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Reading Comprehension: The Question Types

The eight things a reading question can ask, drawn: circles for scope, lines for evidence, a dial for connotation, a dotted box one step past the facts.

11 topics · 48 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.

Central Idea

  1. How it worksHow do you build a central idea out of what every paragraph shares instead of what one paragraph says?
  2. How it worksWalk me through drawing a text's scope as a circle and sizing each answer choice against it.
  3. Common mistakeHow do you spot a central idea answer that is true but far too narrow to be the central idea?
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't the biggest-sounding choice correct when it covers more ground than the text ever does?
  5. Worked exampleWalk me through choosing the central idea of a text about a flood, a rebuilt levee, and a second flood.
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Read the passage. The river took the low ward in 1943, and the town rebuilt the levee two feet higher than the water had reached. For a generation the new wall held. Then a wetter decade arrived, and in one spring the river came over the top and flooded streets the old wall had always protected. Engineers who studied the second flood found that the levee had worked exactly as designed; what had changed was how much water the watershed now delivered in a single week. What is the central idea?

Author's Purpose

  1. How it worksHow does a writer's purpose show up in what they keep, what they cut, and what they repeat?
  2. How it worksWalk me through telling inform, persuade, explain and entertain apart when a text is doing two at once.
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through the job of a paragraph describing a bird's wings and feet right before explaining why it never lands.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't an author's purpose the same thing as the topic the text happens to be about?
  5. Common mistakeWhy doesn't a writer who states no opinion automatically have the purpose of informing?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Read the passage. The frigatebird's wings span more than 7 feet, and its feet are small, weak and unwebbed. Its feathers lack the oils that let a gull sit on the sea. Every part of the bird is built for staying up and none of it for coming down. This is why the frigatebird cannot take off from water, and why a bird that hunts hundreds of miles from land must solve, somehow, the problem of rest. What job does the description of the wings and feet do?

Textual Evidence

  1. How it worksHow does a line drawn from a claim to a quoted sentence either hold or snap under weight?
  2. How it worksWalk me through testing a candidate quote by asking whether the claim could still be false with it.
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through choosing support for 'birds fly without sleeping': '200 days airborne' or 'brain scans would be needed'.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't the most interesting sentence the best evidence when a duller one is far more precise?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Read the passage. A tagged frigatebird stayed airborne for 239 days without landing. Recorders showed it sleeping in bursts of about ten seconds, mostly while gliding on rising air. Earlier work with movement tags could not settle the question, and researchers noted at the time that brain scans would be needed. The bird's total sleep in flight was a fraction of what the same species takes on land. Which sentence best supports the claim that some birds sleep while flying?

Summarizing a Text

  1. How it worksHow does a summary let details drop away while the through-line of the text survives?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through summarizing this: a bird stayed airborne 200 days, slept ten seconds at a time, then rested on land.
  3. Common mistakeHow do you spot a summary answer that is true but too narrow to be the summary?
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't the opening sentence of a text a safe pick when a question asks you to summarize it?
  5. Going furtherWhat changes about a summary question when it asks for the conclusions of a study rather than its events?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Read the passage. A frigatebird tracked by researchers stayed aloft for 239 days. Instruments recorded that it slept about ten seconds at a time and only while gliding. When it finally came down on an island, it slept for more than twelve hours in the first night. The total it had slept in the air, across all those days, was less than it took on land in a single night. Which is the best summary?

Text Structure and Organization

  1. How it worksHow does an outline build itself block by block as you read, turning structure into a shape?
  2. How it worksWalk me through five common shapes: cause and effect, comparison, problem and solution, time order, question and answer.
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through naming the structure of a text that poses an unanswered question, then follows a researcher solving it.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't a text organized by comparison just because two different things both get mentioned in it?
  5. Going furtherWhat changes about the shape when one paragraph exists only to knock down an objection?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Read the description of a text. Paragraph 1 asks how a bird that cannot land on water rests during flights lasting 224 days. Paragraph 2 describes the movement tags that failed to answer it. Paragraph 3 describes the brain recorders one researcher built instead. Paragraph 4 reports what those recorders found. What is the structure?

Word Choice and Connotation

  1. How it worksHow does the sentence around a word rotate its feeling like a dial until one reading survives?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through what 'endurance' and 'impossible' convey in 'That endurance seems impossible to us, since we need sleep.'
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't a dictionary definition enough to answer what a chosen word conveys about the writer's attitude?
  4. Going furtherWhat changes when two words pulling in opposite directions sit in the same short sentence?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Read the sentence. He has saved 34 percent of every paycheck for eleven years, and his brother calls him stingy while his mother calls him thrifty. What does the pair of words show?

Vocabulary in Context

  1. How it worksHow do the words around an unfamiliar term fence its meaning in until one option fits?
  2. Common mistakeWhy isn't the most common meaning of a word the answer when the sentence pushes hard against it?
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through pinning down 'delved' in 'Researcher Rattenborg also delved into this question.'
  4. Going furtherWhat do you do when the tested word is one you have honestly never seen anywhere before?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Read the sentence. After 22 years of failed attempts with movement tags, Researcher Rattenborg also delved into this question, building recorders that could read brain activity in a flying bird. What does 'delved' mean here?

Inference

  1. How it worksHow do stated facts become solid boxes and a fair inference a dotted box drawn right beside them?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through what follows from 'it cannot take off from water, and it hunts far out at sea.'
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't the most likely real-world explanation a fair inference when the words never point at it?
  4. Common mistakeWhy doesn't an answer become wrong just because the text never uses those exact words?
  5. Going furtherWhat changes about an inference when the two facts you need sit in different paragraphs?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Read the passage. The frigatebird cannot take off from water, and it hunts 657 miles out at sea. It has been recorded staying aloft for weeks at a stretch. What can be fairly inferred?

Reading the Question Stem for Scope

  1. How it worksHow does a stem's wording tell you whether to reread one paragraph or scan the entire text?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through the difference between 'the overall structure allows the author to' and 'paragraph 3 mainly serves to'.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't a true statement about a whole text the answer to a question aimed at one paragraph?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A question about a 8 paragraph article reads: 'Paragraph 3 mainly serves to'. What does that stem tell you to do?

Predicting the Answer Before You Read the Choices

  1. How it worksHow does writing your own answer first turn four tempting choices into one match and three misses?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through eliminating choices when your prediction was 'the tags could not measure sleep yet'.
  3. Going furtherWhat should you do when your prediction matches none of the four choices offered?
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't the choice packed with familiar words lifted from the text the safest pick?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A student reads a passage about 22 years of failed attempts to record sleep in flying birds and predicts, before looking at the choices, that the answer is 'the tags could not measure sleep yet'. Which choice matches the prediction?

How the Wrong Choices Are Built

  1. How it worksHow do four families of wrong choice differ: too narrow, too broad, true but unasked, and half right?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through rejecting a choice that gets a study's method right and its conclusion wrong.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't a choice safe just because every single word in it appeared somewhere in the text?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens when two choices are both defensible and the question wants the better one?
Your turneasy1 of 3
A passage reports that a study of 66 lakes measured algae in spring and summer and concluded that warming raised summer blooms in shallow lakes only. A choice says: 'The study measured algae in spring and summer and found that warming raised blooms in all of the lakes.' Why is it wrong?