Unit 3: Interviewing and Interrogation

Preparing for the Written Examination: Reading Comprehension

There are usually more questions on reading comprehension than on any other ability on law enforcement officer exams. Some law enforcement agencies make reading comprehension the whole test. Most agencies make it at least a quarter of the test.

You will be tested on your ability to read and understand the types of written materials that a law enforcement officer might be expected to read during training and later on the job. You will be presented with a reading passage and then asked to answer questions about the passage. All the information needed to answer the questions will be included in the passage itself.

In answering the questions based on the reading passage, it is important that you answer the questions only according to the information given in the passage. If you have information from your own experience and knowledge, you should not use it to answer a question of this type. Even if you think that there is a mistake in the reading selection, you must still answer the question on the basis of the information given in the reading passage.

The kinds of reading comprehension questions which appear on a civil service exam tend to be somewhat different from the reading comprehension questions on a school related exam. That is because there are different kinds of reading--skimming, reading for general understanding, reading for details, etc. Your exam will be based mostly on reading technical materials, not anything like a novel or essay. Hence, your exam probably will have more focus on exact grasp of details.

The reading comprehension questions on a law enforcement officer exam are not usually as difficult as they may seem to be at first. It often happens that the reading passage itself is rather difficult or contains some rather difficult words, but the questions based on the reading passage may be very simple. You do not have to comprehend the whole reading passage; all you need to grasp are those parts of the passage which are the basis for questions. For instance, a reading passage might contain a technical description of a computer based information system, but then the questions might ask only such simple things as what telephone number to call to get information from the computer or how much time it takes to get an answer from the computer. The reading comprehension questions usually turn out to be easier than people expect.

There are certain techniques that will help you do well on reading comprehension questions. Here is a summary of the most important techniques.

Use your pencil. To begin with, use your pencil as a pointer. Using the pencil to guide your eye along a line of text helps you to focus on the details in the reading; it holds your attention to the precise words in the passage. In a long test, attention may weaken. Fatigue may blunt your attention to details. But using your pencil as a pointer will help to preserve your attention to details.

Another benefit of using the pencil as a pointer is that it will probably speed up your reading The steady flow of the pencil across the page with each line of text draws the eye along at a steady pace. Do not go faster than you can grasp the text, but do try to keep your reading going at a steady pace set by the pencil.

Circle key words and phrases. In a Reading Comprehension test you are not reading for just a vague general understanding of the passage. You usually have to read for detailed understanding. There will be individual words which are important for grasping a point exactly. You do not want to mark so much on a passage that it is hard to read a second time if you need to go back to check a detail. But you do want to circle key words or phrases which will enable you to zero in on precise points needed to answer a question.

For short questions, read carefully the first time. When you are reading a short question for the first time, read it carefully. A short question is one that is only seven or eight lines long. You can retain all of the main ideas and remember where particular things are mentioned from one careful reading. Hence, you do not want to waste time reading this passage twice.

Besides wasting time, another bad consequence of reading a short question very carelessly the first time is that it may leave you with some false impressions of what you have read. Wrong ideas can get stuck in your head from a careless reading. Then it will be more difficult to get the correct answer.

For long questions, look ahead to see what is being asked. Take a look at the “stern” of the question, the sentence which precedes the answer choices. And look at the kinds of choices which are being offered. Sometimes reading passages are long but the questions are asking only for particular details. In that case you can often skim a long passage to find the particular detail. For instance, suppose you looked first at a question stern and saw that it asked, “At what time did the accident occur?” You could then skim through the reading material very quickly just to spot the time of the accident. It would be a tactical error for you to read the whole passage carefully when all you needed to grasp was a particular detail.

Keep forging ahead. Do not get bogged down if there is a word or sentence you do not understand. You may get the main idea without knowing the individual word or sentence. Sometimes you can sense the meaning of the word from the context. Sometimes the word or sentence may not be the basis of any question. If the difficult word or sentence does seem to be the basis of a question, read it one more time. If you still do not understand it, move on. You can come back to this question later if you have more time at the end of the test.

Know where the author stands. Sometimes a passage will contain an evaluation of some ideas or tactics or procedures. The author may want to make the point that certain practices or procedures are bad or that certain tactics may not be right for a particular job. Be sure you know if the author is accepting or rejecting something.

Choosing titles. A rather common form of reading comprehension question asks for an appropriate title for the reading passage. A proper title should (1) be broad enough to cover all the main ideas in the passage but (2) cover only ideas discussed in the passage.

One kind of incorrect title is a title which is too broad; it includes ideas not included in the reading selection. Another kind of incorrect title is one which is too narrow; it covers only a part of the reading selection. The excessively narrow title often includes key words from the passage as bait to trap the unwary test taker. Think of the reading passage as a jar and the title as a cover. The cover should fit the jar exactly, not be too big or too little.

Finding main ideas. Another common form of question is one that asks for the main idea of a reading passage. This is very similar to a question which asks for a suitable title. It requires more careful reading than questions about details. However, there can also be questions which ask about particular details in a reading passage but which require an understanding of the passage’s main idea. The ability to pick out the main idea is the ability to distinguish what is most important.

A skillful author expresses the main idea in a “topic sentence.” The topic sentence gives the main idea in a nutshell. The rest of the paragraph is details or evidence or examples or arguments.

Ordinarily, the topic sentence appears at the beginning of a paragraph. However, it frequently appears at the end as a sort of conclusion to the paragraph. But one seldom finds the topic sentence in the middle of a paragraph. Hence, you should be particularly attentive to the first and last sentences in paragraphs. It is often useful to read the first and last sentences again after an entire passage has been read through once.

Difficult words or technical terms. Sometimes a reading passage will contain a few words which you do not understand. Not all of the difficult words you encounter will be used in a question. If a word is not specifically used as the basis for a question, you may be able to just ignore it. Often sentences make complete sense without every word being critical. Read the sentence without the word and see if it makes sense. Then just go on reading further. If the difficult word is the basis of a question, then you must try to deduce the meaning of the word from the rest of the sentence or from the general meaning of the whole reading passage. You will do this by testing the various answer choices which are given with the question. The question will include four possible answer choices. Take these answer choices, one by one, and insert them into the sentence. Read the sentence with each of these answer choices. Choose the answer which seems to make the most sense in the context of the passage.