PSAT Reading — what the passage forces, and what it merely suggests

The inference question is where the Reading section takes most of its marks, and it is the one type where reading carefully is not enough on its own. A wrong option here is rarely false. It is usually something that would be perfectly reasonable to believe about the world, and that these particular sentences do not entitle you to say. This material is twelve of them, half in each of the two forms the test uses.

Six are completions: the passage stops in the middle of its last sentence, and four clauses are offered to finish it. Six ask directly what can be concluded, or what must be true if the writer's account is accurate. In both forms the question underneath is the same one — what do these sentences force, as opposed to what do they suggest.

Every question is built to the same three-trap pattern, and the explanations name the trap each time. One wrong option is a claim that is likely enough in general and unlicensed here: that a plant compound works by helping the roots take up water, that a factory's output rose because its people worked longer hours, that newcomers to a village moved there for work. One overshoots — the right direction stated too strongly: that nitrogen has nothing to do with how trees grow, that a meter is the only way to cut water use, that a species' old range is now uninhabitable. One contradicts a sentence in the passage outright, which is the easiest to reject once you go back and look, and easy to miss if you do not.

Half the passages carry small sets of figures, stated in words and complete enough to reason from. Several of those repay the arithmetic rather than the impression: ten thousand walkers in the north against five thousand in the south looks decisive until you work out how many of each were local, and find more local walkers in the south. Two hundred seedlings out of three hundred growing taller supports a majority and not a rule.

One question deliberately sets the causal reading right next to the correct one — twenty matched households, ten of them metered, using a third less water — because "the metered households used less" and "fitting a meter brings use down" are not the same claim, and only the first is forced. Learning to feel that difference is worth more on this section than any amount of extra vocabulary.

Every study, researcher, town and gallery here was invented for the purpose. Nothing is reproduced from any published test.

• Tell what a passage forces from what it merely makes likely
• Reject an option that is probably true about the world but unlicensed by the sentences in front of you
• Spot the overshoot: the right direction stated with always, never, only or entirely where the passage supports less
• Check every option against the passage for a flat contradiction before weighing the rest
• Finish an incomplete last sentence by reading the finished version back against the passage
• Do the arithmetic when a passage gives counts and shares, including the second calculation that reverses the obvious answer
• Keep a measured difference apart from a cause, even when the groups have been matched

Every passage here was written for this exercise, 45 to 90 words, one question each, no images and no shared texts. Some of what has to be reasoned from: a bus company whose hill route carried three hundred a week and whose coast route went from fifty to two hundred, with no service added in between; three hundred seedlings given one dose of a compound, of which two hundred grew taller, a hundred did not, and none died; ten thousand walkers on a park's northern trails against five thousand on the southern, with eight in ten from outside the county in the north and two in ten in the south; twenty households in one street, ten of them metered, using thirty gallons a day each against forty-five; and two plots of one wood, one composted and forty percent richer in nitrogen, whose trees grew at the same rate. 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.