Language Arts – Reading
What the questions ask
Reading questions on this exam reward close attention to the passage, not to what you already know. You need to find main ideas and supporting details, make inferences, identify an author's purpose and tone, interpret vocabulary in context, and recognize how a text is organized (compare/contrast, cause/effect, chronology, problem/solution). You may also compare two passages or evaluate an argument's evidence.
Traps to watch
A frequent trap is an answer that is true according to the passage but does not answer the specific question. Another is extreme wording-always, never, all, none-which is rarely supported. Watch for choices that require outside knowledge that contradicts the text; the passage wins. Inference means a small, logical step, not a wild guess. For tone, notice adjectives and verbs, not just the topic.
Rule of thumb and example
Cover the choices, predict your answer, then match. For vocabulary, substitute each option into the original sentence and check nearby contrast words such as but or although. For main idea, ask what the paragraph is mostly doing. Example: a passage explains that a city planted trees and later recorded cooler summer temperatures. The best main idea is that trees can reduce urban heat-not "a city planted trees" (too narrow) and not "climate change affects the whole planet" (too broad). If two choices seem right, one is probably too broad, too narrow, or off-topic.