Three Passages, Forty Questions, Sixty Minutes
Amara has 60 minutes to complete three reading passages and 40 questions. She decides to read Passage 1 word by word because it is about a familiar topic, coastal erosion. After 22 minutes she has answered 9 of 13 questions and is unsure about two. Passage 2 begins with a matching-headings task: seven headings for five paragraphs, with two distractors. She spends 12 minutes on the first three paragraphs, then notices the clock. Passage 3, on the history of cartography, has 14 questions and is still unread. Eight minutes remain. She has not transferred answers to the answer sheet, and the test does not allow extra time. Her practice scores were 24/40, 26/40 and 23/40, with Passage 1 accuracy highest and Passage 3 accuracy lowest. She believes she must finish every question in order.
1. Evaluate Amara's time allocation and propose a checkpoint plan for 60 minutes and 40 questions.
Read the worked answer
Her allocation is the main problem, not her reading ability. Forty questions in 60 minutes gives an average of 1.5 minutes per question, but she spent 22 minutes on 13 questions - about 1.7 minutes each - and left only eight minutes for 14 questions. Worse, the 22 minutes produced only 9 confident answers, so the extra time bought very little accuracy. Her practice profile already shows that Passage 3 is her weakest area, so leaving it until last maximises the damage.
A workable checkpoint plan is 17 minutes for Passage 1, 18 minutes for Passage 2, 20 minutes for Passage 3, and 5 minutes for transfer and checking. At minute 17 she must leave Passage 1 even if two answers are uncertain; at minute 35 she must leave Passage 2. She should transfer each answer as she goes rather than save all 40 for the end, because a single transfer error can wipe out several correct answers. The judgement call is to accept imperfect completion of an easier passage in order to attempt the harder one. A blank has a 25% chance at best; a considered guess is better.
2. Passage 3 has 14 questions and eight minutes left. What should she do, and why should she not read the passage first?
Read the worked answer
With eight minutes she should stop trying to read normally. She should go straight to the questions and identify the ones that can be answered by scanning for proper nouns, dates, numbers or distinctive terms. In a history-of-cartography passage, questions about a named mapmaker, a year, or a specific map title are the fastest wins. She can answer those in about 30–40 seconds each, then use remaining time for two or three gist questions.
Reading the whole passage first is a poor choice here because a full read takes four to six minutes and leaves almost no time to locate evidence. Scanning is not guessing: she still reads the relevant sentence carefully, but only after the question tells her what to look for. Matching headings or 'main idea' questions should come last, because they require more of the passage. She should also fill every blank before time expires and check that answers are on the answer sheet. The realistic goal is five or six correct answers, not all 14; chasing completion would risk losing the transfer time as well.
3. Explain why her in-order strategy fails on matching headings and what alternative sequence she should use.
Read the worked answer
Matching headings punishes word-by-word reading because the task is about paragraph function, not detail. Amara spent 12 minutes on three paragraphs, probably because she read every sentence and tried to match words in the headings to words in the text. Headings are usually paraphrases, so word matching is unreliable. She also left the two distractors unmanaged; a distractor often repeats a topic word from the passage but states the wrong relationship.
A better sequence is: spend about 90 seconds skimming the first and last sentences of all five paragraphs to identify each one's job - example, contrast, cause, recommendation, history. Then match the headings that are clearly global, and leave uncertain ones until after detail questions, which may confirm the paragraph's focus. Each paragraph should take about one minute, not four. She should cross out a heading once used and mark distractors with a reason. Finally, she should do matching headings before detailed sentence-completion questions only if she can keep to the skim; otherwise, do the detail questions first and return with evidence.