Verbal reasoning / Reading comprehension
Verbal reasoning / Reading comprehension measures how precisely you extract and evaluate meaning from written English. Passages may come from economics, social science, science, or the humanities; questions ask for main idea, explicit detail, inference, vocabulary in context, tone, and passage structure.
Core rules and concepts
- Main idea must cover the whole passage; a true detail that supports only one paragraph is usually a distractor.
- Inference answers must be necessarily supported by the text. If a choice needs one extra assumption or outside fact, reject it.
- Scope words matter: “all”, “only”, “primarily”, “some”. Eliminate choices that broaden or narrow the author’s claim.
- For vocabulary, substitute each option into the sentence and check tone and grammar; for attitude, track evaluative adjectives and concessions such as “although”.
- Map structure: compare/contrast, cause/effect, problem/solution, or thesis/evidence. The correct answer often reflects the function of a paragraph, not just its content.
Worked example
Passage: “Although the city’s congestion charge cut core traffic by 18%, ring-road retailers reported a 6% sales decline. The council concluded that the charge had damaged the economy.” Asked for an assumption, the key is that the sales decline was caused by the charge rather than by a simultaneous recession or online shopping. The passage supports “traffic fell”; it does not establish “the economy was damaged” without that bridge.
Traps that cost marks
Watch for choices that are true but not asked, extreme wording, reversed causality, and mistaking an example for the main point. Do not import real-world knowledge that the passage does not state.
Key points
- Test main-idea choices against every paragraph.
- Inference must be forced by the text, not merely plausible.
- Scope shifts in “all” or “only” usually signal a wrong choice.
- Use sentence substitution for vocabulary-in-context items.
- Identify passage structure before answering function questions.