READING SECTION

Lesson 1: Factual and Negative Factual Questions

1) What are Factual Questions? Factual questions: Ask about specific facts and details given in the passage Often begin with the phrase According to Sometimes begin with What does the writer say about...? Are based on information stated in the text Do not require inferences

Are generally answered by scanning the text

2) Whats scanning? Looking through a text quickly to find a specific piece of information or to get a general idea of what the text contains. Some scanning techniques to help you: Remember one or two key words from the question (dates, names, or specific nouns) as you scan the text. Run your eyes over the text as you scroll down looking for these words or their synonyms. Do not read all the words in the passage. Questions generally follow the order of the passage. Scroll down from the last answered question. Do not scroll up. Once you spot the key words, read the full sentence carefully. You may need to read the preceding and/or following sentences too. Compare what you read with the answer choices. Remember that correct answers rarely use exactly the same words in the text. Look for synonyms or a different grammatical structure.

3) What are Negative Factual Questions? Ask you to find which of the 4 answer choices is not in the text Usually use the words NOT, EXPECT, or LEAST. The negative words always appear in capital letters.

Some scanning techniques to help you: Scan the text quickly looking for the three answer choices that are mentioned in the passage The correct answer is the one choice that does not appear in the text The three incorrect choices may be grouped together or near each other in the same or neighbouring sentences. The incorrect choices may be scattered throughout the text. In this case, it will take longer to find them. Negative factual questions can take longer to answer than other question types. You may want to focus on easier questions first. Use the Review feature to come back to these items later.

Lesson 2: Vocabulary Questions

Vocabulary questions ask you to decide the meaning of a highlighted word or phrase as it is used in the passage. You have four possibilities to choose from. There are usually two to four vocabulary questions for each passage. Other words in the passage often help you to decide the best answer. Such nearby words provide context, which give clues to the words meaning. These sorts of clues include: Example

Satellites allow us to collect data about inaccessible parts of Earths surface, such as ice caps, mountains, tropical forests, and deserts. A clue to the meaning of the highlighted word is that the examples of inaccessible areas (ice caps, mountains, tropical forests, and deserts) are all places that are hard to get to.

Contrast

Despite the increasing concentration of the media, a contrary trend an atomization of the mediahas also developed in recent decades. The words despite and contrary tell you that what follows presents a contrast with concentration (gathering together)a clue to the actual meaning of atomization, breaking into smaller pieces. Synonyms General context Word analysis separate the word (suffixes, prefixes).

Answering vocabulary questions involves the following steps: 1. If the highlighted word is familiar, look at the four possible answers and guess the best answer. But before you click your answer choice, check it by replacing the highlighted word in the sentence with your choice. Does the sentence still make sense? 2. Read the entire sentence that contains the highlighted word. Are there context clues around it that help you choose the best answer? 3. If context clues are not helpful, analyse the word. Can it be broken into parts--prefix, root and suffix-- that help you figure out the meaning? 4. If word analysis does not help, read the sentence again, and replace highlighted word with each possible answer. Does one work better than the others in the context of the sentence? If any choices do not make sense, you may rule them out as possibilities. 5. If none of these strategies has worked, guess the most appropriate answer and continue with the test. You can return to this question later if time allows

Lesson 3: Inference questions

Inference questions require you to draw conclusions based on information provided in the text. Correct inferences are based on the facts mentioned in the passage. Note that the words infer or imply indicate that the question is an INFER QUESTION but not all inference questions use these words. How Inference Questions work The information in paragraph ___ implies that Which of the following statements does the author imply? Which of the following would be the most likely to occur? What does the author imply about? The author suggests that It is probable that It can be conclude from the passage that

Lesson 4: Purpouse/Method/Opinion Questions

Lesson 5: Sent Restatement Quest

Lesson 6: Reference Questions

Lesson 7: Sentence Addition Questions

Lesson 8: Completing Summaries/Charts