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

Text Structure and Features

The texts that you will encounter on the SBAC come in a variety of lengths, cover a variety of topics, and use a variety of devices to deliver their message to the reader. Text types are categorized as either being literary texts (about 30%) or informational texts (about 70%), which may be about topics related to science, social studies, or technical topics. Being able to read, understand, and analyze a variety of complex texts indicates your readiness for college and career. Being able to identify whether you are reading a piece of literary nonfiction or a fictional passage will affect how and what you analyze and look for within the text, as each style has unique traits.

Literary Texts

Literary texts are generally created to entertain the reader, but also with a theme in mind—the author wants to teach the reader a lesson or share a moral. To do this, the author must capture and keep the reader’s attention by creating dynamic characters whose conflicts advance the plot in a way that keeps the reader engaged. The author’s choices in terms of text structure and organization, character development, point of view, diction, etc. all affect how the reader views the text and the level with which he or she engages with the text and appreciates the intended lesson.

Informational Texts

Informational texts are written, obviously, to inform. The author presents information to the reader without giving an opinion or taking a side. Informational texts are generally objective and fact-based, so the author will often use facts and statistics to support his or her understanding of the subject and help the reader understand it in the same way. However, that does not mean that every author who writes an informational text will write it in the same way or understand the subject in the same way. Thus, when you are comparing two or more informational texts, it is important to analyze how the author structures his or her writing, what supporting details he or she decides to use, who the intended audience might be, and determine which author relays the information more effectively to you, as the reader.

Language Use

Authors use language very purposefully. No word is misplaced or just “thrown in there”; every word serves a purpose and the order in which they are presented to the reader is carefully planned by the author. The SBAC assesses your ability to identify and interpret the use of figurative language, understand the nuances of words and phrases that may have similar meanings, and recognize word relationships. You will be asked to analyze the author’s use of language and the impact it has on the text’s meaning, tone, or overall effectiveness.

Literary

Literary texts require a different set of rules for language use than informational texts. Authors who write literary passages tend to use “flowery” language and require the reader to “read between the lines” or make inferences about character motivation or symbolism within the text. Below are some applications of language that are commonly used in literary writing.

Figurative Language— To be more effective or persuasive in their writing, authors may use figurative language, especially in literary texts. Figurative language includes all of those terms you’ve been studying in your English Language Arts classes since elementary school, things like: metaphors, similes, hyperbole, allusions, onomatopoeia, personification, and so on. The use of figurative language has an impact on the reader and the SBAC may ask you to analyze this effect and determine why an author may have chosen to use a particular form of figurative language.

Connotative Meanings— A word has two levels of meaning: the denotation, or what it actually literally means if you were to look it up in the dictionary, and connotation, or the emotional “baggage” a word has and its impact on a reader. Analyzing the connotation, you may be asked why an author uses a particular word as opposed to one with a similar meaning. You may have to determine what an author is communicating to the reader by his or her use of a particular word or term (and there may be more than one answer if this is a multi-select question).

Figures of Speech— Figures of speech are one type of figurative language used by authors to convey an implied or symbolic meaning to be interpreted by the reader. The most common figures of speech assessed on the SBAC include:

• euphemism—Providing a more mild or “gentle” alternative to a brash or unpleasant or difficult topic, euphemisms “soften the blow.” For example, rather than saying someone died, which can be harsh and unpleasant to think about, an author may say that the person has “passed on” and make their end seem more pleasant. If the author is trying to add a little humor or is setting a sarcastic tone, he or she may say the person “kicked the bucket.” These idioms mean basically the same thing, but are not as harsh as died.

• oxymoron—Jumbo shrimp, happy tears, clearly confused, act naturally—these are all examples of oxymorons. An oxymoron is a figure of speech where seemingly contradictory terms or ideas are used together to create a new meaning. For example, if you say something is growing smaller, you mean that it is, in fact, shrinking in size. But growing means becoming larger, so it is an oxymoron to put growing and smaller together to describe something.

• hyperbole—Hyperbole is extreme exaggeration, often used by an author to create a sense of humor or ridiculousness for the reader. “I’m so hungry, I could eat a horse,” “He’s a tank!” and “She is quiet as a mouse” are all examples of hyperbole. The authors of these don’t literally mean that he or she intends to sit down to a meal of horse, that he is actually a huge machine, or that she never speaks. The idea is that these descriptions are to be taken figuratively and not literally and are used to make a point: the person is really hungry and looking for a big meal, he is strong, and she is soft-spoken.

