← SSAT® Middle Level

Reading Comprehension

Forty questions in forty minutes on narrative and argument passages, worked against all eight official reading tasks, poems included.

14 topics · 55 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.

Narrative Passages and Argument Passages

  1. How it worksHow does an argument build as claim, reason and evidence while a story builds as scene, event and change?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through deciding in two sentences whether a text argues that recess should be longer or tells a story about recess.
  3. Going furtherWhat changes about your first read when a text is a biography rather than a short story?
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't a text stuffed with facts automatically an argument text?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Read this passage, then answer. "Our school should lengthen recess. Last spring the sixth grade was given 16 extra minutes outside each afternoon, and by June their teachers were reporting fewer arguments and better work after lunch. Children who move are children who can sit still later. Nobody learns well after three hours in a chair, and a longer break costs the timetable almost nothing." Is this passage a narrative or an argument, and how can you tell?

Building an Outline as You Read

  1. How it worksHow does an outline grow one line at a time as claim, counterclaim, evidence and concession show up?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through outlining an essay that claims school should start later, admits parents disagree, then cites a sleep study.
  3. Common mistakeWhy doesn't underlining every interesting sentence leave you with a structure you can use?
  4. Going furtherWhat does a paragraph opening with but or however tell you before you read the rest of it?
Your turnhard1 of 3
Read this passage, then answer. "School should start later. Teenagers fall asleep after eleven whatever time they go to bed, so an eight o'clock bell steals real sleep from them. Parents object that a later start would wreck the morning drive to work, and that is a fair worry. Still, a district that moved its bell 44 minutes later last year recorded fewer late arrivals and higher attendance." Which outline matches the passage?

Recognising the Main Idea

  1. How it worksHow does drawing a text's scope as one circle and each choice as another circle show which one is the right size?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through picking the main idea of a text that spends three paragraphs on how honeybees find flowers.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't a choice that is perfectly true about a text good enough to be its main idea?
  4. Common mistakeWhy doesn't a choice covering far more ground than a text ever win, even though it includes everything?
  5. Going furtherWhat happens to the main idea when a text's final sentence reverses everything before it?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Read this passage, then answer. "A honeybee returning from a good patch of flowers dances on the comb. She runs a short straight line, waggling, then circles back and runs it again. The angle of that straight run against the vertical tells her sisters the direction of the flowers relative to the sun, and the length of the waggle tells them how far. A bee that has flown 10 hundred metres waggles longer than one that has flown a short way." What is the main idea?

Locating Details

  1. How it worksHow do you lift a rare word out of a question and scan for it instead of rereading everything?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through finding how long a bat sleeps in a text that says 20 hours exactly once, in the middle.
  3. Common mistakeWhy doesn't a choice that sounds like something you read count as the detail a question asked for?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Read this passage, then answer. "The little brown bat is an animal of extremes. It weighs less than a slice of bread, hunts insects by echo in total darkness, and sleeps for 19 hours of every day. In winter it may drop its body temperature almost to freezing and wait out the cold in a cave with thousands of others." How many hours a day does the little brown bat sleep?

Making Inferences

  1. How it worksHow does a solid box for what is stated and a dotted box one step past it show how far you may go?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through inferring how a boy feels from a line where he leaves his cake untouched and stares at the door.
  3. Common mistakeWhy doesn't a guess that lands two steps past the stated facts count as an inference?
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't something you happen to know from your own life an inference the test will reward?
  5. Going furtherWhat happens to an inference when a writer slips in one word like usually or rarely?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Read this passage, then answer. "Ben had asked for the cake for 7 weeks. Now it sat in front of him with the candles out, and he had not picked up his fork. He turned his glass a quarter turn, then another, and looked past his mother to the front door." What can you infer about Ben?

Deriving a Word's Meaning From Context

  1. How it worksHow do the words around a mystery word act like clamps that rotate it until one meaning fits?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through pinning down grave in the line her face wore a grave look as she read the letter.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't a word's most common meaning the answer when the sentence around it pushes the other way?
  4. Going furtherWhat changes when the mystery is a phrase like broke the ice rather than one single word?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Read this sentence from a passage, then answer. "Her face wore a grave look as she read the letter, and for 11 minutes afterwards she said nothing at all." What does grave mean here?

