Reading the Question Before the Passage

Each text in this section is short, usually under 150 words, and serves exactly one question. That ratio changes the right strategy. On the old paper test, one long passage served several questions, so reading the passage first made sense: no single task could guide that first pass. Now there is only one task per text, named right there in the stem. Reading it first means your first and only read of the passage can be aimed, not wasted.

Knowing the task before you read changes which words you mark. If the stem asks for the main purpose, you hunt for the sentence carrying the claim and read everything else as support for it. If the stem quotes a line and asks what it does, you read looking for that line's job in the argument. If the stem points to a table or graph, you read hunting for the one data point that matches or breaks a claim in the text. If the stem leaves a blank to fill, you read hunting for the logical word or phrase the surrounding sentences demand. Four different stems, four different hunts.

This sits right next to the work of finding central ideas and evidence: the stem tells you which of those jobs this particular text needs from you, so you stop treating every passage as a vague comprehension exercise and start treating it as a short answer to one specific question.