United States
Hong KongCompetency 1: Key ideas and details
Eight of the 17 Reading skills sit under Competency 1, which on our split is about 14 of the 30 questions. It runs from identifying textual evidence and explicit details through inference and assumption to central themes, summary, and cause and effect between ideas.
Nearly half the subtest, on our estimate, from one competency. Worth knowing before you plan a single hour of revision.
The eight skills as the rule states them
1. Identify textual evidence to support conclusions drawn from text. 2. Identify explicit meaning and details within text. 3. Determine inferences and conclusions based on textual evidence. 4. Discriminate among inferences, conclusions, and assumptions based on textual evidence. 5. Determine and analyze the development of central ideas or themes from one or more texts. 6. Summarize one or more texts using key supporting ideas and details. 7. Determine how and why specific individuals, events, and ideas develop based on textual evidence. 8. Determine the cause and effect relationship(s) among individuals, events, and ideas based on textual evidence.
Section 82, Reading, incorporated into Rule 6A-4.0021, F.A.C.
Count the appearances of "textual evidence": five of the eight. That is not decoration. It is the standard every answer on this competency is measured against.
How the eight group up
| Group | Skills | What the questions look like |
|---|---|---|
| Literal comprehension | 1, 2 | Which line supports this; what does the passage state |
| Inference | 3, 4 | What follows from the text; what is assumed rather than said |
| Whole-text meaning | 5, 6 | Central idea, theme development, summary |
| Relationships | 7, 8 | How an idea develops; what caused what |
FLDOE publishes 30 questions for the Reading subtest and no breakdown. We apportioned the 30 across the three competencies in proportion to the number of skills the rule states under each, which puts Competency 1 at about 14. The eight is the state's; the 14 is ours.
Skill 4 is the one worth studying
"Discriminate among inferences, conclusions, and assumptions." Three words that most candidates treat as synonyms, and the rule gives them a skill of their own.
| Term | Where it sits | Test |
|---|---|---|
| Inference | Follows from the text but is not stated | Can you point at the lines that make it likely? |
| Conclusion | The endpoint the text is driving at | Does the passage as a whole lead here? |
| Assumption | What the author took for granted to argue this | Would the argument collapse without it? |
An assumption is the hardest of the three because it is the thing the passage did not say and did not need to say. Ask what has to be true for the author's reasoning to hold. That unstated requirement is the assumption.
Cause and effect gets its own skill
Skill 8 is separate from skill 7 for a reason. Development is the sequence of how something changed; cause is the claim that one thing produced another. A passage can describe a sequence without claiming causation, and an option that upgrades a sequence into a cause is a distractor.
The signal words help: because, therefore, as a result, consequently, led to, owing to. If none of them is present and the option says one event caused another, check whether the passage supports it or whether the options assumed it for you.
How to answer anything in this competency
- Read the question stem before the passage, so you know what you are hunting for
- Answer from the text and only from the text, even when you know the subject
- For each option, find the line that supports it. No line, no answer.
- Where two options both have support, take the one that covers more of the passage rather than one sentence of it
Step three is the one that separates a 70% from a 60% on this subtest. It sounds obvious and almost nobody does it under a 1.83-minute clock, which is what the published question count and time allowance work out to on our division.
Our opinion, and the limit of it
Competency 1 is the best place to spend Reading revision time, because it is the largest on our estimate and because its skills are the most technique-responsive of the three. Inference in particular improves with practice in a way that vocabulary does not.
What we cannot claim is that our 14-question figure is anything other than arithmetic. FLDOE has never published a within-subtest weighting for this test, and the assumption that skills and questions run in proportion is ours.
Common questions
What is Competency 1 on the FTCE Reading subtest?
Knowledge of key ideas and details based on text selections. Eight skills sit under it, covering textual evidence, explicit meaning, inference, the difference between inference and assumption, central ideas, summary, idea development, and cause and effect.
What is the difference between an inference and an assumption?
An inference is something that follows from what the passage says. An assumption is something the author took for granted while arguing it, and never stated. Ask what would have to be true for the reasoning to hold; that is the assumption.
How many questions cover key ideas and details?
FLDOE publishes 30 for the subtest and no split beneath it. Our estimate is about 14, apportioning the published total across the three competencies in proportion to the number of skills the rule states under each one.
Can I use outside knowledge to answer these questions?
No. Five of the eight skills say "based on textual evidence", and the competency title itself says "based on text selections". An option that is true in general but unsupported by this passage is wrong, and that is a deliberate distractor pattern.