Reading Comprehension Question Types [8]

 Reading Comprehension  Question Types

“Understanding the question types that you will see on test day will help you devise proper answering strategies and elimination techniques.”

On an average, a Reading Comprehension passage has 3-5 questions and the end of it. But these questions are of several kinds, and each of them requires a distinct skill set to answer. We have categorized all such questions, and have also included the strategies you need to implement, if you want to solve them all. Here are the most popular types of questions you will see on the Reading Comprehension passages:

1. Main Idea Questions

These are probably the most frequent questions you will see on any reading comprehension passage. Main idea questions ask you to identify the main idea or the primary purpose behind the passage that is given. Example questions are:

In this passage, the author is primarily concerned with…?
Which of the following would be the most appropriate title for the given argument?

2. Tone of the Author Questions

Considered as a tricky question by many students, tone of the author questions ask you to identify the tone of the author, or the passage. Examples include:

The author’s attitude towards contemporary cinema can be best described as…?
The passage regards the idea of modern artistic activity with…?

3. Specific Fact Questions

These are the questions that ask you to spot information that is specifically included as a fact or truth. Specific fact questions will often be consequential in nature. They usually look like this:

The author refers to ‘example phrase’ in line 5, primarily in order to… ?
According to the passage, the critics considered the ideas found in the novelist’s work to be… ?

4. Implied Questions

Implied questions ask you, as a reader, to identify an idea which is suggested or implied, either directly or indirectly. For example, an implied question looks like this:

It can be inferred from the passage that, in evaluating the scientist’s theory, some of the critics were….?
The passage suggests that if the predictions of the geological department were to be true, it would be….?

5. Structural Questions

Structural questions, as the name suggests, ask you to identify the technique, or the writing style adopted by the author, in presenting facts or views. For example:

Which of the following best describes the structure of the passage?
Which of the following best describes the organization of the lines 17 through 23?

6. Extrapolation Questions

Widely regarded as the most twisted of all Reading Comprehension questions, extrapolation questions require you to extrapolate or compare the author’s ideas to other situations, including situations that are analogous. In order to answer this type of questions, you must go beyond what is stated in the passage, draw an inference from the passage, and then match it with the situations given in the answer choices. Example questions are:

Which of the following situations is most closely analogous to the situation described by the author as an irony, in lines 11 and 12?
Which of the following describes a situation that is analogous to the situation described in the second paragraph?

7. Negative or Exception Questions

These are the questions that ask you which of the given answer choices is not true according to the author or the passage, or which of the answer choices with which the author of the passage would not agree. Examples are:

The passage states all of the following about mitochondria, except?
The author asserts that technology has led us do all of the following miraculous experiments, except?

8. Contextual/Definition of a term or word Questions

These are the questions that test your ability to work out the meaning of an unfamiliar word, based on context within the passage. For example:

As it is used in the passage, the term ‘convivial’ can be best described as?
The term ‘inchoate’, used by the author in line 18, refers to?