Task description

You will be provided with a number of questions which you have to answer. Generally your answers must be in three words or fewer but confirm this with the instructions.

What is being tested is your ability to:

• skim for general information
• read for details
• identify the focus of the question
• understand paraphrase in the question

How to approach short answer questions

Step 1: Read the instructions carefully. Note that in the sample task you may use your own words but you may not use more than three words for each answer.

Step 2: Briefly read through all of the questions to get an idea of what information you will have to find in the text.

Step 3: Read the first question more carefully. Decide what information you will skim for. In this case you will skim for reference to Alexander Carlisle.

Step 4: Once you have found the relevant section of the reading text, look back at the question and decide what specific information you need to answer the question. In this case, you need to find what the owners thought was less important than Titanics appearance.

Step 5: Read that part of the text more carefully to find the answer.

Step 6: Your answer does not need to be a complete sentence but it does need to make sense grammatically.