RC Inference Questions

jurisprudent

Hi, I am struggling with Inference questions in Reading Comp and was wondering if any of you had any tips or strategies on how you approach them. I have no issues with 'active reading' -- I manage to get all of the main point, detail-oriented, reasoning structure and author's view/tone questions correct during timed sections and PTs. I just have an issue with inference questions so I usually end up with a -5 or -6.

I struggle with making inferences -- either I don't go far enough or I extrapolate too far and pick one that's out of scope. Even when I BR, I can't quite see where the inference is being drawn from in the passage if I can't point to a specific line reference. Other times, I try to approach it like MBT questions in LR -- but then get stuck if I can't definitely prove an answer choice, OR I vacillate between the 'could be true' and 'this sounds like a stronger/better inference' answer choice and pick the wrong one.

If you have any tips on how to push out inferences from reading comp passages, I'd really appreciate it. Thank you in advance!

rafaelito

Hey there, I have a small bit of advice to offer. Approach inference questions like MSS questions not like MBT questions. The correct answer choices on these types of questions tend to be passive as opposed to strong statements. I would also employ POE if you aren't already. Specifically, pinpoint places where the answer choice goes wrong. For example, can we really infer that "most" of this thing did this thing. Can we infer anything about the past? About the whole genre of fantasy literature? About what would have happened? POE really helps me with these types of questions. Also, there is a weibnar on RC question types and also on MSS questions in LR. You could look there for more info. Hope this helps!

jurisprudent

@RafaelBernard Thank you -- this was helpful!

Cant Get Right

I think @RafaelBernard 's advice is excellent here. Another thing I found in RC is that drilling retakes really helped me to hone in on these types of things. On retakes, I'm able to better see through the content into the structural mechanics which helps me to better make these types of distinctions. Once you can see them on retakes, they become much more apparent on fresh sections.

jurisprudent

@"Cant Get Right" Thanks! That makes total sense.