What the section is made of
The Reading and Writing section is delivered as two modules of 27 questions, 32 minutes each: 54 questions in 64 minutes. Every question stands alone. It carries its own text, and nothing you work out in one question carries over to the next.
Texts are short — roughly 25 to 150 words. Most questions supply a single paragraph. A few supply two short paragraphs labelled Text 1 and Text 2. A few supply a bar graph or a table together with a sentence to complete. One kind supplies a student's research notes as a bulleted list. Every question is multiple choice with four options and exactly one credited answer.
The arithmetic. 32 minutes $=$ 1,920 seconds; 1,920 $\div$ 27 $\approx$ 71 seconds per question. That average is the only number worth memorising about the clock. A wrong answer costs nothing more than a blank, so a blank is strictly worse than a guess.
Điểm khác lớn nhất so với bài đọc ở trường: không có bài đọc dài 700 chữ rồi 10 câu hỏi bám theo. Mỗi câu là một đoạn 25–150 chữ của riêng nó. Hệ quả thực tế: bạn không được “đầu tư” thời gian đọc kỹ một lần rồi thu lời ở các câu sau. Đọc chậm một đoạn là mất thời gian của đúng một câu, và đọc lướt một đoạn là mất luôn câu đó. Nhịp làm bài vì thế phải đều tay hơn nhiều so với đề đọc trong trường.
The second module sets the ceiling
Module 1 is the same mixed-difficulty form for everyone. How you do on it routes you to one of two second modules: a lower form or a higher form. The higher form is where the top of the 200–800 scale lives. A student routed to the lower form is capped — not by a rule printed on the screen, but by the way the scale is built.
- Nothing in module 1 may be left blank. Guessing costs nothing and routing is decided before you see module 2.
- The last two minutes of module 1 are worth more than the last two minutes of module 2. Spend module 1's final minutes filling every empty slot, not polishing one answer you already like.
Nhiều bạn dồn sức cho module hai vì nghĩ “module hai mới là module tính điểm”. Ngược lại: module một quyết định bạn được ngồi vào bàn nào. Làm rơi ba câu dễ ở module một vì hết giờ là tự hạ trần điểm của chính mình, và không có cách nào lấy lại ở module hai.
Where the questions come from
Every question belongs to one of four content domains. Their shares of the section are stable:
- Craft and Structure — about 28%. Words in Context, Text Structure and Purpose, Cross-Text Connections.
- Information and Ideas — about 26%. Central Ideas and Details, Command of Evidence (textual and quantitative), Inferences.
- Standard English Conventions — about 26%. Boundaries; Form, Structure, and Sense.
- Expression of Ideas — about 20%. Transitions, Rhetorical Synthesis.
Inside a module these domains appear in a fixed order, and inside each domain the questions climb in difficulty. That ordering is the whole subject of the next unit; here it is enough to know that the section is not a random shuffle.
Lichens are not single organisms but partnerships: a fungus supplies structure and moisture, while an alga or a cyanobacterium supplies sugars through photosynthesis. Because neither partner can colonise bare rock alone, biologists long described the relationship as straightforwardly cooperative. Recent work complicates that picture. In some pairings the fungus appears to its partner, drawing off more carbon than the alga would ever release if it were living free.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
- exploit
- sustain
- mimic
- abandon
The logic is set by two signals: complicates that picture announces a move away from “cooperative”, and drawing off more carbon than the alga would ever release tells you which way the move goes. (B) sustain points back at cooperation, the direction the text has just rejected. (C) mimic would need a resemblance the text never mentions. (D) abandon contradicts the same clause — you cannot draw carbon off a partner you have left. Answer (A).
Chú ý cách giải ở trên: không có chỗ nào dùng “cảm giác từ nào nghe hợp”. Câu trả lời được quyết định bởi quan hệ logic mà đoạn văn đã dựng sẵn — ở đây là một cú lật chiều. Toàn bộ phần Đọc–Viết vận hành theo kiểu đó: đoạn văn khoá đáp án lại, việc của bạn là tìm chỗ khoá.
Seventy-one seconds, spent unevenly
The 71-second average is an average, not a rule. Some question types are decidable in half that time; others cannot be done properly in twice it. Good pacing means banking time on the cheap ones so the expensive ones are affordable.
Rough working budgets. Transitions and Words in Context: 30–45 seconds. Boundaries and Form/Structure/Sense: 35–50 seconds. Central Ideas, Inferences, Text Structure: 60–80 seconds. Command of Evidence with a graph, Cross-Text Connections, Rhetorical Synthesis: 90–120 seconds.
Coral polyps build their skeletons out of calcium carbonate drawn from seawater. As the ocean absorbs more carbon dioxide, its chemistry shifts in a direction that makes carbonate harder for the polyps to obtain. , reefs in some shallow bays keep growing, apparently because the water there is buffered by the sediments beneath it.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical transition?
- Therefore
- For example
- Even so
- In other words
Read only the sentence before the blank and the sentence after it. Before: carbonate is getting harder to obtain. After: some reefs keep growing anyway. That is a reversal, so the transition must be concessive. (A) claims the growth follows from the difficulty. (B) claims the growth is an instance of the difficulty. (D) claims the two sentences say the same thing. Answer (C), in about thirty seconds — the rest of the paragraph never had to be read closely.
Tiêu đều 71 giây cho mọi câu là cách chắc chắn nhất để hết giờ. Câu transitions và câu từ vựng thường xong trong 35 giây; nếu bạn vẫn ngồi đủ 71 giây ở đó thì đến câu hai văn bản bạn không còn gì để tiêu. Ngân sách phải lệch thì mới đủ.
