LearnVerbal AbilityReading Comprehension
15.03 · Reading Comprehension
Inference Questions
Elite lesson9 rules10 questions
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Rules
At a glance 9 rules
- 1One short stepAn inference goes one step beyond the lines, never two. You must be able to point to the sentence that forces it.
- 2Forced, not just possibleAsk whether the passage makes the option true. 'Not contradicted' is not enough, and true in real life is not enough either.
- 3Timing words imply'Only in', 'no longer', 'until' and 'unlike' carry a hidden fact: 'no longer free' means it was free before.
- 4Strong words need proof'Always', 'never', 'only', 'all' and 'proves' rarely survive. Prefer 'can', 'some' or 'may' when the passage is that cautious.
- 5Join two linesMany inferences join two sentences: if X needs Y and the passage removes Y, X suffers. Point to both lines; one line alone often backs a trap.
- 6No invented comparisonsIf the passage never compares two things, an option ranking one above the other cannot be inferred.
- 7New cases: every conditionWhen options describe new situations, pick the one that meets every condition the passage gives, not just one of them.
- 8Author would agreeFind the author's own lines, not a critic's or the popular view, and pick the option that restates them at the same strength.
- 9Cannot be inferredFor 'EXCEPT' or 'cannot be inferred', confirm three options from the lines; the one left without support is the answer.
Test yourself
Tap an option to answer. The first tap counts.
- Q1Easy
For most of history, a piece of music lasted only as long as someone was playing it. To hear a great singer, you had to be in the same hall, courtyard or temple as she was, and most people heard the finest musicians of their region rarely, if ever. The gramophone, and later the radio, changed this within a few decades. A song could now be heard thousands of times, in homes far from where it was sung, long after the singer had gone home. Listeners began to feel they knew performers they would never see.
Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?
Correct answerBefore recorded sound, hearing a particular singer usually meant being where she performed.
Why
Inference is one short step from a line you can point to.
'You had to be in the same hall, courtyard or temple as she was' is that line, and it describes the time before the gramophone.
Nothing says live music vanished, the two machines are never ranked, and 'and later the radio' puts the radio second.
So before recorded sound, hearing a particular singer usually meant being where she performed.
- Q2Easy
Read the passage and answer the question that follows.
English spelling is notorious for words like 'knight', in which the 'k' and the 'gh' are silent and the vowel is not the one the letter suggests. The oddity is a fossil. When English spelling began to settle, after printing arrived in England in the late fifteenth century, the 'k' in 'knight' was still pronounced, and the 'gh' stood for a throaty sound like the one at the end of the Scottish 'loch'. Over the next two centuries, however, English vowels kept shifting, and several consonants fell silent. Spelling did not follow. Printers, and later the makers of dictionaries, had every reason to keep spellings stable, since fixed spellings made books easier to set, read and sell. The result is a written language that records, in many words, how English sounded some five hundred years ago. Reformers have proposed spelling words as they are spoken today, but they face an awkward problem: speech keeps changing, so a spelling fitted to today's sounds would drift out of date as well.
Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?
Correct answerSilent letters in some English words are clues to how those words were once pronounced.
Why
Read the image: a fossil is a trace of something from long ago, so ask what the spelling preserves.
The 'k' in 'knight' 'was still pronounced' when spelling settled; then the sounds shifted and 'spelling did not follow', so the written word keeps an older sound.
Printers kept spellings stable rather than inventing letters, vowels 'kept shifting' for two centuries, and the reformers' stated problem is that speech keeps changing, not a quarrel among them.
So silent letters in some English words are clues to how those words were once pronounced.
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