Usually, the first question after a passage is an overview question about the main idea, main topic, or main purpose of the passage. Main idea questions ask you to identify the most important thought in the passage. Answer choices for these questions are complete sentences.
Sample Questions
When a single readily identified main idea is not available in the passage, the question may ask about main topic, instead. This kind of question ask you what the passage is generally “about.” Answer choices for these questions are noun phrases.
Sample Questions
Main purpose question is another type of question usually ask right after the passage. Main purpose questions ask why an author wrote a passage. The answer choices for these questions usually begin with infinitives.
Sample Questions
Sample Answer Choices
Don’t answer the initial overview question about a passage until you have answered the other questions. The process of answering the detail questions may give you a clearer idea of the main idea, topic, or purpose of the passage.
The correct answers for main idea, main topic, and main purpose questions correctly summarize the main points of the passage; they must be more general than any of the supporting ideas or details, but not so general that they include ideas outside the scope of the passages.
Distractors for this type of question have one of these characteristics:
If you ‘re not sure of the answer for one of these questions, go back and quickly scan the passage. You can usually infer the main idea, main topic, or main purpose of the entire passage from your understanding about the main ideas of the paragraphs that make up the passage and the relationship between them.
A number of other questions for a passage require an overall understanding of the passage. These are often the last question in a set of questions.
Tone questions ask you to determine the author’s feelings about the topic by the language that he or she uses in writing the passage. Look for vocabulary that indicates if the author’s feelings are positive, negative, or neutral.
Sample Questions
Sample Answer Choices
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If you read the following sentences in passages, would the tone of those passages most likely be positive or negative?
A) That was just the beginning of a remarkable series of performances by this brilliant actress.
B) Despite some minor problems, this device has a number of admirable features.
C) This practice is a waste of time and money.
D) At the time his poems were first published, they were very popular, but today most critics find them simplistic and rather uninteresting.
The italicized words in sentences A) and B) show a positive tone; in C) and D), the italicized words indicate a negative attitude. Notice that sentence B) contains negative words (“minor problems”), but the overall meaning of the sentence is positive. Sentence D) contains positive language (“very popular”), but overall, the tone is negative. (Words like despite, but, although, however, and similar words can “reverse” the tone of the passage.)
Most TOEFL Reading passages have a neutral tone, but sometimes an author may take a position for or against some point. However, answer choices that indicate strong emotion–angry, outraged, sad, and so forth–will seldom be correct.
Attitude questions are very similar to tone questions. Again, you must understand the author’s opinion. The language that the author uses will tell you what his or her position is.
What is the author’s attitude toward smoking on airplanes as expressed in the sentence below?
Although some passengers may experience a slight discomfort from not smoking on Iong flights, their smoking endangers the health of all the passengers and crew.
The author opposes smoking during flights. He admits that there is some argument in favor of smoking–some passengers may feel discomfort–but this is not as important as the fact that smoking can be dangerous to everyone on the flight. The use of the word although shows this.
Sample Questions
Another type of attitude question presents four statements and asks how the author would feel about them.
Organization questions ask about the overall structure of a passage or about the organization of a particular paragraph.
Sample Questions
Sample Answer Choices
Questions about previous or following paragraphs ask you to assume that the passage is part of a longer work: What would be the topic of the hypothetical paragraph that precedes or follows the passage? To find the topic of the previous paragraph, look for clues in the first line or two of the passage; for the topic of the following passage, look in the last few lines. Sometimes incorrect answer choices mention topics that have already been discussed in the passage.
Sample Questions
Exercise 44.1