Bonpas English

Training
Meeting 2
 STRATEGIES FOR THE READING
COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS

1. Look ahead at the questions to determine what types of questions

you must answer.
2. Find the section of the passage that deals with each question.
3. Work on the easier questions first
4. The answers to questions are usually in order
5. Do not spend too much time reading the passages!

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1. Main idea questions
2. Recognize the organization of ideas
3. Stated answers

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 1. MAIN IDEA QUESTIONS

• Main idea questions are asking what primary point the author is trying
to get across in the passage.
• They could be the topic, subject, title, primary idea, or main idea

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Common questions
What is the topic of the passage?
What is the subject of the passage?
What is the main idea of the passage?
Which of the following would be the best title?

Where to find the answer?

The answer to this type of question can generally be determined by

looking at the first sentence of each paragraph.

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 Hurricanes generally occur in the North Atlantic from May through November, with
the peak of the hurricane season in September; only rarely will they occur from
December through April in that part of the ocean. The main reason for the
occurrence of hurricanes during this period is that the temperature on the waters
surface is at its warmest and the humidity of the air is at its highest.
Of the tropical storms that occur each year in the North Atlantic, only about five on
the average, are powerful enough to be called hurricanes. To be classified as a
hurricane, a tropic storm must have winds reaching speeds of at least 117 kilometers
per hour, but the winds are often much stronger than that; the winds of intense
hurricanes can easily surpass 240 kilometers per hour.
1. The passage mainly discusses
(A) how many hurricanes occur each year
(B) the strength of hurricanes
(C) the weather in the North Atlantic
(D) hurricanes in one part of the world
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 A hoax, unlike an honest error, is a deliberately concocted plan to present an untruth as the truth. It
can take the form of a fraud, a fake, or a forgery, and can be accomplished in almost any field:
successful hoaxes have been foisted on the public in fields as varied as politics, religion, science, art,
and literature.
A famous scientific hoax occurred in 1912 when Charles Dawson claimed to have uncovered a
human skull and jawbone on the Piltdown Common in southern England. These human remains were
said to be more than 500,000 years old and were unlike any other remains from that period; as such
they represented an important discovery in the study of human evolution. These remains, popularly
known as the Piltdown Man and scientifically named Eoanthropus dawsoni after their discoverer,
confounded scientists for more than forty years. Finally in 1953, a chemical analysis was used to date
the bones, and it was found that the bones were modern bones that had been skillfully aged. A further
twist to the hoax was that the skull belonged to a human and the jaws to an orangutan.

2. The author’s main point is that

(A) various types of hoaxes have been perpetrated
(B) Charles Dawson discovered a human skull and jawbone
(C) Charles Dawson was not an honest man
(D) the human skull and jawbone were extremely old
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 2. RECOGNIZE THE ORGANIZATION OF IDEAS

• You will be asked to determine how the ideas in one paragraph (or
paragraphs) relate to the ideas in another paragraph (or paragraphs).

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Common questions
How is information in the passage organized?
How is the information in the second paragraph related to the
information in the first paragraph?

Where to find the answer?

The answer to this type of question can generally be determined by
looking at the first sentence of the appropriate paragraphs.

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 If asked who invented the game of baseball, most Americans would probably
reply that it was Abner Doubleday. At the beginning of this century, there was some
disagreement over how the game of baseball had actually originated, so sporting-goods
manufacturer Spaulding inaugurated a commission to research the question. In 1908 a
report was published by the commission in which Abner Doubleday, a U.S. Army officer
from Cooperstown, New York, was given credit for the invention of the game. The
National Baseball Hall of Fame was established in Cooperstown in honor of Doubleday.
Today, most sports historians are in agreement that Doubleday really did not have
much to do with the development of baseball. Instead, baseball seems to be a close
relation to the English game of rounders and probably has English rather than American
roots.
1. The second paragraph
(A) provides examples to support the ideas in the first paragraph
(B) sustain the ideas in the first paragraph
(C) outlines the effect of the idea in the first paragraph
(D) refutes the idea in the first paragraph
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Conflict within an organization is not always viewed as undesirable. In fact, various
managers have widely divergent ideas on the value that conflict can have.
According to the traditional view of conflict, conflict is harmful to an organization.
Managers with this traditional view of conflict see it as their role in an organization to rid
the organization of any possible sources of conflict.
The interactionist view of conflict, on the other hand, holds that conflict can serve an
important function in an organization by reducing complacency among workers and
causing positive changes to occur. Managers who hold an interactionist view of conflict
may actually take steps to stimulate conflict within the organization.
2. How is the information in the passage organized?
(A) Contrasting views of conflict are presented.
(B) Two theorists discuss the strengths and weaknesses of their views on their conflict.
(C) Examples of conflict within organizations are presented.
(D) The similar points of view are displayed

