The Little Blue Reasoning Book - Brandon Royal [56]
One tip involves always performing a “topic-scope-purpose” drill. That is, always ask yourself what is the topic, scope, and purpose. Let’s test this.
The whale is the largest mammal in the animal kingdom. When most people think of whales, they think of sluggish, obese animals, frolicking freely in the ocean by day and eating tons of food to sustain themselves. When people think of ants, on the other hand, they tend to think of hardworking underfed creatures transporting objects twice their body size to and from hidden hideaways. However, if we analyze food consumption based on body size, we find that ants eat their full body weight everyday while a whale eats the equivalent of only one-thousandth of its body weight each day. In fact, when we compare the proportionate food consumption of all living creatures, we find that the whale is one of the most food efficient creatures on earth.
What is the topic? The answer is clearly “whales.” Don’t be fooled into thinking that the topic is the “animal kingdom.” This would be an example of an answer that is too general. What is the scope? The answer is “food consumption of whales.” What is the purpose of the passage or why did the author sit down to write this? The author’s purpose is to say that whales are food efficient creatures and to thereby counter the popular misconception that they are “biological” gas guzzlers.
Passage Structure
There are essentially two distinct ways to analyze passage structure: the micro and the macro. Micro analysis involves keeping track of transitions, which signal the flow of the passage. Transition or guide words, including such words as but and however, have been called the traffic lights of language. These words serve one of four primary purposes: to show continuation, illustration, contrast, or conclusion. See Exhibit A.
Exhibit B – Passage Structure and Viewpoint
Macro analysis involves not only noting the number of paragraphs and their function, but more importantly, the number of viewpoints and their relationship. The relationships between or among viewpoints are finite and summarized in Exhibit B.
In terms of paragraphs and their functions, the opening paragraph is usually the introduction and each succeeding paragraph takes on a single viewpoint or concept. Passages with one or two viewpoints are most common on reading passages, although three viewpoints within a single reading comprehension passage is a possibility. As already noted, viewpoints are more applicable to social science passages than to science passages because social science is typically subjective and argumentative.
Passage Question Types
There are five basic kinds of reading comprehension questions. These include: (1) overview questions, (2) explicit-detail questions, (3) inference questions, (4) tone questions, and (5) passage organization questions. Examples of each question type follow.
Overview questions: “The primary purpose of this passage is to …” or “Which of the following is the author’s main idea?” Not surprisingly, an overview question is sometimes called a primary purpose or main idea question.
Explicit-detail questions: “According to the passage, the author states that …” An explicit-detail question is a question which has a very literal answer. It is something that the reader has read and it can be confirmed based on words actually written in the passage.
Inference questions: “It can be inferred from the passage that …” or “The author implies that …” The artistry in answering an inference question lies in drawing that magic line between what can be logically inferred based on information in a passage and what is declared outside the scope of the passage.
Tone questions: “The attitude of the author toward mystics can best be described as …” A tone question asks the reader to comment on the “temperature” of some aspect of the passage.
Passage organization