Reading and Writing: Information and Ideas
Main ideas as nested circles, evidence as a line that holds or snaps, graphs read against a claim, and inferences drawn exactly one step past the facts.
22 topics · 86 questions
Each topic is a path, not a menu: work down it in order and every question builds on the one above. Click any of them to watch the answer draw itself.
Finding the Central Idea of a Short Text
- How it worksHow does asking what each sentence is there for reveal the single idea a text is built around?
- How it worksWalk me through drawing a scope circle for a short text before any answer choice gets near it.
- Common mistakeWhy isn't the sentence with the most impressive vocabulary the one carrying the main idea?
- Worked exampleFind the central idea of a text saying a weaver grinds local roots, boils them, and stirs in nearby clay.
- Going furtherWhat changes about finding a central idea when three of four sentences describe one example?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text: 'The weaver digs madder roots from the slope behind her house. She boils them for 9 hours with ash from her own fire. The clay she stirs into the dye comes from a bank 137 metres away. Only the loom was bought.'
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?When the First Sentence Is a Decoy
- How it worksHow does a text spend three sentences on what everyone believed and one sentence overturning it?
- Common mistakeWhy does treating sentence one as the thesis work in a news article and fail badly here?
- Worked exampleFind the point of a text praising a long-standing model for two sentences then naming what it cannot explain.
- Going furtherWhat changes when a text opens with a question rather than a statement of accepted wisdom?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text: 'For 48 years the standard model has predicted tide heights along this coast to within 7 centimetres. It handles storms and spring tides alike. It cannot, however, account for the 86-centimetre surge recorded every autumn in one estuary.'
Which choice best states the main point of the text?Central Idea vs. Supporting Detail
- How it worksHow does nesting circles separate one big idea from the three smaller facts sitting inside it?
- Worked exampleFind the idea covering all four when a text lists a drought, a fire, a seed release and a new forest.
- Common mistakeWhy isn't the sentence holding a study's headline figure the central idea of the text around it?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text: 'A drought left the ridge tinder-dry in 2006. The fire that followed burned 2666 hectares. Its heat split open cones that had held their seed for 57 years. Within 4 seasons a young forest stood where the old one had been.'
Which choice best states the central idea?Too Narrow, Too Broad, and Imported from Outside
- How it worksHow do nested circles show a choice as too small, too large, or exactly the size of the text?
- How it worksWalk me through why a choice true of only the second sentence cannot be the whole point.
- Common mistakeWhy does a choice listing every subject in a text still fail to say what the text argues?
- Worked exampleFind which choice overshoots when a text on one desert beetle is answered with 'insects survive without water'.
- Going furtherWhat happens to an over-broad choice when you underline the one word the text never earns?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text: 'The fog-basking beetle tilts its back into the night fog that rolls over a 151-kilometre coastal strip. Droplets run down grooves in its shell to its mouth. In 6 hours it can take on 38 percent of its body mass in water.'
Which choice best states the main idea?Texts Whose Point Arrives in the Last Sentence
- How it worksHow does a single 'yet' in the middle of a text tell you to keep reading for the claim?
- Worked exampleFind the claim in a text describing a method for two sentences and then reporting what it failed to show.
- Going furtherWhat changes about reading order when the point lands last and you have about a minute?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text: 'The team sequenced DNA from 23 sediment cores taken 14 metres below the lake floor. Each core was split and one half kept frozen. The method recovered plant DNA from every layer. It recovered no animal sequences at all.'
Which choice best states the claim of the text?Interpreting the Key Details
- How it worksHow does a stem's own wording point you at the one sentence you need to reread?
- Worked exampleWalk me through telling what a team observed apart from what the same team expected to observe.
- Common mistakeWhy does turning 'in two of the trials' into 'in every trial' break an otherwise correct answer?
- Going furtherWhat changes when the detail you need is split between a main clause and the clause explaining it?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text: 'The team expected the lizards to bask longest on the coolest mornings. Across 45 mornings they instead recorded the longest basking on days when the wind rose above 31 kilometres an hour.'
Which choice states what the team OBSERVED?Matching Evidence to the Exact Claim
- How it worksHow does breaking a claim into its separate promises decide which quotation keeps all of them?
- How it worksWalk me through hanging a claim on one quotation and watching the connection take the weight or snap.
- Worked exampleFind the line supporting 'the speaker first resists the journey and then welcomes it' among four candidates.
- Common mistakeWhy does sharing a subject with the claim buy a quotation nothing at all?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A student claims: 'The speaker first resists the journey and then welcomes it.'
