Reading Comprehension: Locating, Inference and Meaning in Context
A complete method for WAEC prose comprehension: surveying the passage, literal location skills, inference questions, reference words, tone and purpose, and the vocabulary-in-context formats.
Reading a real Ghana Examinations Council instruction sheet — "Candidates must NOT open this booklet until announced. Any candidate found writing before the announcement WILL be penalised" — the modal verbs (must, will) and the condition (any candidate found...) are exactly the structures comprehension inference items are built from.
Key Syllabus Learning Objectives
- 1Survey a passage and predict where information lives
- 2Answer literal questions by locating and lightly paraphrasing the source line
- 3Build inference answers from two or more textual clues
- 4Explain words in context including figurative senses
- 5Resolve reference words (it, they, this, such, the former) accurately
The Survey-Hunt-Answer Method
- Objective strategy: eliminate two options with a quote; between the last two, choose the one whose words appear in the passage’s sense, not merely its letters.
- Paper 2 rule: lift-and-drop answers ("copying") earn 0 for that point; paraphrase at least one clause.
- If a question’s wording contains "in the passage", outside facts are BANNED even when they are true.
- Numbers, names and places are the passage’s signposts: questions about them are literal — locate and answer directly.
A district education report’s summary paragraph — question: "Give TWO reasons for the drop in enrolment." The two reasons sit as separate sentences in paragraph 4; hunting finds them in 60 seconds.
Survey the map, read the questions first, hunt with a pencil, answer in your own words.
Literal Questions: Locate and Lightly Rephrase
- For "state two/three" items, write the points as separate numbered answers — examiners hunt per point.
- Never answer a two-part question with one combined sentence — Organisation of the answer matters.
- Quote boundaries: when paraphrasing is risky, quote with the paragraph: the mark scheme accepts a correct quotation for literal items (but NOT for summary).
- Time markers decide past/present tense of your answer: the passage narrated yesterday, so answer in past tense.
Passage: "Ama’s stall lost thirty rupees worth of tomatoes to a stray goat." Q: "What happened to Ama’s tomatoes?" A: "A loose goat destroyed part of her stock." — located, rephrased, in ten seconds.
Literal answers are the passage’s facts wearing new clothes.
Inference: Building From Clues
- "suggests/implies" items keep the answer INSIDE the text’s reach — extreme options (always/never/all) are usually wrong.
- Character inference: feelings are shown through actions, not labels; "he shuffled coins slowly" → he was reluctant or ashamed.
- Writer’s purpose questions: distinguish entertain / inform / persuade / warn — check the title and the closing sentence.
- Answer stem discipline: "The writer implies that..." answers must complete the given stem, not restart.
"Ama’s smile froze when the customer walked away." Inference: the customer said or did something upsetting — the sudden stop (froze) plus the smile (was happy) clash, and the clash is the clue.
Two textual clues + one link word = the unstated answer.
Words in Context and Reference Words
- Never give the FIRST meaning of a word you know; give the meaning THIS passage uses.
- Figurative sense flag: if the literal meaning is nonsense in context ("the town was swallowing the forest"), the exam expects the figurative gloss ("expanding into, consuming").
- Ambiguous reference check: "When the bell rang the boys jumped; it was loud." — "it" should refer to the bell; a passage that breaks reference is itself an error-correction test item.
- For "find a word which means X" items, scan by paragraph order and match exact sense — the distractor is usually a near-synonym in a different paragraph.
A text about the Tema port: "the crane lifted another container" — here "crane" is machinery, not the bird; the whole paragraph (steel, harbour) votes for the machine sense.
Context is the jury: it chooses the sense and the antecedent.
- Allocate 35-40 minutes to a full comprehension section: 5 survey, 8 reading the questions and hunting, the rest answering with two minutes left for a sense-check read.
- Write paragraph numbers beside every evidence line you underline; when you revise at the end, evidence with a paragraph tag gets verified in seconds.
- For "the word X suggests" items, name the FEELING or ATTITUDE word (fear, eagerness, contempt) the passage loads onto X — examiners expect the connotative label, not the dictionary sense.
- In Paper 2, complete answers take a subject and verb; "Because he was afraid" scores 0 as a fragment — convert every point into a sentence.
- If two answers seem identical, the passage intends ONE; choose the one that survives when you read the NEXT paragraph — context continues beyond the line you found.
- Answering with outside knowledge the passage never gave ("Ghana gained independence in 1957" when the question demands what the passage says).
- Verbatim lifting of whole sentences in Paper 2 answers — the mark scheme calls it "mindless copying" and scores 0 for that point.
- Choosing the extreme option (always/never/most) on inference items where the passage hedged (often/some).
- Reference errors: pointing "they" at the nearest noun when the nearest noun is singular or illogical.
- Half-answering two-part questions ("give two reasons" then listing only one).
- Ignoring the question stem and writing a free essay instead of completing the given opening words.
- Can I run the Survey-Hunt-Answer method on any unseen passage?
- Can I paraphrase a literal answer without changing its facts?
- Can I name two clues that jointly support an inference?
- Can I choose the passage sense of a multiple-meaning word?
- Can I resolve every pronoun reference in a paragraph correctly?
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