• paradox—Seemingly contradictory, much like oxymorons, a paradox is used by authors to get the reader to think about something in a new way or from a different perspective. Although they appear to be incongruous, when more deeply considered, these statements have a ring of truth. Some examples of paradoxes from literature include the declaration by the animals on George Orwell’s Animal Farm that “All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others” or Hamlet’s famous quote that he “must be cruel to be kind” as he prepares to kill his uncle and avenge his father’s death. On the surface, these statements are contradictory, but when you dive in a little deeper and understand the context in which they are said, they take on a new level of meaning.

Informational

Informational texts may use some of the same devices as above, but they also have language use that is more commonly found in nonfiction writing. While it is not unheard of for an informational text to use a metaphor to make a point, authors of informational texts use language with a different purpose. As opposed to flowery writing filled with symbolism and figurative language, informational texts must inform the audience about a topic more directly, in a way that they will be able to understand. Below are the language uses to be aware of that are more specific to informational texts.

Word relationships— Word relationships include things like synonyms, antonyms, homonyms, and rhyme. Authors use words carefully, so you will need to analyze why an author chooses to use one word as opposed to another that has a similar meaning. What is the effect of using a particular word, given the purpose and intended audience of a text? It’s not only the words selected by an author, but how the author elects to put them together that affects their relationship. Changing the order of the words may change the relationship, which can change the message and the effect on the reader.

Nuances— Every word has a definition, an explanation of what it means, but every word also has a nuance, or slight or subtle difference in its shade of meaning. Some words have multiple meanings, depending on how they are used, so it is important to be able to identify the nuance between words to help unlock the clues as to why an author might have selected one word over another. Identifying and understanding the nuances of words comes with careful analysis; a quick read and you may miss the subtlety of what the author is really trying to convey.

Phrases— As mentioned in the “word relationships” section above, word order is purposefully created by the author. The way words are put together can change their meaning and create a different understanding for the reader. Be on the lookout for figures of speech an author may use and how he or she phrases the evidence chosen to support the implied message.

Question Types in the Reading Section

There are several different question types you will face in the Reading portion of the SBAC. In addition to the classic multiple-choice questions where you select one right answer, you will also see:

Multi-Select—In this type of question, you will have a number of answer options to choose from and will select several that apply. The test question will guide you as to whether you are supposed to select “all that apply” or “the two sentences that best support” or the exact number of answer options you need to click on, so be sure to read the questions carefully so you know how many answers to provide.

Short Answer—These responses require you to type a response into the text box provided. These are tricky because they don’t tell you how much you have to write to have a “complete” response. So read the question carefully, provide textual evidence that will help support your answer to the question, and try to use the key words you think a grader would be looking for in a response. Short answer questions are also a perfect opportunity for test-makers to ask you to summarize the author’s message, so you’d want to make sure that you focus on the main ideas presented and don’t get bogged down in the details.

Evidence-Based Selected Response—These are two-part questions whereby you answer part A and then answer part B to show support for your answer to A. For example, part A may ask which statement best expresses the theme of the text, and part B will ask you to select the sentence from the text that best supports your answer to part A. In these questions, you must usually select one answer option in part A and one answer option in part B.

Hot-Text—These questions have been made possible by the use of computer-based testing. In hot-text questions, portions of the text are reproduced and you are to select portions of the text that support the answer to the question. For example, the question may state that the reader can come to a certain conclusion about a character in the story and ask you to select three sentences that best support this conclusion. You would then highlight those sentences using the cursor and select them as your answer. Again, the number of pieces of evidence changes with each question, so read carefully so that you know how many sentences or parts of the text you need to identify.

Types of Passages Used

The reading passages used on the SBAC are intended to align with the Common Core Standards and represent grade-level appropriate texts. Some texts are used independently, that is to say that there is one passage that is used for multiple questions; and some texts are used to compare with another, with questions about each that follow. Between 25% and 40% of the questions about two passages will ask you to compare the two in some way. Texts may appear in traditional form and look like an essay or book excerpt or be formatted to look like a webpage, newspaper article, or scene from a play. The length of the reading selections vary and some may also include graphics or images intended to support the message of the text.

Literary Passages

The literary passages selected for the SBAC may come from a variety of genres. You should be ready to see short stories, poems, drama (including both tragedies and comedies), literary nonfiction (which tells the stories of true events using literary techniques), and eighteenth, nineteenth, or twentieth century works of American literature. About 30% of the assessment uses literary passages.

Informational Passages

Informational passages make up 70% of the texts found in the Reading section, and they come from a variety of sources. Historical U.S. documents, science, and technical texts are among the most popular. The text types may be research findings, articles from newspapers or magazines, essays, op-ed articles, speeches, lectures, debates, or public advocacy documents.

Tackling Differently Formatted Test Items

There is important information about differently formatted test items on the SBAC exam. Go to our home page for the SBAC to read it as you prepare. Scroll down to “Tips and Tricks.”