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Content
of the Passages
The
Regents' Testing Program Reading Test is a multiple-choice test with 54
items and an administration time of one hour. The test consists of nine
reading passages with five to eight questions about each passage.
The passages
are from magazines (e.g., Newsweek, National Geographic), newspapers,
literary works, and other written material that, in the judgment of committees
of faculty members, all students receiving college degrees should be able
to comprehend.
The passages
on the test usually range from 175 to 325 words in length, treat topics
drawn from a variety of subject areas (social science, mathematics and
natural science, and humanities), and entail various modes of discourse
(exposition, narration, and argumentation).
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More
about the Questions
The questions on the test have been designed to assess the following four
major aspects of reading:
Vocabulary:
entails identifying the meanings of words as they are used in passages.
The student may use context clues, structural analysis and/or a general
understanding of the meaning of the passage to determine the meaning of
a word.
Literal
Comprehension: entails recognizing information and ideas presented explicitly
in passages. Literal comprehension items require a student to recognize
(1) details or facts, (2) a sequence of events, (3) a comparative relationship,
(4) a cause and effect relationship, or (5) the referent for which a word
or group of words has been substituted in a passage.
Inferential Comprehension: entails synthesizing and interpreting
material that is presented in a passage. Inferential comprehension items
involve the following skills: (1) identifying the main idea of a passage
or paragraph, (2) inductive reasoning, (3) deductive reasoning, and (4)
interpretation of figurative or other language.
Analysis: is concerned with how or why a passage is written rather
than what a passage is about. In general, analysis items require inferences
to be made about the style, purpose, or organization of a passage.
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