Information and Ideas That Can Be Inferred
What you must be able to do
An inference question asks for what must be true or is strongly supported - not what is plausible, interesting, or likely in real life. The correct answer often feels modest and unexciting; the wrong answers often feel insightful.
Concepts to master
- The contradiction test. Ask: if this choice were false, would any sentence in the passage be contradicted or left unexplained? If not, it is not supported.
- Combining statements. Many inferences require joining two separated sentences, for example a stated method plus a stated limitation of that method.
- Assumptions. Where the author moves from evidence to conclusion, the unstated link is fair game.
- Attitude inference. Word choices ("merely," "so-called," "surprisingly") license conclusions about the author's view.
- Causal caution. The passage noting that two things co-occur does not license an inference that one caused the other.
Traps
The could-be-true choice (consistent with the passage but not required), the extreme choice (turns a tendency into a rule), and the causal leap.
Rule of thumb and worked example
Paraphrase the inference in your own words before reading options, and keep it deliberately weak.
Example: the author writes that a dating technique "has yet to be independently replicated." Supported inference: the author regards the technique's results as not yet established. Unsupported: the technique is unreliable; replication is impossible; the original researchers were careless. Each of those goes one step beyond what the sentence licenses.