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PTE Trainer

Reading

Multiple Choice, Single Answer

Read a short academic passage and choose the one option that answers the question.

Scored on
Content
Contributes to
Reading

Sample item

What is the writer's main purpose in the passage?

Attempts to define creativity operationally have produced measures that correlate poorly with one another. This is not necessarily a failure of the measures. It may instead indicate that creativity is not one capacity but several, each recruited by different tasks.
  1. To argue that creativity cannot be measured
  2. To suggest creativity may be several distinct capacities
  3. To criticise existing psychological measures
  4. To describe how creativity tests are designed

To suggest creativity may be several distinct capacities

The first and third options are true of details in the passage but are not its purpose — the classic distractor design on this task type.

How to approach Multiple Choice, Single Answer

  1. Read the question first

    Read the stem before the passage and notice precisely what it asks: the author's purpose, the main idea, a specific detail, or the meaning of a phrase in context. Each of those sends you to a different part of the text.

  2. Locate the relevant lines

    Scan the passage for the section that bears on the question rather than reading every sentence with equal care. A purpose question is usually settled by the opening and closing lines; a detail question by one identifiable sentence in the middle.

  3. Eliminate the near misses

    Discard options that are accurate statements about the passage but do not answer the question that was asked. That mismatch is the characteristic distractor here, and it catches careful readers who verify each option instead of testing it against the stem.

  4. Commit and bank the time

    Choose the surviving option and move on. Only one answer is credited and there is no partial credit to work towards, so minutes spent deliberating here are better invested in the two fill-in-the-blanks types, which carry more of the section.

The method

Read the question before the passage so you scan with a target in mind. Then eliminate the options that are true statements about the text but do not answer the question actually asked — that mismatch is the standard distractor design here, and it catches strong readers who verify the statement instead of matching it to the question.

The mistake that costs most

Spending several minutes deliberating. This task carries less weight than either fill-in-the-blanks type, so time banked here is better spent there.

Other Reading tasks

Frequently asked questions

On multiple-choice multiple-answer tasks and Highlight Incorrect Words, incorrect selections subtract from your score for that item, though the item total cannot go below zero. Other task types award partial credit with no penalty.

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