Basic Information and Inferencing TOEFL Reading Question type

Factual Information Questions

 These questions ask you to identify factual information that is explicitly stated in the passage. Factual Information questions can focus on facts on facts, details, definitions, or other information that is typically mentioned only in part of the passage. They generally do not ask about general themes that he passage as a whole discusses. Often, the relevant information is in one or two sentences.

How To Recognize Factual Information Questions

Factual Information question are often phrased in one of these ways:

• According to the paragraph, which of the following is true of X?
• The author’s description of X mentions which of the following?
• According to the paragraph, X occurred because…
• According to the paragraph, X did Y because…
• According to the paragraph, why did X do Y?
• The author’s description of X mentions which of the following?

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Tips for factual information Questions

• You may need to refer back to the passage in order to know what exactly is said about the subject of the question. Since the questions may be about a detail, you may not recall the detail from your first reading of the passage.
• Eliminate choices that present information that is contradicted in the passage.
• Do not select an answer just because it is mentioned in the passage.

Your choice should answer the specific question that was asked.

SAMPLE READING

Example PASSAGE EXCERPT: “ . . . Sculpture must, for example, be stable, which requires an understanding of the properties of mass, weight distribution, and stress. Paintings must have rigid stretchers so that the canvas will be taut, and the paint must not deteriorate, crack, or discolor. These are problems that must be overcome by the artist because they tend to intrude upon his or her conception of the work. For example, in the early Italian Renaissance, bronze statues of horses with a raised foreleg usually had a cannonball under that hoof. This was done because the cannonball was needed to support the weight of the leg. In other words, the demands of the laws of physics, not the sculptor’s aesthetic intentions, placed the ball there. That this devices was a necessary structural compromise is clear from the fact that the cannonball quickly disappeared when sculptors learned how to strengthen the internal structure of a statue with iron braces (iron being much stronger than bronze)…” 

According to paragraph 2, sculptors in the Italian Renaissance stopped using cannonballs in bronze statues of horses because

• They began using a material that made the statues weigh less
• They found a way to strengthen the statues internally
• They aesthetic tastes of the public had changes over time
• The cannonballs added too much weight to the statues

Explanation

The question tells you to look for the answer in the excerpted paragraph, which in this case is paragraph 2. You do not need to skim the entire passage to find the relevant information.

Choice I says that sculptors stopped putting cannonballs under the raised legs of horses in statues because they learned how to make the statue weigh less  and not require support for the leg. The passage does not mention making the statues weigh less; it says that sculptors learned a better way to support the weight. Choice 3 says that the change occurred only because people’s taste changed, meaning that the cannonballs were never structurally necessary. That directly contradicts the passage. Choice 4 says that the cannonballs weakened the structure of the statues. This choice also contradicts the passage. Choice 2 correctly identifies the reason the passage gives for the change: sculptor developed a way to strengthen the statue from the inside, making the cannonballs physically unnecessary.