Dispatcher Reading Comprehension and Sentence Clarity Tips

Separate three kinds of reading answers

Words such as always, never, only, all, and must make a claim stronger. Do not choose them unless the passage supports that strength. Likewise, a cautious statement such as may or some cannot automatically prove a universal conclusion.

• Direct fact: the passage states the answer explicitly.
• Supported inference: the answer must follow from facts in the passage.
• Unsupported possibility: the answer could be true in real life but is not established here.

Prove the answer

1. Read the question stem and identify whether it asks for a fact, meaning, or conclusion.
2. Return to the relevant sentence or paragraph.
3. State the support in your own words before looking closely at the choices.
4. Eliminate choices that add a person, cause, time, certainty, or relationship not supplied.
5. Choose the answer that says no more than the passage justifies.

Check sentence clarity with four questions

A grammatically possible sentence can still be operationally unclear. Watch for a final he, she, it, or they that could refer to two different subjects. Prefer the version that removes ambiguity without changing the facts.

• Actor: is it obvious who performed each action?
• Reference: does every pronoun point clearly to one person or thing?
• Sequence: can the reader tell what happened before, during, and after?
• Modifier: is each descriptive phrase placed next to what it describes?

Practice editing, not just selecting

Take an unclear sentence and rewrite it in a subject-action-object order. Use names or roles when a pronoun could be ambiguous. Place time and location phrases where they cannot attach to the wrong action. Then compare your rewrite with the clearest multiple-choice version.

For reading passages, create one direct-fact question, one supported-inference question, and one tempting but unsupported choice. Writing distractors teaches you to recognize how extra assumptions enter an answer.