Lesson 12 of 46 · Reading Comprehension
Select-in-Passage and select-one-or-more questions
Judge each choice of a select-one-or-more question on its own, and find a Select-in-Passage sentence by turning the description into a test.
About 18 minutes
In this lesson
- Decide each choice of a select-one-or-more question independently, with no assumption about how many are right.
- Turn a Select-in-Passage description into a test and apply it to each candidate sentence.
- Avoid the near-miss sentence that fits half of a description.
The idea
Two formats that change how you answer
Most reading questions ask you to choose one answer from five. Two other formats work differently, and the usual habit of looking for the single best choice fails on both.
- Select one or more answer choices. Three choices are given, and anywhere from one to all three can be correct. You must select every correct choice and no incorrect one; there is no partial credit.
- Select-in-Passage. Instead of choices, you are asked to select the sentence in the passage that fits a description, such as "the sentence that presents evidence against the author's own view".
Select one or more: three true-or-false questions
Treat each of the three choices as its own true-or-false question against the passage. Do not compare them with each other, and do not decide in advance how many will be right. A format that allows one, two or three correct choices gives you no information about the number in any particular question.
For each choice, apply the same tests as for any detail or inference question:
- Find the sentence that supports it, or that it contradicts.
- Check its strength: "some" in the passage does not support "most" in the choice.
- Check every clause: a choice that is half supported is not supported.
Because there is no partial credit, one wrong decision costs the whole question. That is a reason to be equally careful with the choice you like least: the classic loss is to find two good choices, feel finished, and skim the third.
How the checks in this course show this format. A check here has one key, so a select-one-or-more question appears with its three statements numbered I, II and III, and the options list combinations ("I and III only"). Decide each statement on its own first, then pick the combination; do not work backwards from the combinations.
Select-in-Passage: turn the description into a test
The description in the question is precise, and every word of it is a condition. "The sentence in which the author concedes a point to the opposing view" requires a sentence that (a) gives ground, (b) to the opposing view, (c) in the author's own voice. Write the conditions down or hold them clearly in mind, then go through the candidate sentences one at a time.
Most sentences fail quickly. The ones that remain usually fail one condition each, and that is where the question is decided:
| Description asks for | Near-miss to watch for |
|---|---|
| evidence for a claim | the claim itself |
| the author's conclusion | a view the author reports and then questions |
| an example of something that works | an example of something that fails |
| the cause of an effect | a consequence of the effect |
| what cannot be done | the result of trying to do it |
Signal words help here as they do in mapping: "therefore" tends to open a conclusion, "for example" an illustration, "but" or "yet" a turn.
Pace
Select-in-Passage questions can take time if you reread the whole passage for each one. Your map tells you which paragraph to search; start there. For select-one-or-more questions, the time goes on the third choice, which is exactly where it should go.
Worked examples
Example 1: Three choices, judged one by one
Many shops price goods at amounts just below a round number, such as 9.99 rather than 10.00. The usual explanation is that shoppers read prices from left to right and give too much weight to the first digit, so that 9.99 feels closer to 9 than to 10. Experiments broadly support this left-digit effect, but they also find it weaker for expensive purchases, where buyers tend to compare prices more carefully. A second explanation does not depend on any misreading. A price ending in nines may simply signal that an item is discounted or that the shop competes on price, and shoppers who have learned this association respond to the signal rather than to the number itself. The two explanations make different predictions: if the signal account is right, a shop known for luxury goods should gain little from such prices, whatever their first digit.
Which of the following does the passage indicate about the left-digit effect? Consider each choice separately and select all that apply.
- I. It has received some experimental support.
- II. It is weaker for expensive purchases than for cheaper ones.
- III. It explains why shops known for luxury goods gain little from prices ending in nines.
Statement I: "Experiments broadly support this left-digit effect." Supported.
Statement II: the experiments "find it weaker for expensive purchases". The comparison with cheaper purchases is what "weaker for expensive purchases" means. Supported.
Statement III: luxury shops appear only in the last sentence, as a prediction of the signal account, not the left-digit account. The passage does not say luxury shops actually gain little, and it does not tie this to the left-digit effect. Not supported.
Only after deciding each statement, combine: I and II.
Answer
I and II only. Statement III is the trap: it mentions something from the passage, but attaches it to the wrong explanation and turns a prediction into a fact.
Example 2: Finding a sentence from its description
In the pricing passage above, select the sentence that states how the two explanations could be told apart.
Turn the description into conditions: the sentence must (a) involve both explanations and (b) say something that would distinguish them.
The opening sentence names no explanation. The left-digit sentence and the sentence on experiments deal only with the first explanation, and the sentence beginning "A price ending in nines" deals only with the second: all fail condition (a). The sentence "A second explanation does not depend on any misreading" sets the second against the first, so it meets (a), but it gives no way to tell them apart, so it fails (b).
The last sentence names both ("The two explanations make different predictions") and gives the distinguishing case: luxury shops should gain little if the signal account is right. Both conditions hold.
Answer
The last sentence, beginning "The two explanations make different predictions". The near-miss is "A second explanation does not depend on any misreading", which does contrast the two accounts but does not say how one could tell which is right.
Common traps
Deciding how many are right before reading
Expecting two correct choices (or one) makes readers bend their judgement of the last choice to fit. Each choice stands or falls on the passage alone; one, two or three can be right.
Stopping after the choices you like
With no partial credit, the choice you check least carefully decides the question. Give the third choice the same reread you gave the first.
The sentence that fits half the description
In Select-in-Passage questions, the wrong sentences that remain after a first pass usually meet every condition but one. List the conditions and check each, especially whose voice the sentence is in and whether it gives evidence or the claim itself.
Check yourself
Answer each question before you open its answer.