Which quotation from the poem best supports that claim?Evidence That Proves the Wrong Thing
- How it worksHow does naming the claim a wrong quotation would have supported speed up the whole question?
- Common mistakeWhy doesn't a quotation that repeats the claim's own wording count as the strongest support available?
- Going furtherWhat changes when the claim being supported belongs to a character rather than to the author?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A warden claims: 'The 69 nesting pairs abandoned the cliff because of disturbance from boats.'
Which finding best supports the claim?True, Irrelevant, and Chosen Anyway
- How it worksHow do you tell a quotation that bears on a claim from one that merely shares its vocabulary?
- Common mistakeWhy doesn't a fact you know to be true outside the text help you answer a question about the text?
- Common mistakeWhy isn't a quotation proving a rug won an award evidence that its dyes came from local plants?
- Going furtherWhat happens to three irrelevant quotations when a word like 'only' is dropped into the claim?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text: 'A survey recorded 30 of the 117 bridges as needing repair within 11 years.' A student who has worked on bridges knows that timber decks fail sooner than steel ones.
Which choice states something the TEXT supports?Which Finding, If True, Would Support the Hypothesis
- How it worksHow do you turn a stated hypothesis into the result it would have to produce if it were right?
- How it worksWalk me through predicting an outcome first and treating the four findings as a matching task.
- Worked exampleFind which result supports the idea that hollow bones let a diving bird stay under water longer.
- Common mistakeWhy does a finding that merely fits a hypothesis lose to one the hypothesis actually demanded?
- Going furtherWhat do the four findings become when a stem flips from 'support' to 'call into question'?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Hypothesis: the air held in a diving bird's hollow bones lets it stay under water longer. A team times 62 birds of the species on a single dive each.
Which finding, if true, would most strongly support it?Quotations That Illustrate a Technique
- How it worksHow do you turn a described technique into a shape you can hunt for inside four quoted lines?
- How it worksHow does what a character asserts differ from what the author holds when a claim names one of them?
- Worked exampleFind which line shows repetition when one repeats a phrase twice and three others each say something new.
Your turneasy1 of 3
A student claims the poet uses repetition to slow the last 9 lines of the poem.
Which quotation best illustrates that technique?Reading the Axes and Units Before the Answers
- How it worksHow do you take in a bar graph's units, legend and range before the claim is even read?
- How it worksHow do you read a table where two columns report shares of different totals rather than one?
- Worked exampleFind what a line graph actually shows when its vertical axis reads millimetres of rain per decade.
- Going furtherWhat happens to your sense of a difference when a bar chart's axis begins at 40 instead of zero?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A line graph's vertical axis reads 'millimetres of rain per decade' and its horizontal axis runs from 1928 to 2009. The line rises across the whole range.
What does that show?Accurate About the Graphic, Useless for the Claim
- How it worksHow does a claim about variation tell you to look for a spread rather than a single tall bar?
- Common mistakeWhy does reading the chart correctly get you only halfway to the right answer?
- Worked exampleShow me running one answer choice through two separate checks before it is allowed to survive.
- Going furtherWhat changes when a claim promises one group differs from another rather than that one is largest?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A text claims that rainfall varies more between the 15 stations than it does from year to year. A bar graph gives annual rainfall at each station.
Which kind of answer would support that claim?Fits the Claim, Misreads the Graphic
- How it worksHow do you check a choice's numbers against the graphic before checking its logic against the claim?
- Worked exampleFind the error when a choice reports 62 percent for a bar sitting between the 50 and 60 gridlines.
- Common mistakeWhy doesn't a choice that agrees with the text's argument get to skip the check against the data?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A bar sits between the 44 and 73 gridlines of a chart labelled in percent. A choice reports its value as 94 percent.
What is wrong with the choice?Joining the Text's Claim to the Numbers
- How it worksHow does the wording just before a blank tell you which two numbers to go find in a table?
- Worked exampleWalk me through finishing 'for instance, ______' when a table gives 74 percent for librarians and 12 for pilots.
- Worked exampleWalk me through finishing a sentence promising a rise when the line falls for its first three years.
- Common mistakeWhy does naming one bar fail a sentence that promised the gap between two of them?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A table gives job satisfaction as 74 percent among librarians and 20 percent among pilots. The text reads: 'Satisfaction differs sharply by profession; for instance, ______'
Which choice best completes the text?Tables, Bar Graphs, Line Graphs and No Arithmetic
- How it worksHow does a section with no calculator make sure its data questions never require arithmetic?
