Reading Comprehension at the 700-800 Level

The hardest passages don't test whether you understood the sentences. They test whether you tracked what each sentence was doing. Three archetypes carry the tier.

• Function questions. A short sentence — often three to six words ("The ridicule is easy," "The doubling may be real") — gets singled out. It is nearly always a pivot (turning from someone else's view to the author's case), a strategic concession (granting a point so the objection lands on a narrower target), or a stage-setter. Master move: name the sentence's target, then check the next sentence — the next sentence is the function's receipt.
• Cross-text response. Text 2 almost never denies Text 1's data. It accepts the numbers and attacks the inference: the measurement's boundary, the one-session design, the confound, the missing population. Correct answers have the shape "accepts X while asking Y."
• Overall structure. The answer is a three-beat map — explanation offered, evidence against, real division located — with verbs that match the passage's actual moves.

At this level the traps are directional: they get the content right and the vector wrong. The reversed target (criticism of the commentators read as criticism of their subject), the concession read as surrender, the denial overshoot, the committed near-miss (making Text 2 rank a confound it refused to rank), and the promoted subordinate clause. Trust eliminations made on quoted phrases.