Question 1: Select-in-Passage
Reading Comprehension: Select-in-Passage
(1) Translators of poetry are often told that they must choose between sense and sound: either keep what the lines say or keep how they sing. (2) The choice is real but narrower than it seems. (3) Rhyme and metre are rarely the whole of a poem's music; repeated vowels, the length of phrases and the placing of stressed words often matter as much, and these can usually be carried into another language without bending the meaning. (4) What resists translation is the coincidence of sense and sound, as when a line's meaning depends on two words that happen to sound alike in the original. (5) Here no strategy saves both, and a translator who claims otherwise has usually given up one without saying so.
Select the sentence in which the author identifies what, in the author's view, genuinely resists translation.
- A.Sentence (1)
- B.Sentence (2)
- C.Sentence (3)
- D.Sentence (4)
- E.Sentence (5)
Show the answer
Answer: D. Sentence (4)
Working
Conditions: the sentence must (a) be the author's view and (b) name what cannot be translated. Sentence (4) begins "What resists translation is the coincidence of sense and sound" and illustrates it with words that sound alike. Sentence (5) depends on it ("Here") and gives a consequence, and sentence (3) names what can be translated.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. This reports what translators "are often told", a view the author goes on to narrow, not the author's own identification of anything.
- B. This says the choice is narrower than it seems but does not yet say what lies inside the narrower choice.
- C. This names features that can be carried into another language, the opposite of what is asked.
- E. This states the consequence ("no strategy saves both") of the case already identified; "Here" points back to the sentence that names it.
What carries over
Between a sentence that names something and the next sentence that comments on it, the description decides which you need; "Here" and "this" point back to the naming sentence.
Question 2: Select one or more
Reading Comprehension: select one or more answer choices
(1) Translators of poetry are often told that they must choose between sense and sound: either keep what the lines say or keep how they sing. (2) The choice is real but narrower than it seems. (3) Rhyme and metre are rarely the whole of a poem's music; repeated vowels, the length of phrases and the placing of stressed words often matter as much, and these can usually be carried into another language without bending the meaning. (4) What resists translation is the coincidence of sense and sound, as when a line's meaning depends on two words that happen to sound alike in the original. (5) Here no strategy saves both, and a translator who claims otherwise has usually given up one without saying so.
Which of the following can be inferred about the author's view? Consider each statement separately.
- I. Some features of a poem's sound can survive translation with its meaning intact.
- II. Translators should usually keep a poem's sense rather than its sound.
- III. A translation that claims to keep both the sense and the sound of a line that turns on similar-sounding words is probably hiding a loss.
- A.I only
- B.III only
- C.I and II only
- D.I and III only
- E.I, II and III
Show the answer
Answer: D. I and III only
Working
Statement I: sentence (3) says vowel repetition, phrase length and stress placement "can usually be carried into another language without bending the meaning". Supported. Statement II: the author narrows the choice but never says how to make it. Not supported. Statement III: sentences (4) and (5) say that where meaning depends on similar-sounding words no strategy saves both, and a translator who claims otherwise "has usually given up one without saying so". Supported. So I and III.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Statement III also follows: sentence (5) says a translator who claims to save both has usually given one up without saying so.
- B. Statement I also follows: sentence (3) says repeated vowels, phrase length and stress can usually be carried over without bending the meaning.
- C. Statement II is not supported: the author never says which of sense and sound to prefer, only where the choice is unavoidable.
- E. Statement II has no basis in the passage, which recommends neither sense nor sound.
What carries over
Decide each statement from its own sentence in the passage; a statement about what the author recommends needs a recommendation in the text.
Question 3: Select one or more
Reading Comprehension: select one or more answer choices
Glaciers are often described as rivers of ice, and the comparison is apt in one respect: both move downhill under gravity. In other respects it misleads. A river's speed depends mainly on the slope of its bed and the depth of its water, whereas a glacier moves partly by the slow deformation of the ice itself and partly by sliding over its bed, and the second process can change abruptly. When meltwater reaches the base of a glacier, it can lift the ice slightly from the rock and let it slide many times faster than before, even where the slope has not changed.
Based on the passage, which of the following statements are true? Consider each statement separately.
- I. A glacier's speed can increase without any change in the slope beneath it.
- II. Rivers and glaciers both move downhill under the influence of gravity.
- III. The deformation of the ice changes more abruptly than the glacier's sliding over its bed.
- A.I only
- B.I and II only
- C.I and III only
- D.II and III only
- E.I, II and III
Show the answer
Answer: B. I and II only
Working
Statement I: meltwater can make the ice slide many times faster "even where the slope has not changed". True. Statement II: the comparison is "apt in one respect: both move downhill under gravity". True. Statement III: the glacier moves by deformation and by sliding, "and the second process can change abruptly"; the second process is sliding, so the statement reverses it. False.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Statement II is stated directly in the first sentence: both move downhill under gravity.
- C. Statement III reverses the passage: it is sliding, "the second process", that can change abruptly.
- D. Statement I is supported by the last sentence, and statement III reverses which process changes abruptly.
- E. Statement III swaps the two processes; the passage says sliding, not deformation, can change abruptly.
What carries over
With "the first" and "the second" in a passage, work out exactly which is which before judging a statement that names them.
Key points
In select-one-or-more questions, judge each choice on its own; any number from one to three can be right.
There is no partial credit, so the last choice deserves as much care as the first.
For Select-in-Passage, list every condition in the description and test each sentence against all of them.
The surviving wrong sentence usually fails exactly one condition: find it.
All questions here are original and written for UniExamer; none comes from the test maker.
Written by the UniExamer team with AI assistance. Every worked example and check question was re-solved by an independent checker before publication. No subject expert has reviewed this lesson yet. If you find a mistake, write to support@uniexamer.com.