QUESTION 5
Step 2 - Read the instructions and question
The instruction tell you to write a letter (A, B, C, or D), not a word.
The key words in the question are underlined: Which offices will stay open longer?
The answer choices also help here. Factors such as the type of office ( main or agency) and whether it is some or all offices are relevant.
Step 3 - Find the answer
We have already looked for the key word ‘office’ (in question1) and found that the changes are being introduced in ‘our main offices’ (sentence 1) and ‘many of our agency offices’。 It seems that the changes do not refer to all offices.
Looking quickly for stay open longer or synonyms, we find ‘extended opening hours’ in the seventh improvement. However, it mentions only ‘ selected main offices’。 The answer is therefore C - ‘some main offices’。
ANALYSIS AND PRACTICE
The three different kinds of questions used in the Demonstration are the most common question types in Section 1 of the Reading test.
True - False - Not Given (questions 1-3)
short answer of no more than three words ( question 4)
Multiple choice (question 5)
Following the three-step strategy:
survey the text
read the instructions and the question(s)
find the answers
is usually the fastest and surest way of doin the kinds of questions you will find in Section 1. We will now look at each of these steps in more detail.
STEP 1 - SURVEY THE TEXT
You can quickly obtain a lot of useful information about a text by just looking at:
the title
section headings or subheadings
any words in special print (bold, italics, CAPITALS or underlined)
any diagrams, tables or pictures
any unusual features of the text (e.g. layout or boxed text)。
Surveying tells you about the topic or subject of the text. It may also tell you something about how the text is organized (subheadings are especially useful)。 Surveying may also tell you something about the writer‘s purpose - whether the intention is to give instructions, to compare, to give information, and so on.