Reading and Thinking Skills

The commonest question gives a short passage and asks for one fact that is written down somewhere in it. The answer is usually in the passage verbatim or close to it, and the skill is locating it quickly rather than reasoning about it. How long will the power be off? Less than two hours, because the notice says power will not be out longer than two hours. Where did the writer keep his savings? In a sock, because the passage says he keeps his savings in silver dollars in a sock. Where did most of the people end up when the panic ended? Franklin Park, four miles out, because the passage lists the distances and attaches each group to a place.

One small trap hides inside this otherwise mechanical group, and it is the number that is present but not wanted. A passage says a family has five children and then asks how many siblings the narrator has; the number in the passage is five, but the narrator is one of the five, so the answer is four. The examiner relies on a student who finds the number and stops reading.

It is worth being honest about part of this chapter. A run of questions are not comprehension at all but general knowledge recall: who wrote the national anthem, when the first constitution of Pakistan was approved, which prophet could speak to animals, which surah is called the mother of the Quran, when the first Indo-Pakistan war was fought. These are answerable from memory rather than from any passage, and a student should recognise them for what they are instead of hunting for a passage that is not there.