LITERAL COMPREHENSION SKILLS:
Recognizing the Central Idea:
 Frequently the author will express the main (or central or controlling) idea in a single
sentence, called the thesis statement or topic sentence.
Identifying Supporting Details:
 How does the author support the main idea with facts, examples, illustrations, or related
arguments.
 Before you read the passage, read the questions. This way, if any of the questions are
about supporting details, you will know in advance which details to focus on. When you
come to those details in your reading, make a mark in the margin.
 Sometimes a question about details asks you to identify the only one of the four details
that is not in the passage. In this case, after you read the passage, check off each detail
that you remember being in the passage. If more than one remains, skim the passage
again until you can check off all but one.
Determining Contextual Meaning:
 Identifying the meaning of words by examining and understanding their context – that is,
the sentence and passage in which the word occurs.
 Even if you have never before seen a particular word, you can take a pretty good guess at
its meaning by paying close attention to the whole sentence and passage. For example, if
you do not know the word “obstreperous,” try to figure it out by reading this sentence:
“The obstreperous youngsters burst through the kitchen door shouting, arguing, and
loudly demanding, ‘Hey, what’s for lunch?’” If you guessed something like “unruly,”
“noisy,” “boisterous,” or “clamorous,” you were right.
 Even when you already know the meaning of a word, be careful. Words can have more
than one meaning; the meaning you are thinking of may not be the one called for by the
context. So pay attention to the context clues to determine the meaning of the word in the
given sentence.
Example: Read the following sentence and answer the question.
“Indeed, so remote and little known is the volcano that there were not any witnesses near
enough to see the eruption, and it was not until the National Geographic Society’s
expeditions explored the district that it was settled definitely which of several near-by
volcanoes was really the seat of the disturbance.”
In this context, the word settled means
a) inhabited b) subsided c) determined d) quieted down
 All of the choices are various meanings of settled, but only choice c) (determined)
describes what is meant here: that the scientists had to explore the area before they could
determine which volcano had erupted