Reading: Literary and Informational Texts
What the domain tests
The Reading domain samples both literary texts (short stories, poems, excerpts from novels) and informational texts (articles, speeches, memoirs, historical documents). The NYS Next Generation ELA Standards organize these tasks around Key Ideas and Details, Craft and Structure, and Integration of Knowledge and Ideas. Expect questions on central idea or theme, how details develop it, author's purpose, point of view, text structure, figurative language, and how two texts treat the same topic. Answers must be defensible with evidence from the passage, not from outside knowledge.
Core rules
- State the central idea in your own words, then find the sentence or detail that supports it.
- Separate explicit information ("the text says") from inference ("the text suggests"). Correct inferences are forced by details, not merely plausible.
- Name the structure: chronological, cause/effect, problem/solution, compare/contrast, or claim/reason/evidence. Structure questions often ask why a paragraph is placed where it is.
- For literary texts, track character motivation, conflict, and shifts in tone. Theme is a statement about life, not a one-word topic.
- For arguments, identify the claim, reasons, and evidence; note what is omitted or exaggerated.
- When comparing texts, cite a difference in emphasis, audience, or purpose.
Worked example
Passage: "After the factory closed, Main Street lost three stores. The town council voted to fund a job-training center. Within a year, two new businesses opened near the center." Question: Which inference is best supported? A. The factory closure caused every store to close. B. The job-training center contributed to new business activity. C. The council opposed new businesses. D. Main Street never recovered. Answer: B. A is too absolute ("every"); C contradicts the vote; D is contradicted by "two new businesses opened." B is a cautious inference from the sequence, not a claim that training alone caused it.
Traps
Choosing a true-sounding statement that the passage never supports; confusing topic with theme; overlooking "most likely" and "best"; ignoring line references; treating the author's view as the narrator's view in fiction.