre and use it.