Reading between the lines of a course advertisement
An advertisement for an adult evening course reads: 'Join our evening English course at Msida Adult Learning Centre. Small groups (maximum 10 students). All teachers are native speakers. Free placement test. Classes twice weekly, 6.30-8pm. 92% of last year's students passed their MATSEC exam. Enrolment closes 15 September; late enrolments accepted only if places remain.' A candidate answers four comprehension questions as follows:
- 'The course guarantees you will pass MATSEC.' - marked true.
- 'Classes take place in the evening.' - marked true.
- 'You must take a placement test before you can enrol.' - marked true.
- 'If you apply after 15 September you may not get a place.' - marked false. The paper asks candidates to distinguish what is stated from what is implied. Two of the four answers are wrong.
1. Classify each of the four answers as correct or incorrect, and explain the reading skill each one tests.
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1. Incorrect. '92% of last year's students passed' is a statistic about a past, self-selected group. A guarantee is a promise about the future and would need words like 'we guarantee' or 'pass or your money back'. The candidate has converted a probability into a promise - the commonest inference error at this level, and the most expensive.
2. Correct, and directly stated. 'Classes twice weekly, 6.30-8pm.' No inference is needed; the skill is simply locating the information rather than reasoning about it.
3. Incorrect. The advertisement says the test is free. It does not say it is compulsory, nor that it is a condition of enrolment. 'Available' and 'required' are different claims, and a careful reader marks this 'not stated' rather than guessing.
4. Incorrectly marked false. 'Late enrolments accepted only if places remain' entails that a place may not be available after 15 September. 'You may not get a place' is exactly what the wording permits - a hedge that matches a hedge. The candidate has treated a possibility as a certainty in the opposite direction.
2. Question 3 produced most of the errors. Rewrite it so that it tests the stated/implied distinction fairly, and explain your changes.
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Original: 'You must take a placement test before you can enrol.' - This asks the candidate to affirm something the text never addresses, so the only way to get it right is to distrust the question. That rewards suspicion, not reading.
Rewrite: 'According to the advertisement, which of the following is stated? (i) The placement test costs nothing. (ii) The placement test is compulsory. (iii) The placement test is written. A. (i) only B. (i) and (ii) C. (ii) and (iii) D. all three.'
Why it works. It supplies a true option drawn from the text, so the correct answer is reached by reading rather than by rejecting everything. It separates 'free' from 'compulsory' as distinct propositions, which is precisely the confusion being tested, and it leaves a distractor about the test being written, which the text neither states nor implies.
A fair comprehension item must be answerable from the passage. If a question can only be answered by assuming the text is silent, it is testing the candidate's nerve.
3. A classmate claims the advert implies the teachers are qualified. Decide whether this is a defensible inference and explain what the phrase 'native speakers' actually commits the school to.
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Not a defensible inference, though it is an understandable one.
The advertisement commits the school to exactly one thing: that its teachers are native speakers. That is a statement about first language, not about training. Many native speakers have no teaching qualification; many highly qualified teachers are not native speakers. The two properties are independent, so one cannot be inferred from the other.
Why the inference feels available is that the phrase is placed in a list of selling points, and readers assume a seller only mentions a feature that is a virtue. That is a reasonable assumption about advertising intent but not a reading of the words on the page - and comprehension questions ask about the words.
What the classmate can defensibly say is narrower: the school chooses to present nativeness as a selling point, which suggests it expects applicants to value it. Whether that is good teaching policy is a matter for argument, not for the advertisement.
The discipline is the same as in question 1: distinguish what the writer promised from what the reader supplied.