- Common mistakeWhy isn't a data question asking you to compute a difference even when two numbers sit right there?
- Worked exampleShow me answering a graph question by comparing two bar heights instead of subtracting their values.
Your turneasy1 of 3
A bar chart gives 74 percent for one group and 33 percent for another, and the text claims the first group reports the behaviour more often.
What does the question actually require?Completing the Text with a Conclusion
- How it worksHow does a stated fact get drawn as a solid box and the conclusion as a dotted one just past it?
- How it worksWalk me through laying three stated facts side by side and reading the only ending they leave room for.
- Common mistakeWhy does the boldest-sounding ending almost never survive a text that reasons carefully?
- Worked exampleFind the ending when one lizard is the only seed disperser and ungathered seeds pile under the parent plant.
- Going furtherWhat happens to the ending when you delete one of the facts the argument was resting on?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text: 'On the island the 44-gram lizard is the only animal that eats the shrub's fruit and carries its seeds away. In valleys the lizard has left, seeds lie in a ring under the parent plant. Seedlings in those rings die within 8 months. Therefore ______'
Which choice most logically completes the text?One Step Beyond, Not Two
- How it worksHow does counting the unstated assumptions an ending needs measure how far it has travelled?
- Worked exampleFind the over-reach when a text on one cave bat is answered with 'darkness causes deep sleep in mammals'.
- Common mistakeWhy does an ending everyone would call true outside the text still fail as an inference from it?
- Common mistakeWhy isn't an ending safe merely because nothing in the text comes out and contradicts it?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text: 'In a cave kept dark for 20 hours a day, the bats slept 62 minutes longer than those in a lit chamber. Therefore ______'
Which choice most logically completes the text?The Connector That Fixes the Ending
- How it worksHow does 'therefore' force an ending to keep going the way the evidence was already pointing?
- Worked exampleFind what must follow 'the technique is fast and cheap; nevertheless, ______' in a text praising a method.
- Common mistakeWhy doesn't 'therefore' permit an ending that adds a brand-new fact the text never mentioned?
- Going furtherWhat changes when the blank is followed by another clause instead of ending the text?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text: 'The technique sequences a sample in 9 hours for about 209 dollars; nevertheless, ______'
Which choice most logically completes the text?The Restatement That Concludes Nothing
- How it worksHow does asking what new thing you now know separate a conclusion from a paraphrase?
- Common mistakeWhy does an ending that is perfectly accurate about the text still complete nothing?
- Going furtherWhat changes when a restatement is dressed up in vocabulary the text itself never used?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text: 'Water in the cave pool holds at 19 degrees all year. The blind fish there breed in every month. Therefore ______'
Which choice most logically completes the text?Seventy-One Seconds per Question
- How it worksHow do you split about 71 seconds across a 100-word text, a stem and four answer choices?
- How it worksHow does knowing the task before reading change which three words you mark in a short text?
- Worked exampleFind the time left for 26 remaining questions when the first one in a 32-minute module took three minutes.
- Common mistakeWhy does racing the first module cost more than it saves when routing follows how many you got right?
- Going furtherWhat happens to a Selection Index when Reading and Writing counts twice and Math counts once?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A Reading and Writing module allows 32 minutes for 27 questions. A student spends 12 minutes on the first 7 questions. Find the number of SECONDS then available for each remaining question.Why Prior Knowledge Is Never Assessed
- How it worksHow does a 90-word text define every term it needs so the answer sits inside its own boundary?
- How it worksHow do you fence off a text so everything you learned in class stays outside the fence?
- Common mistakeWhy does knowing the chemistry in a chemistry text sometimes pull a student toward a wrong choice?
- Ties togetherHow does the closed-text rule turn main idea, evidence and inference into one repeatable move?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Text: 'A chaperone protein holds a newly made chain until it folds. In the 59 samples tested, chains with no chaperone present folded into the wrong shape 52 percent of the time.'
Which choice is supported by the text?AP®, SAT® and PSAT/NMSQT® are trademarks registered by the College Board (PSAT/NMSQT® jointly with the National Merit Scholarship Corporation). ACT® is a registered trademark of ACT Education Corp. GRE® is a registered trademark of ETS. LSAT® is a registered trademark of the Law School Admission Council. MCAT® is a registered trademark of the Association of American Medical Colleges. ISEE® and SSAT® are registered trademarks of their owners. None of these organizations is affiliated with, or endorses, Jentoo.