Reading Comprehension
Reading Comprehension
Passages on the PMA test are short, often expository or argumentative, followed by items on main idea, explicit detail, inference, vocabulary in context, tone, and the author's purpose. The test rewards evidence from the text, not outside opinion.
Core rules
- Main idea: broad enough to cover every paragraph, but not so broad that it would fit any topic.
- Detail items: ask what is stated; return to the exact line instead of answering from memory.
- Inference: a small, necessary step from the text. If you need two assumptions, the choice is wrong.
- Vocabulary in context: substitute each option into the sentence and test the fit, not the dictionary's first definition.
- Tone and purpose: identify words with positive or negative charge; label the passage as informing, persuading, criticizing, or describing.
- Track contrast signals (however, although, yet, in contrast); shifts often carry the main point.
Worked example
Read: "Coral reefs cover less than one percent of the ocean floor, yet they shelter roughly a quarter of all marine species. Their loss would not be merely an aesthetic one; it would be an economic one as well." The main idea is that reef loss carries both biological and economic consequences - not "reefs are pretty" (a detail) and not "the ocean is unexplored" (outside the passage). "Yet" signals the contrast the author builds toward.
Traps that cost marks
- Options that are true in real life but not stated or implied in the passage.
- Extreme wording: all, never, only, always.
- Choosing a supporting detail as the main idea.
- Confusing the author's view with a view the author reports and rejects.
- Answering from personal knowledge instead of the text.