Answers and Discussion
- How would you go about locating the answers?
Type A: You might select key words from the questions which help you to locate the area in the passage where the information can be found. Then you should read through the extract carefully in order to understand what information it contains and then to identify the missing information which completes the sentence in the question. If required to supply the words themselves, candidates should select the words directly from the passage. They should take care that they spell the words correctly, as they may lose the mark if they copy the words wrongly.
Type B: You might select key ideas from the first half of the sentence and then scan the passage for similar ideas. Having located the area in which the information may be found, you should then go through the list of possible answers to choose the most appropriate one.
- When you begin the second question, would you scan from the beginning of the passage?
Since the information will occur in text order, it is not necessary to continually return to the beginning.
- Is the structure of the sentence halves useful in joining them together?
Where a list of answers is supplied, they will be structured so that grammatical considerations play little part in the successful location of the correct answer.
- What skills are being tested in this task type?
In Type A, the skill being tested is the ability to locate detail/specific information. In Type B, the skill being tested is understanding of the main ideas.
