Reading comprehension

An inference

提示You read between the lines — the writer leaves the clue, you supply the meaning.

为什么Retrieval finds words that are actually on the page; an inference builds on them. Questions signal it with verbs like 'suggests' or 'implies'.

A fact

提示The sort of thing you could settle with a record, a measurement or a photograph.

为什么An opinion reports what a writer believes, so it cannot be checked. Words like "clearly", "best" and "should" are usually opinion signals.

Skimming

提示A fast pass over the surface, like a stone bouncing across a pond.

为什么You use it to decide whether a text is worth reading properly, or to grasp the shape of an article before answering questions on it.

scanning

提示What you do to a timetable or an index — eyes moving fast, brain hunting one thing.

为什么Skimming and scanning are often confused: skimming takes in the whole text lightly, while scanning ignores nearly all of it to find one target.

Context

提示The company a word keeps — everything around it that narrows down what it could mean.

为什么Good readers guess from the sentence before reaching for a dictionary. The words either side usually rule out most meanings on their own.

Summarising

提示What you do when a friend asks what a film was about and you have thirty seconds.

为什么A good one keeps the main ideas and drops the examples. Copying whole sentences out of the passage is the commonest way to lose marks here.

A quotation

提示The bit you lift word for word and fence off with speech marks.

为什么The best ones are short — a few words you can actually pick apart. A whole sentence dropped in usually carries more than you can explain.

Persuade you

提示The job of an advertisement or a campaign leaflet — it wants you on its side.

为什么Purpose comes in a small family: to inform, to explain, to entertain, to change minds. Naming it first makes every other choice easier to explain.

First person

提示The narrator is inside the story, telling you their own version of events.

为什么It buys closeness and imposes limits — you hear one character's thoughts directly, but you only ever see what that character sees.

Biased

提示The word for a referee who wants one team to win.

为什么It shows in what is left out as much as in what is said. Loaded word choices and one-sided evidence are the usual giveaways.

Sarcasm

提示'Well, that went brilliantly,' said just after dropping the cake.

为什么Tone of voice carries it in speech; in writing you have to spot it from the mismatch between the words and the situation around them.

An unreliable narrator

提示The story comes from someone who lies, forgets, or does not understand what they are seeing.

为什么The reader has to read past the telling to work out what actually happened, and the gap between the two is usually the point of the book.