Reading: Main Idea, Inference, and Evidence
The Reading domain tests whether you can extract and support meaning from passages. The core concepts are main idea (the central claim the whole passage serves), supporting detail (evidence that backs the main idea), inference (a conclusion that follows necessarily from the text), author's purpose and tone (why the writer wrote it and the attitude conveyed), vocabulary in context (a word's meaning as used, not its most common dictionary sense), and structural relationships (cause/effect, comparison, contrast, sequence).
Most traps come from answers that are true but not asked for or reasonable but unsupported. Watch for choices that overstate ("proves," "always," "never"), that borrow a word from the passage to sound familiar, or that describe the topic rather than the point about the topic. A detail question asks what the passage says; an inference question asks what it implies-do not import outside knowledge.
Rule of thumb: for any answer choice, ask "Where in the passage is my evidence?" If you cannot point to a specific sentence or two, eliminate it. For main-idea questions, test each candidate by asking whether the whole passage (not one paragraph) supports it.
Worked example: A passage describes how a city added trees along a hot commercial street and then reports summer surface temperatures dropping. An answer saying "trees are the only way to cool cities" is wrong-it overstates. The supported choice is narrower: "street trees can lower temperatures in hot urban areas." The qualifier can is doing the work.