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'.

An opinion

提示'Everyone agrees' is a trick — ask whether any measurement or record could settle it.

为什么'Everyone agrees' and 'finest' cannot be checked, so this is a view dressed up as a fact. Writers use the disguise to make a view sound settled.

Skimming

提示You want the shape of the whole piece, not one detail — the stone bouncing across the 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.

synthesis

提示Not shrinking one article, but welding matching details from a pair of them together.

为什么It is the skill behind the two-source question on a GCSE English Language paper: each detail from one article is matched to its partner in the other, and the link is stated rather than left for the examiner to spot.

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.

An advertorial

提示A blend of two words: one for selling, one for a paper's own opinion column.

为什么Working out purpose and audience is the first move in any analysis, and it is hardest when a text hides them — a sponsored post, a press release printed as news, or this. Ask who paid for the words.

Second person

提示Rare in novels, common in instructions and choose-your-own-adventure books.

为什么It is the rarest viewpoint in fiction because it drags the reader into the character's shoes; writers use it to unsettle, or to give instructions.

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.