{"id":799,"date":"2013-02-15T09:00:24","date_gmt":"2013-02-15T09:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/sat\/?p=799"},"modified":"2015-04-16T00:30:30","modified_gmt":"2015-04-16T00:30:30","slug":"inference-questions-on-sat-reading-comprehension","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/sat\/inference-questions-on-sat-reading-comprehension\/","title":{"rendered":"Inference Questions on SAT Reading Comprehension"},"content":{"rendered":"

Here\u2019s a good SAT vocabulary word for you: infer<\/i>. If you don\u2019t already know what it means, go look it up. I\u2019ll wait here. There\u2019s a decent chance that it\u2019ll show up on your SAT, and not even in a sentence completion. It might show up in a SAT Reading Comprehension<\/a> question about a passage.<\/p>\n

Questions that ask you to infer things about the reading look a bit like this, most of the time.<\/p>\n

The author suggests that the \u201cearlier settlers\u201d (line 50) were<\/i><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. unable to find an adequate source of fuel for cooking<\/i><\/li>\n
  2. divided according to their religious beliefs <\/i><\/li>\n
  3. initially displeased with the geography of their landing site<\/i><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u2026etc<\/i><\/p>\n

    We don\u2019t need to worry about (D)<\/i> and (E)<\/i> here, although you\u2019d of course see them on your SAT.<\/p>\n

    \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

    The structure and frequency<\/h2>\n

    There\u2019s one key word in that question that tells you you\u2019re supposed to read between the lines, and that word is \u201csuggests.\u201d There are also a number of other words and phrases which would do the same thing, including \u201cimply,\u201d \u201cwould most likely agree,\u201d and \u201ccan be inferred.\u201d<\/p>\n

    Although there are a number of different ways this type of SAT question<\/a> might be worded, there\u2019s one thing for sure\u2014you\u2019re going to see a lot of them on your SAT. Some readings might include three or four questions that ask you to infer something.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    How to answer inference questions<\/h2>\n

    Reading between the lines in real life is different than on the SAT. On the test, you really don\u2019t have to make very big assumptions. If fact, you shouldn\u2019t assume anything at all. Instead, you\u2019ll need to simply link a couple pieces of information. Either you\u2019ll draw details from two sentences in the passage (at least one of them will be in the question) and combine them to get a pretty obvious result or you\u2019ll take an understanding of an author\u2019s general attitude and apply it to a given detail.<\/p>\n

    Let\u2019s say that the example question at the beginning of this post refers this excerpt from a passage.<\/p>\n

    \u201cGiven the lack of food stores left and the absence of fishing gear on their ships, the explorers found that they needed badly to land in order to find food. After miles of coastline that wasn\u2019t suited to landing, they came ashore in an area of meadowland with few trees and, hence, little wood. Without the time or seeds to begin farming, they relied on game, of which there was plenty, but they were often forced to eat the meat raw, which left many ill. Within a few months, those earlier settler set out once again to find a more suitable residence.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

    There are two possible answer choices from what we had earlier, (A) <\/i>or (C). <\/i>Most likely, (B) <\/i>refers to some information given earlier in the reading that\u2019s irrelevant here.<\/p>\n

    If you try too hard, you may end up selecting (C) <\/i>as your answer, but that\u2019s not correct. Yes, it\u2019s true that the settlers ended up leaving. And yes, it\u2019s true that they had trouble finding a place to land their ships in the first place. But do we really know that when they got onto the land, they said, \u201cMan, this sucks\u201d? You might imagine it, but it\u2019s just not in the passage.<\/p>\n

    The leaps that we make when answering inference questions about SAT passages<\/a> should be very small ones. We know that there were few trees. We know that they ate raw meat, and we know that they weren\u2019t happy doing so. To say that we have to read between the lines is really an exaggeration. We just have to understand something that\u2019s not written out in a perfectly explicit sentence. That they didn\u2019t have enough wood for their fires is an easy assumption to make. Follow this simple SAT Critical Reading tip<\/a> and don\u2019t make these kinds of questions harder than they have to be.<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Here\u2019s a good SAT vocabulary word for you: infer. If you don\u2019t already know what it means, go look it up. I\u2019ll wait here. There\u2019s a decent chance that it\u2019ll show up on your SAT, and not even in a sentence completion. It might show up in a SAT Reading Comprehension question about a passage. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[91],"tags":[46,85],"ppma_author":[24883],"class_list":["post-799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all","tag-sat-reading-comprehension","tag-sat-reading-section"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nInference Questions on SAT Reading Comprehension - Magoosh Blog | SAT<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/magoosh.com\/sat\/inference-questions-on-sat-reading-comprehension\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Inference Questions on SAT Reading Comprehension\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here\u2019s a good SAT vocabulary word for you: infer. 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