Critical Reading Comprehension vs Extended Reasoning Overview 2

Critical Reading: Comprehension vs. Extended Reasoning Overview

2 COMPREHENSION Comprehension questions test your ability to understand significant information presented in the reading passage. This type of question tests a skill that you practice actively when reading: the ability to acquire information.

3 • EXTENDED REASONING • Extended Reasoning test your ability to synthesize and analyze information by relating various parts of the reading passage to each other or by recognizing how one part relates to the overall passage.

4 • EXTENDED REASONING • These questions may ask you to recognize organizational techniques, such as contrastand-comparison, cause-and-effect, to follow the logic of an argument, to integrate details, or to understand the overall implication of the argument. Also included are questions about the overall theme or meaning of the passage as well as questions about assumptions made by the author in presenting an argument.

5 • MAKING INFERENCES • Inferential thinking is the deductive process by which we take a given statement, usually expressed in concrete ways, and deduce from it a more general meaning. • The author intentionally tries to convey an idea without directly stating it; the reader’s task is to infer a judgment or deduction that corresponds to the author’s implication.

3 • Focus on ideas or events that stand out in some way. Such ideas might be discussed in depth, repeated in different ways, or might seem out of place. • Ask broad questions, not questions that can be answered in a word or two. • To note relevant details, watch for clues that tie a detail to your question. For example, if your question is about the cause of an event, look for cause-effect clue words such as “as a result. ” You might also look for details that describe the situation before that event took place.