Three passes and one flag rule
Pass 1 — straight through. Answer everything you can decide inside about 90 seconds. The moment a question passes 90 seconds, put down the best current answer, flag it, and move. Never flag an empty question.
Pass 2 — the flags. Come back with the clock visible. Most flagged questions fall in another 40 seconds now that the pressure of “I must finish this one” is gone.
Pass 3 — sweep. Two minutes before the end, check that all 27 slots are filled.
In the 1870s, painters we now call the Impressionists were repeatedly refused wall space at the official Salon. Rather than petition the jury a second time, the group rented a photographer's studio and mounted an exhibition of its own. The show drew hostile reviews and few buyers, but it left behind a model that later independent movements copied: if the institution will not admit the work, build a rival venue and let the public decide.
Which choice best describes the function of the underlined sentence in the text as a whole?
- It offers evidence that the Salon's jury was unusually strict in those years.
- It concedes a weakness in the claim the text goes on to make.
- It records the decision whose longer-term consequences the rest of the text weighs.
- It illustrates a general principle stated in the preceding sentence.
Work in two steps. First, what does the sentence say? The group stopped appealing and built its own venue. Second, what does the text do with that sentence? The final sentence measures what the decision left behind. So the underlined sentence is the pivot the rest of the text evaluates — (C). (A) is a true-sounding claim about the Salon, but the sentence reports what the painters did, not how strict the jury was. (B) needs a concession, and nothing here is conceded. (D) needs a principle in the preceding sentence; that sentence states a refusal. Answer (C).
Ba phương án sai của câu “chức năng của câu gạch chân” thường đều là những mô tả đúng về đoạn văn. Chúng chỉ sai ở chỗ không phải chức năng của câu đó. Vì vậy đọc phương án mà thấy “đúng quá” không có nghĩa gì cả — phải hỏi lại: đúng, nhưng có phải việc mà riêng câu gạch chân đang làm không.
Read the stem first, predict before you look
The question stem tells you what kind of reading the text needs. Read it first, then read the text with that job in mind. For any question with a blank, write your own answer in your head before you look at the four choices; the choices are engineered to sound plausible, and a prediction is the cheapest protection against them.
Excavations at settlement sites in the Andes have uncovered storage rooms far larger than any single household could fill. Some archaeologists read the rooms as evidence of a central authority collecting tribute. Others reply that the same architecture would suit a community pooling harvests against a bad year, with no ruler involved. Because storage leaves the same physical trace under either arrangement, the buildings alone cannot settle the question.
Which choice best states the main idea of the text?
- The Andean storage rooms were almost certainly built to hold tribute owed to a ruler.
- One kind of archaeological evidence is consistent with two very different social arrangements.
- Archaeologists disagree about whether large storage rooms existed at Andean settlements.
- Communities that pooled harvests were more common in the Andes than centralised states were.
The last sentence is the text's own summary: the same trace fits both readings. (A) picks one of the two readings the text refuses to choose between. (C) misplaces the disagreement — nobody disputes that the rooms exist. (D) adds a comparison of frequency the text never makes. Answer (B).
A researcher studying urban birdsong noticed that great tits in noisy districts sing at a higher pitch than those in quiet parks. She proposed that the shift is a response to traffic noise, which is concentrated at low frequencies and would mask a low song. She wanted a finding that her explanation predicts but that the rival explanation — high-pitched birds simply settle in noisy districts — does not.
Which finding, if true, would most strongly support the researcher's proposal?
- Great tits in noisy districts are on average slightly smaller than those in quiet parks.
- Individual birds recorded in both settings raise their pitch only while traffic noise is present.
- Great tits in quiet parks sing more often in the early morning than at midday.
- Some other species living in the same noisy districts also sing at a high pitch.
The stem does the work for you: the finding must separate two explanations, not merely agree with one. (B) follows one bird into both settings, so “high-pitched birds settle in noisy places” cannot explain it. (D) is the tempting one — it feels like more evidence — but a second species could equally well be sorting itself by habitat, so it separates nothing. (A) and (C) are consistent with either story. Answer (B).
Câu Command of Evidence luôn kèm một mệnh đề chỉ rõ bằng chứng phải làm gì: “ủng hộ”, “làm suy yếu”, hoặc như ví dụ trên là “phân biệt hai cách giải thích”. Đọc kỹ mệnh đề đó rồi mới đọc bốn phương án. Phương án nghe khoa học nhất thường là phương án phù hợp với cả hai cách giải thích — tức là không chứng minh được gì.
Neither the vault's position deep inside a mountain nor the low temperatures maintained in its chambers the seeds indefinitely; the collection must still be renewed every few decades.
Which choice completes the text so that it conforms to the conventions of Standard English?
- preserves
- preserve
- preserving
- to preserve
The sentence needs a finite verb, which removes (C) and (D) at once. With neither… nor, the verb agrees with the nearer subject, and the nearer subject is the low temperatures. Answer (B).
Desert plants that open their stomata only at night lose far less water than plants that open them by day. The trade-off is that carbon dioxide taken in after dark must be stored as an acid until sunlight arrives, and the storage capacity of the tissue puts a ceiling on how much can be fixed. It follows that, under the same light, night-opening plants should
Which choice most logically completes the text?
- lose more water for each unit of carbon fixed.
- require cooler nights in order to survive.
- keep their stomata open for longer periods.
- grow more slowly than day-opening plants.
The text supplies a ceiling on carbon fixed per day and no compensating advantage in growth, so less carbon fixed means less growth — (D). (A) reverses the first sentence, which says night opening saves water. (B) and (C) introduce requirements the text never sets up. Answer (D).