Determining the Author's Purpose

  1. How it worksHow do the verbs persuade, inform, entertain and describe sort a text into one of four buckets?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through deciding the purpose of a text that lists three reasons plastic straws should be banned.
  3. Common mistakeWhy doesn't a text being packed with facts mean the writer's purpose was to inform?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to purpose when a writer uses a funny story to argue something serious?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Read this passage, then answer. "Plastic straws should be banned in our town. They are used for about 19 minutes and then last for centuries in the sea. They cannot be recycled with other plastics because they are too light for the sorting machines. And paper alternatives now cost restaurants almost nothing." What is the author's purpose?

Author's Attitude and Tone

  1. How it worksHow does each loaded word turn a tone dial a little further toward admiring, annoyed or amused?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through reading the tone of a writer who calls a new stadium a shiny monument to wasted money.
  3. Going furtherWhat changes about tone when the speaker is a character inside a story rather than an essayist?
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't a writer who criticises something automatically angry about it?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Read this sentence, then answer. "The council's new stadium, which swallowed 72 million pounds of public money, is a shiny monument to wasted money." What is the writer's tone?

Understanding and Evaluating Opinions and Arguments

  1. How it worksHow do reasons stack as blocks under a conclusion so that a missing block shows up as a gap?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through testing the claim that homework should be banned because one class slept more without it.
  3. Common mistakeWhy doesn't a strong feeling in a writer's voice make their argument any stronger?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to an argument when the only evidence behind it is one person's story?
  5. Ties togetherHow does reading a writer's tone help you judge whether their evidence is being oversold?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Read this passage, then answer. "Homework should be banned. In one class of 28 students last term, the teacher set none for a month and the students reported sleeping longer." What is the weakest part of this argument?

Making Predictions From a Text

  1. How it worksHow does extending a text's trend past its last sentence work like continuing a line on a graph?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through predicting what a girl does next after she packs a bag and reads the bus timetable twice.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't the most dramatic thing that could happen next the prediction a test question wants?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Read this passage, then answer. "Nadia put 5 shirts into the bag, then her toothbrush, then the photograph from the shelf. She read the bus timetable twice and put it in her pocket. From the kitchen her aunt called that supper was nearly ready." What most likely happens next?

Reading a Poem the Way the SSAT Asks

  1. How it worksHow do you find the sentence inside a poem when its lines break in the middle of that sentence?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through finding the speaker's feeling in two lines where a house is described as holding its breath.
  3. Going furtherWhat changes about a tone question when the answer lives in a repeated word rather than a stated opinion?
  4. Common mistakeWhy doesn't a poem about winter automatically carry a sad tone?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Read these lines, then answer. "For 9 days the house has held its breath, / the hall clock counting into empty rooms; / the coats still hang where they were hung." What is the speaker's feeling?

The Choice That Is True but Not the Answer

  1. How it worksHow does checking a choice against the text instead of against the world knock out true but unsupported answers?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through rejecting bats are mammals as the answer for a text that only describes how bats hunt.
  3. Common mistakeWhy doesn't already knowing a lot about a topic help you on a reading question about it?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Read this passage, then answer. "A hunting bat sends out 31 clicks a second and listens for the echo. The returning sound tells it how far away a moth is and which way that moth is turning. In the last moment before a catch the clicks speed up into a buzz." Which choice answers a question about what the passage says?

Main Idea and Content vs Higher Order and Interpretation

  1. How it worksHow do the eight reading question types sort into a finding bucket and a figuring-out bucket?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through sorting a purpose question, a detail question and an inference question into those two buckets.
  3. Going furtherWhat does a high finding score sitting next to a low interpreting score tell you to practise?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Your score report splits the 41 reading questions into Main Idea and Content and Higher Order and Interpretation. Which sorting is right?

Forty Questions in Forty Minutes

  1. How it worksHow do you budget 40 minutes across seven or eight texts so that none of them gets stranded?
  2. Worked exampleFind how many minutes each text gets when 40 minutes is spread across 7 texts and 40 questions.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't reading the questions before the text always the faster way through?
  4. Going furtherWhat do you do with three minutes left and one text untouched, when wrong answers cost a quarter point?
Your turneasy1 of 3
The reading section gives you 40 minutes. If the section holds 8 passages and you want to spread the time evenly, how many minutes does each passage get? Round to two decimal places.

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