Reading Comprehension: The Unseen Passage
What this domain tests
The comprehension section gives you an unseen prose extract, usually on a topic such as environment, education, technology or social change, and asks you to answer without any outside knowledge. The marks come from four skills: locating explicit information, drawing a supported inference, working out the meaning of a word from context, and occasionally note-making or a one-line summary.
Core method
- Read the questions first, briefly. They show you which paragraphs carry the marks.
- Skim the whole passage once for the main idea, then scan for the key words in each question.
- Answer in your own words, one clear sentence per mark. One mark means one point, not a paragraph.
- For vocabulary, substitute the word back into the sentence and check whether the meaning still holds.
- For inference, name the clue and then the conclusion: "Because the writer says X, we can infer Y."
Worked example
Question: "What does 'curb' mean in the sentence 'The city plans to curb traffic in school zones'?" Reasoning: the sentence describes a plan about traffic near schools; a plan normally restricts rather than encourages; 'curb' is used as a verb here, so the meaning is to restrict or control. Answer: "limit". Notice that the answer is built from the surrounding words, not from a memorised word list.
Traps that cost marks
- Copying an entire sentence when a phrase is enough.
- Missing negatives such as 'not only', 'except' and 'least'.
- Giving your own opinion about the topic instead of the writer's view.
- Ignoring a word limit such as 'in about 30 words'.
- Answering only the first half of a two-part question.