Reading: Business Documents, Correspondence, and Reports
What the Reading section tests
iTEP Business-Core Reading presents business documents: emails, letters, notices, short reports, and policy extracts. Questions test main idea, specific detail, vocabulary in context, inference, purpose, and tone. You need to move between skimming for structure and scanning for exact conditions.
Core rules and concepts
- Identify the document’s job. A quotation offers prices; an invoice requests payment; a complaint states a problem and a remedy; a follow-up checks progress.
- Underline conditions and deadlines. Only if, provided that, subject to, by return, no later than change the meaning of the whole message.
- Read for the writer’s purpose. We regret to inform you signals bad news; We would appreciate signals a request; Please note signals a policy point.
- Watch cohesion. However, therefore, in addition, meanwhile show how sentences relate; the answer often depends on that link.
- Distinguish fact from recommendation. Deliveries fell by 12% is fact; we should renegotiate is advice.
Worked example
Email: Thank you for your quotation dated 3 May. We can proceed only if the unit price is held for 90 days and delivery is confirmed by 30 June. Please confirm by return. Question: What does the sender want? Reasoning: only if introduces two conditions: price held and delivery confirmed. By return asks for a prompt reply. The sender has not accepted; they have set conditions. Answer: confirmation that both conditions can be met.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating a conditional acceptance as a firm order.
- Confusing quotation with invoice.
- Missing a negative: not included, unless, except.
- Choosing a true statement that does not answer the question.
- Over-inferring tone from one polite phrase; We note your comments can be neutral or cool.