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 IQ, or Intelligence Quotient, is defined as the ratio of a person’s mental age to chronological age, with
the ratio multiplied by 100 to remove the decimal. Chronological age is easily determined; mental age is
generally measured by some kind of standard test and is not so simple to define.

In theory, a standardized IQ test is set up to measure an individual's ability to perform intellectual

operations such as reasoning and problem solving. These intellectual operations are considered to
represent intelligence.

In practice, it has been impossible to arrive at consensus as to which types of intellectual operations
demonstrate intelligence. Furthermore, it has been impossible to devise a test without cultural bias,
which is to say that any IQ tests so far proposed have been shown to reflect the culture of the test
makers. Test takers from that culture would, it follows, score higher on such a test than test takers from a
different culture with equal intelligence.

3. How does the information in the third paragraph differ from that in the second paragraph?
(A) It presents a contrasting point of view.
(B) It follows chronologically from the ideas in the second paragraph.
(C) It presents real information rather than a premise.
(D) It presents an example of the ideas in the second paragraph.
 3. Stated Answers

• A stated detail question asks about one piece of information in the

passage.
• The correct answer is written in the passage
• Common questions
According to the passage,...
It is stated in the passage that...
The passage indicate that...
The author mentions that...
Which of the following is true...?

• How to answer the question?

Choose a keyword in the question.
Find the keyword in the passage
Look for the restatement
 The human heart is divided into four chambers, each of which serves its own
function in the cycle of pumping blood. The atria are the thin-walled upper chambers
that gather blood as it flows from the veins between heartbeats. The ventricles are the
thick-walled lower chambers that receive blood from the atria and push it into the
arteries with each contraction of the heart. The left atrium and ventricle work
separately from those on the right. The role of the chambers on the right side of the
heart is to receive oxygen-depleted blood from the body tissues and send it on to the
lungs; the chambers on the left side of the heart then receive the oxygen-enriched
blood from the lungs and send it back out to the body tissues.
1. The passage indicates that the ventricles
(A) have thin walls
(B) send blood to the atria
(C) are above the atria
(D) force blood into the arteries
Dekanawida’s role as a supreme lawgiver in the Iroquois tribe has given him the status of
demigod within the Indian nation. Born into the Huron tribe, Dekanawida caused great fear in
his parents, who tried to drown him in his youth after a prophecy was made indicating that he
would bring great sorrow to the Huron nation. Dekanawida was to survive this attempted
drowning but later left his parents' home and tribe to live among the Iroquois.
One of his achievements with the Iroquois was the institution of a law among the Iroquois
that virtually ended blood feuds among the nation's families. Wampum, strings of beads
made of polished shells, was a valued commodity in the Iroquois culture; according to policies
established by Dekanawida, wampum had to be paid to the family of a murder victim by the
family of the killer. Since the killer was also put to death, the family of the killer had to pay the
victim's family in wampum for two deaths, the death of the murder victim and the death of
the killer. These strict policies implemented by Dekanawida helped to establish him as a wise
lawgiver and leader of the Iroquois nation.
2. According to the passage, Dekanawida
(A) led the Iroquois nation in a thoughtful way
(B) was born into Iroquois tribe
(C) was an evil lawgiver
(D) was loved when he was young