Factual Passages — Fundamental Concepts

Fundamental Concepts

Evidence checklist

Actor: — identify who performs the action. Do not transfer a statement about a committee to every resident.
Action: — distinguish proposed, approved, started, completed and evaluated. These describe different stages.
Object: — preserve the measure: visits are not visitors; applications are not approvals.
Scope: — mark the population and place. A sample of branches does not establish a result for every branch.
Time: — retain dates, duration and temporary exceptions. A six-week trial is not a permanent policy.
Quantity: — retain some, most, all, exactly and at least. “Not all” supplies an exception, not a universal denial.
Certainty: — retain may, likely and established. Failure to prove an effect does not prove no effect.

Three answer categories

Supported: explicitly stated or restated without adding information. Contradicted: conflicts with a claim in the text. Not established: may be possible, but the text supplies insufficient evidence.

For a factual question, the supported category normally contains the answer. When the stem asks for an incorrect statement, reverse the selection task before evaluating the choices.

Minimal working record

Use four short entries: question target; evidence sentence; relevant restriction; selected option. For a numerical detail, add the unit and one calculation. Do not copy the entire paragraph. This record makes it possible to diagnose whether an error came from locating the wrong sentence, dropping a qualifier, confusing quantities or answering the opposite question.