Answer the questions

We might be able to understand the passage well, but no marks will be awarded unless we can provide the correct answers to the questions! Looking at things positively though, even if we are not be able to understand every part of the passage, we will still be able to pick up marks for questions testing our understanding on parts of the passage we understand. In all, there would be 10 questions to answer, which will consist of different types of questions, each worth 2 marks.

a) Finding the answer

[Type text]

For each question, we will apply the same steps to find the answer.

i) Identify relevant information from passage

Let us recall that one paragraph focuses on one main thing, so we should be able to easily find the part of the passage that contains the information related to help us find the answer to the question. We must also note that since only a portion of the passage would give us the relevant information we need, we must be able to know which information is not relevant to the question. It will be a waste of time and we will only confuse ourselves if we look at the wrong portion of the passage. We are now like a detective looking for clues in the passage that would help us, and ignoring irrelevant information!

ii) Highlight/Underline key words and phrases of the question in the passage This step involves matching the key words and phrases we highlighted/underlined in the question with the same words and phrases in the portion of the passage we identified in the previous step. If a key word or phrase we highlighted/underlined in the question is not found in the passage, then we must match that word or phrase to the closest word or phrase in the passage.

iii) Look before and after the key words and phrases highlighted/underlined

Recalling our discussion about understanding the CONTEXT of something, we look for information before and after a word or phrase in order to understand what that word or phrase means or refers to. Often, it would be useful to draw arrows to link pronouns like ‘it’, ‘her’, ‘which’, ‘this’ etc. to the noun a pronoun represents. Adverbs like ‘however’, ‘nevertheless’, ‘but’, ‘in addition’, ‘furthermore, ‘moreover’ etc.

should be paid attention to.

iv) Answer the question by making changes to word forms (where needed)

After we have found the information we need, we would answer the question with all the relevant information. Often, we cannot copy totally whole sentences and phrases, so we must make changes to some word forms to make sure our answer is grammatically sound. Marks will be deducted for mistakes in grammar (e.g. present tense not changed to past tense to answer the question).

v) Check our answers

This step can be done after we have finished answering all the questions, or after we have answered each question. It is often necessary for us to look at the portion of the passage we got our answer from several times.

 Missing information

[Type text]

For each question, we must ask ourselves, is our answer sufficient? Does it contain all the information required by the question? We must be thorough in our checking by looking back at the portion of the passage we got our answer from and see if there are any important words or phrases we left out. For example, we know that there is a difference between ‘hand’ and ‘hands’; ’not guilty’ and ‘guilty’; ‘conscious’

and ‘unconscious’ etc. And if the author mentions more than one point, we must make sure that we do not just give one point. For example, if the portion of the passage we look at states: ‘Pauline was very sad and was full of bitterness’, and the question is: ‘How did Pauline feel?’, we should answer: ‘She felt very sad and bitter.’, and not ‘She felt sad.’ (Notice that the word ‘very’ beside ‘sad’ should not be left out, as well as the feeling of being ‘bitter’.)

 Extra information

Have we overanswered the question? Generally speaking, if our answer exceeds three lines, this would mean that there has been information we gave that is not needed. A simple example would be a student knowing that the answer is found in a particular paragraph, and copies the whole paragraph (perhaps trying to ‘play safe’)!

We should try to be as precise as possible in the amount of information we provide for each question. As in another example, the portion of the passage states: ‘Fabian had just gobbled down a bowl of noodles for lunch, like a wild beast devouring a prey. Some of his classmates were amazed at the speed he ate, when even a fever could not prevent him from chomping up four hamburgers at once!’ And if the question asks ‘What did Fabian eat during lunch?’, we should answer something like

‘He ate a bowl of noodles for lunch.’ Giving an answer like ‘He gobbled down a bowl of noodles for lunch like a wild beast devouring a prey, making some of his classmates amazed at the speed he ate when even a fever could not prevent him<’

would clearly be a case of overanswering. If a student overanswers, it is clear that he or she does not understand the question and/or does not know which piece(s) of information fit the question. (Usually a student who overanswers as in this case would not be one who has the habit of highlighting/underlining the relevant key words and phrases that would be ‘gobbled’ and ‘lunch’.) So if you have the habit of copying chunks of information hoping that this would guarantee you full marks for each question, stop doing that, and start highlighting/underlining!

 Spelling mistakes

This should not happen if you bother to check again. And again!

