Reading (on the Reading Section) Is for Losers, Part 2

Before we get into strategies for answering questions on the Reading sections, let’s sum up my argument for skimming rather than reading the passage with a classic Choose Your Own Adventure™ piece of “interactive fiction.” ¹

There is one minute left in class, and you’re thinking you might survive through it. Suddenly, your teacher interrupts that dream. 

“Your homework tonight is to read the entire works of William Shakespeare. There will be a comprehension check tomorrow.”

What?! He wants you to read every play and poem Shakespeare ever wrote in one day! That’s absurd. It’s over a thousand pages of reading! Your mind is screaming about how impossible this task is when your teacher opens his stupid mouth again. 

“You have to read everything; however, the reading comprehension check will only include questions about the events of Act 1, Scene 1 of Hamlet; the main idea of Act 2, Scene 3 of Macbeth; the theme of Sonnet 18; and what the word “base” means in Act IV, Scene 1, line 106 of Henry VI, Part 2. Don’t forget: you have to read everything to be able to answer these questions.”

You’re a good student. You want to do well. Heck, you even like reading Shakespeare. But that’s a lot of work to answer some pretty specific questions.

When you get home, you lock yourself away at your study space for the evening. Do you (a) pull an all-nighter, read everything, and confuse yourself with information that won’t be tested or (b) read the specific scenes, sonnet, and line number that will help you correctly answer the questions on the comprehension check?”

• If you say option (a) pull an all-nighter, you’re a liar, and you are banished to the shadow realm.
• If you say option (b) only read the parts that are important for answering the questions, continue reading below.

Jack, can we please leave your creative writing exercise behind? This “summary” is almost as long as the original post!

– Everyone reading this not named Jack Kybo

No one in their right mind, given the two options above, is going to chose to stay up all night reading texts that aren’t going to help them answer the comprehension check questions. Yet millions of high school students are making that choice every year on test day.

So what does answering the questions look like if you haven’t read the passage? That depends on what type of question you’re answering. 

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Literal Questions

Most test questions are asking for literal information straight from the passage. The test makers do their best to hide what they’re doing, but, because it’s a standardized test, they are forced to ask surface-level questions covering the information stated in the passage.

The ACT usually uses question stems and/or answers that are taken word-for-word from the passage. That means all you have to do is word search through the passage for the right word or phrase. The SAT likes to paraphrase the passage in the most generalized way possible. If you know what you’re looking for, these questions are a slam dunk.

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“Inference” Questions

These questions tend to trick students because, naturally, we associate inferencing with higher-order thinking. However, on the test day, they have to keep it surface level. That means, if the passage states that the sky is blue, we can infer that the sky is not red. If the passage author spends a third of the passage bad-mouthing the new French government for trying to gain public approval (and the rest of the passage is divided up evenly between 4-5 other complaints), we can infer that the author is especially upset with the new French government’s seeking public approval. See? Surface level.

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Function/Purpose Questions

Function questions are about how the pieces of a passage fit together to support the author’s main idea. If you’ve skimmed the passage, you should already know the main idea of the passage. Then, it’s just a matter of figuring out the main idea of the paragraph you’re being asked about. How does this paragraph support the main idea of the passage? Do you need to re-skim the paragraphs before and/or after in order to understand the flow of ideas? In a science passage, is the paragraph the start of the description of an experiment/study? If you find yourself consistently missing these questions, you’re probably working too hard to make the wrong answers fit.

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Vocabulary Questions

Both tests will ask you vocabulary questions involving words you probably already know, but which are used in uncommon ways. Always go to the passage and read the full sentence to get the word’s context—sometimes the sentence(s) before or after can even help. I like to come up with my own definition for the word before looking at the test’s answer choices, then (and only then) comparing my definition to the those choices. Will reading the entire passage help you answer these questions? No!

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Somehow, I’ve run out the clock once again without getting to all the question types, so I’ll have to conclude this argument in an unplanned Part 3. Hopefully, by now, you’re starting to realize that the proverbial emperor has no clothes.

Based on that previous sentence, it is most reasonable to infer that the “emperor” is

A) Kuzco
B) Palpatine
C) Leto II Atreides
D) The Reading sections of the ACT and SAT

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¹ Please don’t sue me, Chooseco.