Reading Comprehension OVERVIEW * Types of reading comprehension questions * Strategies for solving reading comprehension questionsMost often, you will be given a reading passage and then asked to answer a series of questions based on the passage. The following are the most common kinds of questions asked: * Question of fact or detail. You may have to mentally rephrase or rearrange, but you should find the answer stated in the body of the passage. ¢ Best title or main idea. The answer may be obvious, but the incorrect choices to the “main idea” question are often half-truths that are easily confused with the main idea. They may misstate the idea, omit part of the idea, or even offer a supporting idea quoted directly from the text. The correct answer is the one that covers the largest part of the selection.* Interpretation. This type of question asks you what the selection means, not just what it says. On police examples, questions based on definitions of crimes fall into this category, for example. * Vocabulary. Some civil service reading passages directly or indirectly ask the meanings of certain words used in the passage. ¢ Inference. This is the most difficult type of reading comprehension question. It asks you to go beyond what the passage says and predict what might happen next. Your answer must be based on the information in the passage and your own common sense, but not on any other information that you may have about the subject. Don’t worry if you’re unfamiliar with the subject discussed in the reading selection. You don’t need to have any knowledge about the subject of the passage because the answer to the question is always given in the passage itself.