 Grammatical mistakes

[Type text]

Little errors in grammar that may arise from using ‘shall’ instead of ‘should’, or ‘will’

instead of ‘would’, or ‘It was the cat that ate the food.’ instead of ‘It was the cat which ate the food.’, are usually overlooked and not penalized. Other mistakes that are obvious as in the example: ‘Why did the old lady suddenly faint?’, and the answer should follow ‘The old lady fainted <’ and not ‘The old lady faints’ (which is in the present tense).

If your answer is long and you want to reduce the risk of committing grammatical errors, you may choose to answer a question requiring two points (for example two reasons) in two sentences. This is also makes your answer clearer, to show that one sentence represents one reason. Use commas when you feel the need to pause after many words.

Answer in complete sentences. For example, in the case where a question asks: ‘How did Sammy get to Frankfurt?’, we should answer ‘He got to Frankfurt by train and bus.’, instead of ‘By train and bus.’

Be careful when you use pronouns like ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘boy’, ‘girl’ etc. For example, in an answer like ‘Jonny and Peter witnessed the incident and he called the police.’, who does ‘he’ refer to? Jonny and Peter are both boys, the answer is not clear! Rather, if it was Peter who called the police, it would make sense to answer ‘Jonny and Peter witnessed the incident and Peter called the police.’

We must also ensure that the sentence we give for our answer actually means what we have in mind according to our understanding.

Lastly, remember to put a full-stop at the back of the sentence if a full-stop is not provided, and begin a sentence with a capital letter of the first word!

b) Pay attention to the 5Ws and 1H

In the section in highlighting/underlining the key words, we have identified the 5Ws and 1H most questions ask for. Why do they begin most questions with the 5Ws and 1H? When we write our compositions, we often use the 5Ws and 1H as a guide to help us in writing. Therefore, when the author wrote the passage, he or she also used the 5Ws and 1H to help him or her.

[Type text]

As mentioned before, each paragraph may contain either 2Ws, or 1W and 1H etc. When the examiner sets the questions, a question asking for a particular W or H can only be asked if the answer is found in the passage. For example, in the following paragraph:

Looking back, I would never have put so much trust in a stranger again. I ought to have been more obedient in following my mother’s advice never to talk to strangers; if not, remember to have a healthy amount of wariness to strangers. The consequence of getting robbed of my wallet was an expensive price to pay, and a traumatizing one too. I vowed from then that I would never follow a stranger to a secluded area again, no matter how innocuous he looked.

What are some questions that can be asked? The following are some possibilities:

1) What was the consequence the author suffered?

2) What did the author regret not doing?

3) How did the stranger look like to the author?

4) Why was the author robbed?

5) Where was the author robbed?

The examiner cannot set questions where relevant information is not provided in the passage. For example, the following are questions which cannot and will not be asked:

1) At what time of the day was the author robbed?

2) How much money did the author lose?

3) How many years had passed since the author was robbed?

4) What did the author do after he was robbed?

The purpose of the examiner setting questions in the comprehension open-ended section is not to ask us to for our opinion or to guess an answer. Rather, the questions are to test how well we understand what the author of the passage has written for us (the readers).

From the above questions that the examiner can ask, we realize that the questions asked are quite direct, and the answer to each question can be found quite easily.

Answering this type of questions will be discussed in the section DIRECT

QUESTIONS that would follow. We have to note, however, that the examiner can ask questions where the information given in the passage is indirectly related. One such type of question is an inferential question, which will be discussed in the section INFERENTIAL QUESTIONS.

[Type text]

c) Types of questions

Different types of questions set test different skills of comprehension. Different types of questions are also asked to identify students who are very competent, average and poor.

The types of questions asked can be divided into five broad categories as we will see.

i) Direct question

Direct questions are the easiest of the five types of questions to answer. This category of questions tests the most basic level of understanding. The answers are easily found from the passage. Students who are weak in the comprehension open-ended section should aim to pick up marks for this type of questions. Let us go back to an example we saw previously:

Looking back, I would never have put so much trust in a stranger again. I ought to have been more obedient in following my mother’s advice never to talk to strangers; if not, remember to have a healthy amount of wariness to strangers. The consequence of getting robbed of my wallet was an expensive price to pay, and a traumatizing one too. I vowed from then that I would never follow a stranger to a secluded area again, no matter how innocuous he looked.

1) What was the consequence the author suffered?

