Not in the Text
A candidate is working on a reading task in which each statement must be marked True, False or Not Given, using only the text. The passage is short: 'The Riverside Cycle Hub opened in 2019 with twelve bicycles. Today it has sixty, and there is a waiting list for membership. Members pay £20 a year. The hub's coordinator, Mia, says the biggest surprise has been the number of older residents who joined: the youngest member is 19 and the oldest is 78. She would like to add a repair workshop, but the council has not yet agreed to fund it.' The three statements are: (1) The hub has more bicycles now than in 2019. (2) Mia expected a lot of older residents to join. (3) The hub is planning to open a second site. The candidate marks 1 True, 2 True and 3 False. Asked why, they say 2 is True because 'older residents' and 'surprise' are both in the text, and 3 is False because 'second site' is not in the text.
1. Give the correct answer for each statement and explain the reasoning for statement 2 in particular.
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- True. 'Opened in 2019 with twelve bicycles' is set against 'Today it has sixty'. It is a direct comparison; no inference is needed.
- False. The text says the number of older residents was 'the biggest surprise'. If something is a surprise, you did not expect it. So the statement 'Mia expected a lot of older residents to join' says the opposite of the text.
- Not Given. The text says nothing about a second site. There is no sentence to confirm it and none to contradict it.
The distinction the candidate missed: False means the text says the opposite; Not Given means the text is silent. 'Surprise' is not a neutral word, because it carries the meaning 'not expected', so statement 2 is contradicted. 'Second site' is simply absent, so statement 3 is not given.
2. The candidate's method is 'find the words and tick'. Why does this method fail on statements 2 and 3, and what should replace it?
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Word-matching fails because the test deliberately reuses vocabulary from the text in statements that are wrong or unsupported. 'Older residents' appears in the passage, but the statement adds 'expected', which reverses the meaning. 'Second site' does not appear at all, yet the candidate marked it False, when absence of information is exactly what Not Given means.
Replacement routine:
- Find the sentence. Locate where the passage talks about the same topic. For statement 2, that is the sentence about older residents.
- Compare meaning, not words. Ask: does the passage say this, does it say the opposite, or does it say nothing?
- Test the key word. For 2 the key word is 'expected'; for 3 it is 'second site'. If the key word has no equivalent anywhere in the passage, the answer is Not Given, not False.
- Do not use general knowledge. You may know that small community projects often expand. That is irrelevant; only the text counts.
3. Write a one-sentence rule the candidate can apply in the exam to separate False from Not Given.
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Rule: if you can point to a sentence that says the opposite, it is False; if you cannot point to any sentence at all, it is Not Given.
Two checks make this reliable under time pressure:
- The pointing test. Put your finger on the line. For False you must be able to read out a sentence that contradicts the statement. For statement 2, 'the biggest surprise has been the number of older residents' is that sentence. For statement 3 there is no line to point to.
- The opposite test. Write the statement's opposite in your head. 'Mia did not expect many older residents' is supported by the text, so the original is False. 'The hub is not planning a second site' is supported by nothing, so the original is Not Given.
Budget your time as well. Not Given items often take longest because you keep searching. Decide, mark it and move on; you can return at the end.