11th Grade English Language Arts and Literacy: Reading Study Guide for the SBAC

Page 2

Evidence and Reasoning

On the 11th grade SBAC test, students are assessed in their ability to apply evidence and reasoning to answer questions about a text. You may be asked to make an inference or draw a conclusion about a single text or use your inferences and conclusions to compare texts. This means that you must be able to identify examples of evidence used by an author to support an idea and then apply reasoning to that evidence to draw conclusions and make inferences.

Evidence

Evidence refers to the support or examples an author uses to help persuade or inform an audience. Evidence may be explicitly stated within the text, or you may need to make inferences and draw conclusions from hints provided in the text. The test questions about evidence may ask you to highlight or identify evidence from the text that supports your answer, assessing both your ability to infer the answer to the question and identify the evidence that led you to a particular conclusion. The author will be using evidence in his or her text, but as a test-taker you will be asked to use evidence to support your answers, too, so remember that evidence is not only what proof the author uses, but what proof you provide to prove how you came to a particular answer.

For evidence of inference— When you infer something, you make an educated guess based on your past knowledge and experience and the clues that you pick up from a text. Even if a text doesn’t explicitly provide an answer to a question, strong readers look for clues in the information provided to draw a conclusion or make an inference.

For support of what the author says— Evidence may be provided, explicitly or implicitly, to support what an author is trying to convey to the reader. In this case, evidence might be facts or statistics that the author includes to support or convince the reader of what he or she is writing about. Quotes or paraphrased information from “experts” may also provide evidence for the author’s text.

If a test question asks you to defend your answer or to identify the specific details that led you to a particular conclusion or answer, you will need to provide textual evidence to support your answer. In other words, you will need to identify which parts of the passage led you to your answer.

To support your reasoning about the text— Not only will you need to identify the evidence an author uses in his or her writing, but you will need to use evidence yourself to support your reasoning about the text. For many of the questions on the SBAC, it is not enough to select an answer, but you must follow up with evidence to explain how you arrived at that answer. You must point to particular parts of the text to show how you drew a particular conclusion. Some questions are two-part questions, requiring you to first identify the central idea of a text, for example, and then in part 2 to select the sentence from the text that best expresses the same central idea as the one you chose. In other question types, you may have to type in a short justification statement for why you selected a particular answer.

Reasoning

Reasoning is the application of logic to draw a conclusion or make an inference about a text. The author can provide reasoning, in the form of evidence, to explain how he or she has arrived at a position about a particular topic. Often, this is referred to as logos or logic because the arguments the author uses make reasonable, rational, logical sense.

As a critical reader, you employ reasoning skills every time you read. Here are some of the more popular or common reasoning behaviors:

Think critically— When you read a text, you probably don’t just accept everything it says as true at face value. You probably analyze the author’s words objectively and evaluate the evidence presented to form your opinion about the text. This is what is known as thinking critically. Analysis and questioning of the text, consideration of its validity and whether what it says or suggests makes logical, reasonable sense are all steps in critical thinking.

Analyze— To reason or think logically about a text, you must analyze the content of that text. That is to say that you should review the details and the evidence presented by the author and examine them objectively. This is analysis—a close study or inspection of not only what an author says, but also how he or she says it. Test questions asking why an author uses a particular word, phrase, or literary device requires you to analyze the text.

Compare and Contrast— In logically looking at a subject, one way to approach is by comparing and contrasting. This works within one text, if an author has selected a compare/contrast structure for his or her writing, or it can be used to highlight the similarities and differences between multiple texts. When taking this test, it is almost guaranteed that you will be asked to compare and contrast at least two texts, probably by different authors. The test-makers, in including this type of question, are looking to assess your ability to recognize similarities (comparisons) and differences (contrasts) between different authors’ voices. While the subject of the texts to be compared and contrasted will likely be similar, the authors may have different viewpoints on the subject or they may approach the topic from different perspectives.

Synthesize— Synthesizing means that you are able to move beyond basic comprehension of the information provided in a text and combine different parts and pieces, often from different texts, together to make a coherent whole. When you synthesize, you see the “big picture” but can only determine that big picture as a result of understanding the smaller details and applying your understanding to the world beyond the text.

Evaluate— When you are logically applying reason to a text, you must evaluate that text to determine which parts align with your understanding or expectations and which parts you may question. You must appraise the information provided by the author and determine its credibility. In this way, you are judging the value of the information, examples, or support used by the author in terms of its effectiveness.

Critique— The term critique tends to have a negative connotation, as if it only means to look for the bad or determine what’s wrong with it. Actually, critiquing something just means that you look at it in a detailed and analytical way, determining both the flaws and the strengths. On the SBAC, when you critique something, expect to also be required to provide evidence that determined your appraisal.

Analysis

Analysis of a text requires close, careful, critical examination of not only what the author says, but also how he or she presents that information to the reader. In the case of the SBAC test, expect to be asked to analyze elements within a passage and to analyze the relationship between multiple texts.

In Literary Texts

Analysis may look slightly different between literary and informational texts because they have different formats and serve different purposes. In literary texts, you will likely be asked to analyze the effect of a literary device used by the author on the passage itself. Questions analyzing the effectiveness of figurative language, rhetorical devices, organization, and word choice are among the more popular literary analysis questions.

Point of view— The point of view in a literary text refers to the perspective from which the story is told. When an author chooses to tell a story with a first-person narrator, that presents a different perspective than a story told with a third-person omniscient narrator. You may be asked to analyze not only what point of view an author uses, but also to evaluate the effectiveness of that choice as it pertains to the reader.

Literary elements— Literary elements like plot, theme, character, and tone are also popular choices for test-makers to use to assess your understanding of the text and your ability to analyze the text. Analyzing a character’s development or the effect of an author’s word choice on the tone of a passage requires you to carefully examine the text in detail.

In Informational Texts

Informational texts require analysis of different elements than those of literary texts. For informational texts, analyzing the structure, word choice, and author’s purpose are common fodder for questions on the SBAC.

Connections— Informational texts present information to the reader, but both the author and the reader must work to make connections for the information to make sense. Analyzing the connections the author makes within a text (or comparing the connections made between two texts) requires the reader to study the people, ideas, or events the author uses. Authors work mindfully to make connections with what they present and their intended audience. For example, an author targeting teenagers to inform them about the dangers of smoking is going to use examples that are relevant to teenagers today so that the reader can connect with the author’s message.

In addition to the connections the author must make within the text, the reader must also make connections between what is being presented and his or her own prior knowledge and personal experience. These personal connections may be different for each reader, which is why, on the SBAC test, you are often required to “defend” your answer or use evidence from the text to support your answer. With that, you can show the test-maker the connection you saw within the text or explain the connection you made with it personally.

Information qualities— Because informational texts are designed to present information to the reader, one can sometimes forget that how the information is presented gives the reader insight into the author’s position or purpose even if he or she doesn’t state it outright. Analyzing the qualities of an informational text, including its organization or structure, diction, the evidence used by the author, and any graphics or images that accompany the text are great sources of test questions.

Additionally, you may be asked to analyze the source of the information. “Is the author a known expert in the field?” and “Does the data come from a reliable, verified source?” are two questions you may ask yourself as you are analyzing the quality of information. Not only is the SBAC likely to ask you to analyze the informational qualities of the text, but you will need to provide evidence to support that analysis, so be ready to indicate what specific qualities you analyzed.

All Study Guides for the SBAC are now available as downloadable PDFs