Passage-Based Critical Reading

This presentation was created by members of the Medford High School English Department. It is available for all teachers’ use.

Information in this presentation is based on The Princeton Review: Cracking the PSAT/NMSQT, 2008 Edition.

Copyright 2008, Random House Publishing

1. Science• Discoveries• Controversies• Physics• Chemistry• Astronomy• Biology• Medicine• Botany• Zoology

2. Humanities• Art• Literature• Music• Philosophy• Folklore• Artists• Novelists• Historical Figures

3. Social Sciences• Topics in politics

4. Narrative• Novels• Short Stories• Humorous Essays• Poetry?

According to The Princeton Review, there has never been a poem on the PSAT, but we might want to be prepared for one anyways.

1. Read the Blurb/Skim the Passage2. Go to the Questions3. Paraphrase the Question4. Find the Answer5. Answer in Your Own Words6. Process of Elimination

Read italicized introduction.• This provides context for the passage.

Take a minute to skim the passage.• Don’t get bogged down.• Identify main idea.• Get a sense of the structure of the passage.• Identify where supporting details are (and

not necessarily what the are just yet) so you can find them later.

Unlike the sentence completion section, these questions are not arranged in order of set of difficulty.• Figure out which ones you will tackle first and

which ones you will tackle last.• Consider which ones you might skip

3 Types of Questions – Do in this order…• Literal Comprehension (“Go-Fetch” - easy)• Reasoning Questions (i.e. “author’s motive”)• Complex or “Weird” Questions

Called “Go Fetch” questions because they ask you to go find information in the passage.

Examples:• According to lines 8-9, why are malamutes

stronger than huskies?• According to the passage, Type II diabetes is

characterized by

Reasoning questions are similar to “Go-Fetch” questions, but might require some higher-level thinking skills – like making inferences.

Examples:• The author quotes Dr. Silas as saying “The

findings were surprising” (lines 18-22) to show• Which is the following best expresses the

central theme of the passage?• Which of the following may be inferred from the

author’s discussion of the Great Plains?

These questions require you not only understand the author’s motives in writing something, but also that you apply that understanding to a new situation.

Examples:• All of the following, if true, would undermine the

author’s argument in the second paragraph EXCEPT

• Which of the following is a use of hyperbole most similar to that found in line 31?

Put the question in your own words. Don’t be afraid to actually write in the

book. For examples let’s say a question

asks:• The author mentions the Israeli-Palestinian

conflict in the last paragraph (lines 92-97) in order to

You could rephrase it this way:• Israel vs. Palestine – Why mentioned?

There is no opinion! There is always a right answer choice

and four wrong answer choices.

Remember how we covered our answers and jotted down our own words for Sentence Completions, so we wouldn’t be distracted by the answer choices?

You can use the same strategy for passage-based reading.

For example, if you know the answer is in line 39, paraphrase the sentence that includes line 39 to know just what it means.

We are told that the trouble with Modern Man is that he has been trying to detach himself from nature. He sits in the topmost tiers of polymer, glass, and steel, dangling his pulsing legs, surveying at a distance the writhing life of the planet. In this scenario, Man comes on as a stupendous lethal force, and the Earth is pictured as something delicate, like rising bubbles at the surface of a country pond, or flights of fragile birds.

Some say that the Earth is delicate and that Modern Man’s detached from it and can really mess it up.

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with one another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation.

When people declare independence, they’d better tell the world why.

Evaluate every answer choice. Be aggressive. It’s all about the passage. Beware exact phrasing. For general questions, pay attention

to scope. Avoid extremes and give no offense.

You should always avoid things like this:• Everyone believes that Shakespeare was the

greatest writer in history.• Nineteenth-century scientists were foolish and

ignorant to believe in the existence of ether.• The judges deliberately undermined the

constitution in the landmark case.• String theory fills in all the gaps between

Newtonian physics and Quantum Mechanics.

Individually or as a class, read the “Try it Yourself” passage on page 64 of Cracking the PSAT.

You may write on the passage. Be sure to be cognizant of TIME.

1. The word “ineluctable” as used in line 31 most nearly means

a) Unhappyb) Absurdc) Unchangeabled) Indifferente) Proven

2. According to the passage, the “necessity of education” (line 33) is based on the fact that humans

a) Have mothers and fathersb) Have larger brains than any other

animalc) Are more advanced than other animalsd) Are mortale) Are born unable to feed themselves

3. The author discusses a stone (lies 3-9) in order to explain

a) The forces necessary to destroy rockb) The difference between living and

nonliving beingsc) Why living things cannot be split

into piecesd) Why living things are easier to crush

than stonese) The nutritional requirements for life

4. The tone of the author’s discussion of living things in the first paragraph (lines 9-18) is one of

a) Wholehearted optimismb) Slight condescensionc) Indifferent neutralityd) Utter disdaine) Restrained admiration

5. The author mentions a savage tribe in the third paragraph in order to

a) Make a point about how necessary education is for societies to survive

b) Assert that savage tribes are more in need of education than civilized societies are

c) Compare the achievements of adults in a savage tribe to those of adults in a civilized society

d) Emphasize how education spans the gap between savage tribes and civilized societies

e) State how education makes the facts of life and death less relevant to an individual’s survival

6. The author implies in the last paragraph that without a concerted effort to educate the young, humans

a) Will become extinctb) May return to a more savage lifestylec) Would not be as happy as those with

educationd) Will become more like stonese) May have poorly behaved children

7. The primary purpose of the passage is to

a) Argue that we should spend more money on public schools

b) Explain why the author wants to be a teacher

c) Prove that humans would die without education

d) Recount the author’s own experience as a student

e) Support the claim that good education is essential for human beings

8. With which of the following statements is the author LEAST likely to agree?

a) Education is a necessary component of the survival of civilization

b) If humans were immortal, the process of education would be less important, ad ti might not even happen at all

c) Individuals are born without the means of survival within their own societal groups

d) Adults pass ideas, beliefs, and social standards on to immature members of a group through an automatic process of transmission

e) Living things react to environmental stimuli differently from nonliving things

For our next PSAT practice session, please complete the following exercises from the Cracking the PSAT text:• Practice Test 1, Session 1, #9-24 (pp. 255-

259)• Practice Test 1, Session 3, #30-48 (pp.265-

269) Don’t forget to use the strategies we

learned today!