Reading Comprehension: Structure, Function, and Inference
Read for structure before detail
Every passage has a skeleton: a claim, evidence, a concession, a rebuttal. Before answering anything, summarize in one sentence what the author wants you to believe, and label how the parts move (e.g., phenomenon → rejected explanation → preferred explanation). Most questions, including detail questions, get easier once that skeleton is explicit.
Question types you must recognize
Main idea; function (“in order to”); inference; author's attitude; detail and EXCEPT; strengthen/weaken; vocabulary in context; analogy. For function questions, insert “in order to” before each choice - the correct one completes a statement of purpose, not a paraphrase of the sentence's content.
Traps
- True but irrelevant: supported by the passage, yet it does not answer the question asked.
- Extreme language: all, never, proves, impossible usually outruns hedged academic prose.
- Scope creep: an answer about the wrong paragraph, or one that generalizes a carefully limited claim.
- Outside knowledge: your own expertise is never the evidence; only the text is.
- Reversed direction: in strengthen/weaken items, choices that do the opposite are common.
Rule of thumb
Phrase your own answer in the author's cautious register before looking at the choices, then eliminate anything stronger or broader than the text. For inference, permit exactly one modest step - a statement that must be true if the passage is.
Worked example
Passage: “Historians once treated guild records as mere administrative residue. Recent work reads them as negotiated documents in which masters and journeymen contested wage norms.” Question: the author mentions “administrative residue” primarily to - the answer names a view the passage then revises. A choice like “to describe medieval bookkeeping practices” is true to the phrase but misses its function, and is wrong.