Reading comprehension: cohesion, stance and inference
Reading is tested on authentic documents: press editorials and news items, literary extracts, institutional or administrative texts, essays and surveys. Items ask for the main idea, the author's position, the function of a paragraph or sentence, and inferences that depend on cohesive devices rather than on word-matching.
Suivre les références
- Anaphora: celui-ci/celle-ci usually points to the nearer or later noun (the latter), celui-là to the former; cette dernière, ledit, en, y and dont must be resolved before answering.
- dont replaces de + noun; auquel/duquel follow à or de; où covers both place and time.
- In reported discourse, track who holds which view: selon X, d'après Y, X affirme que … ; Y en doute.
Lire la position de l'auteur
- Modalisation: sans doute means probably, not « without doubt »; certes and il est vrai que open a concession; il n'en reste pas moins que reverses it.
- The conditional hedges: on pourrait penser que, il serait tentant de croire que.
- Irony is flagged by quotation marks used as scare quotes, exclamations, or an adjective clashing with its noun.
- Litotes: il n'est pas sans rappeler = it strongly recalls; il n'est pas exclu que = it is possible.
Structure du texte
- An argumentative text moves through thesis, arguments, examples, concession, conclusion. ainsi, par exemple and tel que introduce illustration, not the claim itself.
- Punctuation carries logic: the colon explains, the semicolon balances, dashes insert an aside, the question sets a problem.
Worked example
« Si l'on peut se réjouir de la baisse du chômage, il convient néanmoins de s'interroger sur la qualité des emplois créés. » Question: what is the author's position? Reasoning: « si l'on peut » concedes a positive point; « néanmoins » marks the pivot; « il convient de s'interroger » expresses reservation, not rejection. The position is therefore qualified and cautious. Choosing « the author opposes the policy » overreads a concession that was explicitly granted.
Traps that cost marks
- Answering from general knowledge instead of from the passage.
- Mistaking an example (introduced by ainsi, par exemple) for the main claim.
- Attributing a quoted view to the author.
- Faux amis inside the text: actuellement = currently, éventuellement = possibly, ignorer = not to know.
- Ignoring the scope of negation, which can invert an entire sentence.