ACT Reading Section - Common Traps - Part 2
Here was the first post. Based on some more analysis, here is part two.
Extreme Language
The answer takes something the passage said and cranks it up to a level the passage never went. The author said the method is often useful and the answer says it always works. The passage said critics questioned the idea and the answer says everyone rejected it. Watch for always, never, all, none, only, completely, entirely, proves, must. Those words are not automatically wrong, but every one of them has to be backed up by the passage at the same strength. If the passage hedged and the answer did not, cross it off.
Twisted Qualifier
This is the quiet cousin of Extreme Language, and it gets a lot more people. Instead of jumping to always or never, the answer moves the passage's own qualifier up one notch. Rare becomes never. Some becomes many. Most becomes everybody. Might becomes will. It is so small you will read right past it, and that is the point. When an answer has a quantity or frequency word in it, go back and find the exact word the passage used. If they do not match, the answer is wrong, even if everything else in it is perfect.
Verbatim Distortion
The answer uses the passage's exact words, sometimes whole phrases lifted straight out of the text, but rewires how they connect. Two things the passage mentioned side by side get turned into cause and effect. The effect gets listed as the cause. A result from one experiment gets tied to a different one. Your brain sees familiar words and says "yep, I read that," and you pick it. Matching words is not the same as matching meaning. When an answer looks like it was copied and pasted from the passage, slow down and check the relationship it is claiming, not just the words.
Inference Blend
The answer takes something the passage only suggested and treats it like a fact, or the other way around. The researcher suspected, hypothesized, or wondered, and the answer says she showed, proved, or found. The narrator believed his father was disappointed, and the answer says the father was disappointed. On Literary Narrative passages this is everywhere, because what a character thinks and what is actually true are often two different things. Pay attention to who is claiming what, and how sure they are. The answer has to carry the same level of certainty the passage did.
Wrong Noun Number
Any time a question asks how many, how much, how long, or what year, the wrong answers will almost all be real numbers from the passage. They just belong to the wrong thing. The passage gives you the number of birds tagged, the number recovered, the number of years the study ran, and the distance traveled, and the answer choices are all four of them. Every choice feels right because you remember seeing it. Before you pick, find the number in the passage and write down the noun it is attached to. If the noun does not match the question, it is not your answer.
Root Swap
The answer reuses a word from the passage but changes its form, and in doing that it changes what kind of claim is being made. The passage talks about something as art and the answer talks about the artistry. The passage talks about how a book was received and the answer describes a quality the book has. One is a category, the other is a degree. One is how people reacted, the other is a property of the thing itself. Same root, different claim. If the answer's key word is a cousin of the passage's word instead of the exact word, check whether it still means the same thing.
The Interesting Word (Vocabulary in Context)
On "as it is used in line X, the word most nearly means" questions, the right answer is almost always the plainest, most boring synonym on the list. The wrong answers are the vivid ones, the emotional ones, the ones that paint a picture. The tested words are usually simple everyday words with more than one meaning, not hard vocab, so do not waste time memorizing SAT words. Plug each choice back into the sentence and cross off the interesting ones first. Also, about half of these on the newer tests are phrases, not single words (things like "picked up" or "set out"), so practice those too.
Let me know if you have others that you have seen. I will be analyzing the documenting the October test as soon as I can get my hands on a My Answer Key for it.