Reading Comprehension
Reading Comprehension tests what you can establish from a text you have never seen. Passages may be articles, reports, reviews, advertisements or literary extracts. Questions ask for the main idea, a specific detail, the meaning of a word in context, the writer's attitude, the function of a paragraph, or an inference that the text supports.
Working method
- Read the questions first as a map of the passage - not to guess answers.
- Skim for structure: title, first and last sentences of paragraphs, and signposts such as however, in contrast, the evidence suggests.
- Return to the text for every answer and underline the line that proves it. If you cannot point to that line, the option is a distractor.
Question types and what they reward
- Main idea: covers the whole passage, not the most striking detail.
- Detail: usually paraphrased, so match meaning rather than wording.
- Inference: follows necessarily from the text, in one logical step.
- Reference: this, they, such measures - trace back to the noun phrase that fits both grammar and sense.
- Tone/attitude: read the evaluative adjectives, adverbs, modals and hedges (appears, arguably, may) rather than isolated facts.
Worked example
Although the council approved the scheme, its report noted that the projected savings rested on assumptions that had not been independently audited.
Which best describes the writer's attitude? Hostile / Cautiously critical / Enthusiastic / Neutral
The concessive although concedes the approval; the main clause carries the doubt. Cautiously critical fits. Hostile overstates - the writer reports a caveat, not opposition. Neutral ignores the weight of rested on and had not been audited. Enthusiastic contradicts the sentence.
Traps that cost marks
- Options that are true in general knowledge but absent from the passage.
- Extreme quantifiers - always, never, all, proves - where the text says often, some, suggests.
- Confusing the writer's own view with a view the writer reports and then rejects.
- Answering from the first paragraph when the question asks about the whole text.
- Spending too long on one item: every question carries the same mark, so move on and return.