We assume that this is the paragraph where the information relevant to this question is found. Applying the steps we discussed previously, we go about highlighting/underlining the key words and phrases in the passage that we have highlighted/underlined in the question (which has been done in this case):

Looking back, I would never have put so much trust in a stranger again. I ought to have been more obedient in following my mother’s advice never to talk to strangers; if not, remember to have a healthy amount of wariness to strangers. The consequence of getting robbed of my wallet was an expensive price to pay, and a traumatizing one too. I vowed from then that I would never follow a stranger to a secluded area again, no matter how innocuous he looked.

To find out more information about the ‘consequence’, we look before and after the word ‘consequence’ and the ‘consequence’ refers to ‘getting robbed of my wallet’. Next, we would write down the answer, making changes to the grammatical word forms. An answer like this might follow:

The consequence suffered was getting robbed of his wallet. (Assuming the author is male. ‘my’ in the passage <which is written in direct speech> is changed to ‘his’ in our answer <which should be written in indirect speech>).

2) What did the author regret not doing?

[Type text]

This is a more difficult example of a direct question, because ‘regret’ is not a word found in the passage. The closest match to ‘regret’ is ‘ought to’ and

‘remember to have’ (both phrases have the idea that the author should have done something). One more clue that shows that there is a second point (referring to the phrase ‘remember to have’) is the adverb ‘if not’. Therefore, we

highlight/underline the phrase ‘ought to’ accordingly:

Looking back, I would never have put so much trust in a stranger again. I ought to have been more obedient in following my mother’s advice never to talk to strangers; if not, remember to have a healthy amount of wariness to strangers. The consequence of getting robbed of my wallet was an expensive price to pay, and a traumatizing one too. I vowed from then that I would never follow a stranger to a secluded area again, no matter how innocuous he looked.

Now getting the answer is easy, since information that ‘ought to’ refers to is

‘more obedient< to strangers’. An answer could be:

He regretted not obeying his mother’s advice never to talk to strangers and not having a healthy amount of wariness to strangers. (Realise that the word some words like ‘more obedient’ has been changed to ‘obeying’ and ‘in following’ is not included because there is no need to. ‘have’ has been changed to ‘having’. We have ensured that the meaning of our answer and the meaning of the author is the same.)

We can learn from such an example that two points are stated, and the two points must be included to score the full 2 marks.

ii) Reference question

Reference questions are also easy to answer. Students who are weak in comprehension should seek to pick up marks from this type of questions. They simply ask us what a pronoun refers to. We have to specify the noun or the thing the pronoun refers to.

Using the example again,

Looking back, I would never have put so much trust in a stranger again. I ought to have been more obedient in following my mother’s advice never to talk to strangers; if not, remember to have a healthy amount of wariness to strangers. The consequence of getting robbed of my wallet was an expensive price to pay, and a traumatizing one too. I vowed from then that I would never follow a stranger to a secluded area again, no matter how innocuous he looked.

[Type text]

1) Who does ‘he’ (in line 6) refer to?

Once again, we follow the prescribed steps, and highlight ‘he’ which has been done in the passage, and look at information before and after ‘he’. In this case, the noun which the pronoun ‘he’ refers to is found before ‘he’. Our answer would be:

‘he’ refers to the stranger who robbed the author’s wallet. (We do not write ‘robbed the author of his wallet’ because from the passage given, we do not know the author’s gender, male or female. We have once again answered in indirect speech, not ‘’he’ was the stranger who robbed me.’)

Another common pronoun that we are asked what something refers to is the pronoun

‘it’. Let us look at a given case:

The monsoon season had arrived. It was at this time of the year that torrential rainfall was to be expected for a whole month, and roaming the streets without an umbrella was not an option, for even most who used an umbrella in a downpour would find some parts of themselves ‘bathed’ by the rain. Afraid that I might catch a cold if I walked about dripping from head to toe, she made it a non-negotiable duty for me to carry an umbrella in my schoolbag each day during that month.

2 i) What does ‘it’ (in line 1) refer to?

Looking before and after ‘it’ (in line 1), we must find what is the word or phrase that ‘it’

can be replaced with and the meaning of the sentence is still unchanged. The key information includes ‘monsoon season’ and ‘this time of the year’.

(One way to go about the difficulty of determining the meaning of ‘it’ in this case would be to consider a similar scenario in your mind. Let us consider the situation: I was looking for my pencil case that went missing. It was at a deserted corner of my home that I found my pencil case. ‘It’ definitely refers to the ‘deserted corner’, since ‘was’

functions like something equals to.)

[Type text]

Instructions on using FreeRice 2.0:

1. You may want to select ‘sign up’ and link your account to your Facebook account, to monitor your overall statistics.