Reading Strategies

• English
• Secondary Education

Reading Strategies

Distractors

Dealing with distractors 

A distractor is an incorrect answer that is similar to the correct answer. Distractors are similar to the correct answer but will differ in some detail. Distractors in the reading assessment are used to see if students can tell the difference between two or three options. 

Dealing with distractors 

Distractors can be found in the question or prompt. However, in the case of assessment activities with more than one potential answer, such as multiple-choice questions, there will be four 

options. 

Professor McDuff's article suggests how to become more...

1. self-assured
2. trustworthy
3. respected
4. competent

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Identifying true statements: True or False? 

• An even number of statements based on the text are listed.
  
• Half the statements are true; half are false.
  
• The true and false statements are mixed up.
  
• You can write your correct answers in any order.
  
• You must identify the statements which are true.
  
• The more statements there are, the more difficult the assessment activity becomes.
  
• There is one mark available for each correct answer.
  

A. The writer first learned English by talking with native speakers of English.

B. The writer learned to understand English by watching films with her sister.

C. The writer thinks other learners of English should concentrate on learning pronunciation.

D. The writer's greatest challenge was learning English pronunciation.

E. The writer started learning English mainly by viewing and listening.

F. The writer learned English by watching the same film again and again.

G. The writer thinks that people have different wags of acquiring new ideas.

H. The writer knows the dialogue from a favourite English language film by heart.

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Justification 1

Justification 2

Justification 3

Justification 4

Justification 5

Justification 6

Justification 7

Vocabulary Exercises

Matching Words

• This exercise tests your ability to find the meaning of words from their context. 
• You have to match words from the text with synonyms or definitions. 
• There will also be one distractor for each correct answer in this kind of exercise. 
• The words in the left-hand column will appear in their order in the text while the synonyms or definitions in the list of options will be in random order. 
• There is one mark available for each correct answer. 

compelled (line 26)

prolonged (line 29)

unchecked (line 31)

spotted (line 36)

observed 

abandoned 

marked

strained

stretched

extended

forced

uncontrolled

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Finding words in a text

• This exercise tests your ability to find or deduce word(s) in the text with the same meaning as those in the question. 
• Unlike vocabulary matching, you may need to find words from different grammatical categories. 
• The words to be matched  will be in the same grammatical form. 
• To help you, there are line numbers to give you the area of the text you need to look at closely. 
• There is one mark available for each correct answer. 

suffer

released

quick

reasonable

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