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| I. 6 Tactics for Analyzing a Reading Comprehension Passage |
| wA. The writer's purpose and voice |
| wB. Finding the essay's main point |
| wC. Finding the purpose of each paragraph |
| wD. Determining the scope of the argument |
| wE. Determining the structure |
| wF. Don't read, skim |
| II. Three Most Common Question Types |
| III. 4 Step Method of Attacking Reading Comprehension Passages and Sample Essay |
B. Finding the essay's main point
If you can find the author's voice and purpose, you are in excellent shape to find the essay's main point. The author has a personal point of view that is nearly always injected into the essay. The purpose of the essay is to persuade you of the author's point of view. Sometimes the author makes it easy to identify his point of view by tagging it with strong adjectives/adverbs (vital, remarkable, spectacular, etc.). Watch the author's voice. However, often the essay writers are less straightforward in expressing their viewpoints.
Main points are arguments and not objectively factual. The main point of an essay would not be World War I was fought from 1914 to 1919; that is merely a fact. Instead, the claim World War I was extended by Britain's needless and poorly conceived intervention would be a main idea of an essay (note the strong words). That is a controversial position that a 350-word passage might discuss. Even science articles that might appear objective will have subjective viewpoints injected by the author to express a point. For these persuasive essays, you will most likely get the question: "What is the essay's main idea?"
Strategy: Since the CAT picks questions based on your ability level, and "main point" questions are relatively easy, the main point questions appear more often on the tests of lower scorers.
Essays without a pointSometimes an essay has no major point. These essays read like a story or a factual, dispassionate account. These essays will have no buzzwords that indicate the author is expressing an opinion: no amazing, impressive, disappointing, remarkable, invalid, etc. These essays tend to be rare, and if you think you have a "pointless essay", you may simply have failed to identify the author's point of view. Double check.
In the event you do have a pointless essay, you should look for structure and factual details that might be brought up in the questions. You are more likely to be asked detail (recall) questions on pointless essays. Make sure you make a good mental road map so that you may identify where certain facts are located in the essay.
w C. Finding the purpose of each paragraph
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