PSAT Reading — what a sentence does, and what two writers are arguing about

Craft and Structure asks a different kind of question from the rest of the Reading section. It is not what the paragraph says — that is Information and Ideas, covered by another material here — but what it is doing, which is a question most readers have never been asked out loud. This material is twelve of them, in the three shapes the test uses.

Four ask about the function of one sentence. The paragraph is printed, the question names a sentence by its position in it, and the options describe jobs rather than content: it states the fact the rest of the paragraph explains; it grants a point before the objection that follows; it offers an explanation the writer is about to weigh against another. The reliable trap in this type is an option that names a job the paragraph really does perform — just in a different sentence from the one you were asked about. Three of the four questions here carry one, and the explanations say so, because recognizing it is the skill.

Four ask about the structure of a whole paragraph in a single line. A long-held view, evidence against it, and a revision that keeps what was true in the old one. A process in order with its one apparently wasteful step justified. Two cases set against each other on the single measure that separates them. A problem with a remedy that reaches part of it. Here the trap is a shape that fits part of the paragraph and not the whole — a figure at the end that looks like a comparison, a rule in the last sentence that looks like a heading — and every one of these four questions carries one.

Four are cross-text: two short passages by two invented researchers, and a question about how the second would answer a specific claim of the first, or about what both would accept. Three of the four turn on interpretation rather than fact — the researchers agree on the count of panels, the literacy figures, the size of the gap, and part company over what those show. Two of the questions include an option the second writer would readily accept and which says nothing about the claim in question; learning to notice that a true, agreeable statement can still be no answer is worth more marks than anything else in this section.

Nothing is reproduced from any published test. Every researcher, town, gallery, archive and estuary here was invented for the purpose, and each question is answerable from the words printed in it.

• Ask what a sentence does in a paragraph, not only what it says
• Name the common jobs a sentence can hold: stating the fact to be explained, granting a point, offering an explanation that is about to be weighed against another, reporting a result
• Reject an option that names a real job performed by a different sentence from the one the question asked about
• Describe the shape of a whole paragraph in one line, and check that the shape covers its last sentence as well as its first
• Spot a shape that fits only part of a paragraph, such as a lone figure that looks like a comparison
• Read two short texts for the difference between disagreeing about a fact and disagreeing about what the fact shows
• Find the exact claim a cross-text question puts to the second writer, and reject an option that writer would accept but which does not answer it

Every paragraph here was written for this exercise, and each question is answerable from the words printed in it. Some of what has to be read: a bridge at Trellis Reach whose piers "took the water without shifting" while every rebuilt bridge near it has needed repair twice; a ferry timetable that "does save time on paper" and leaves no margin for weather; terraces above Loch Tay that a single sixteenth-century rent roll had made into a vineyard until excavation found oat pollen and no vine pollen at all; Bryn slate left out through a winter "deliberately, to let frost open the bedding planes"; and four pairs of researchers who part company over what a shared fact shows — nine repeated panels from one workshop, a literacy figure a generation after a library was built, a coin from a bank cut through by a later ditch, and a fifth less fish landed by the boats that joined a quota scheme. Zestly is an independent study tool. It is not affiliated with the College Board, which owns the PSAT/NMSQT, and it is not an exam centre.