This article continues our Part 1, Strategies for Interactive Reading. If you haven’t read Part 1, feel free to check it out, “Strategies for Interactive Reading Part 1”.
1. Complete the Sentences
In Part 1, we already shared how you can complete this question in a short time and successfully. Let’s move on to the next ones and get your DET Ready today.
2. Complete the Passage
When you pass to this question, you will see the correct answers for all blanks in question 1; we strongly suggest you should focus on the current questions because there is no way you are able to make changes. You simply cannot go back and change your answers even if some of them are wrong; hopefully, there are not!
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There are several steps to get this question correctly.
a. Read the previous and next sentences
Read the previous and next sentences helps you understand the context and what idea you should put into among them.
In this practice question, the previous sentence is about Harold having difficulties talking to others, while the next one is about Mr. Abbott.
b. Eliminate the wrong answers
Next step, we need to pick a sentence including both Harold and Mr. Abbott. Or at least, the answer includes Harold and related information with the previous sentence. As a result, we should pick A and B in this step. In other words, we also eliminate the rest.
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c. Choose the best answer
It’s time to pick the best answer, depending on the context when you put them to the test. You only need to move your pointer to each answer and read the whole paragraph to see which one is the best.
Time management:It doesn’t take much time to read two sentences and four answers, and you have already read it once when you complete the first question. Therefore, you need around 01 minute for this challenge.
3. Highlight the Answer
a. Read the question carefully and find keywords
It’s all about reading; reading carefully and finding keywords save you a ton of time before finding correct answers. Besides, keywords also help you focus on only related information.
b. Find corresponding information
In our practice example, the keywords are “necessary traits” and “publican”. So, we use these keywords to find the corresponding information in the paragraph. As you can see, we found that “Publicans should be worldly and sociable”.
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c. Do not highlight irrelevant words
If you highlight irrelevant words, you will lose your points. In other words, you only need to highlight the keywords answering the questions. For example, you should highlight “worldly and sociable” instead of “Publicans should be worldly and sociable”.
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4. Identify the Idea
a. Read the whole passage
At this moment, we already have the correct paragraph; as a result, you must read the whole passage again to understand it completely. While reading, test-takers should remember all key words and points in the passage.
b. Eliminate irrelevant answers
Next step, we eliminate all irrelevant answers to the keywords and points we find out from the previous step.
For example, we eliminate the answers A and C because they have nothing related to the passage.
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c. Choose the best answer
Our last step is to find keywords in the remaining answers and scan through the whole passage once again. Consequently, we will know which answer is the best to the question.
From our example, the best answer is “Harold has problems talking to people.”
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5. Title the Passage
a. Read the whole passage
Being careful is always necessary, especially when we take the Duolingo English Test or get your DET Ready in a short time. Thus, you should read the whole passage again and note down key categories like what you did for the previous question. We usually have from one to two key categories in one passage.
For example, there are two categories as follows.
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b. Eliminate irrelevant answers
The first category is about workbecause we found so many words and points relating to work, including job, accountants, publicans, the owner and proprietor of the River Bed Inn and Tavern and, his employees.
The second category is about personality, we found some words, including talking to people made Harold sweat, persuasive and charming manner.
After checking all answers, we eliminate the two most irrelevant answers, including “Harold and his problems” and “Harold Ferguson and his bartending work”.
c. Choose the answer with the level of highest relevancy
We have two answers left, including “Harold’s personality and work” and “Mr. Abbot’s charming manners”. Apparently, if we review all key categories again, we can tell that “Harold’s personality and work” is the best answer because it has the highest level of relevancy.
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We currently have over 100 sets of Interactive Reading, and we add new sets to our library every month, so you will always have new questions to practice.
Besides, there are thousands of practice questions on the DET Practice Platform and instant feedback for your Writing and Speaking answers. In detail, we evaluate your answers based on several grading elements, including Fluency, Lexical Sophistication, Lexical Diversity, Grammatical Accuracy, and Acoustic Features.
