Reading - Craft and Structure
What this domain asks you to do
Craft and Structure questions focus on how a text is built and why the author made those choices: word choice, figurative language, text structure, point of view, tone, and purpose.
Concepts to master
- Connotation vs. denotation: denotation is the dictionary meaning; connotation is the feeling a word carries (thrifty vs. stingy).
- Figurative language: simile, metaphor, personification, hyperbole, idiom, symbolism - and the effect each creates.
- Text structure: chronological, cause–effect, compare–contrast, problem–solution, description, and claim–evidence. Structure is revealed by relationships between ideas, not by a single signal word.
- Point of view: first person, third-person limited, third-person omniscient - and how the narrator's position limits what readers know.
- Tone and purpose: tone is the author's attitude; mood is the reader's feeling; purpose is what the author wants to accomplish.
Traps the test sets
Mixing up tone and mood; labeling a passage compare–contrast just because it contains the word like; choosing the literal meaning of a figurative phrase; assuming an author's purpose is always to persuade when the passage mainly informs; ignoring how a shift in point of view changes the reader's information.
Rule of thumb and worked example
Name the function, not just the label. Instead of answering it is a metaphor, answer the metaphor makes the storm feel like an animal hunting the town, which builds dread.
Example: In the line the deadline crept toward her like a rising tide, the simile compares the deadline to water. The effect is a sense of slow, unstoppable pressure - not that the deadline is literally wet. An answer choices that mentions only water is describing the image, not its effect, and is the trap.