Mastering Inference Questions on the SAT & ACT Reading Tests
Raise Your Score with Expert Tips on Navigating the Three Types of Allowable Inferences (for both the paper-based SAT and the ACT).
Note - The information in this article primarily applies to Inference Questions on the paper-based SAT Reading Test and the ACT Reading Test.
Identifying SAT and ACT Reading Inference Questions
SAT and ACT Reading Inference Questions are among the more challenging question types. While these questions can be difficult to solve, identifying them is usually straightforward. If you see any of the following phrases in an SAT or ACT Reading question, you’re dealing with an inference question:
“It can reasonably be inferred …”
“It can most reasonably be inferred …”
“… implies that … “
“… most clearly implies …”
“… is implicit … “
Note – On SAT and ACT Reading, the phrase “most likely” does not necessarily indicate an Inference Question.
Inferences and HLTA
When I teach my ACT and SAT Reading test prep students about the importance of Hyper-Literal Textual Analysis (HLTA), one of the first things they ask is, “But what about Inference Questions? Isn’t inferring the opposite of being literal?”
Yes and no. In school, during English class, when your teacher asks you to draw inferences from a text, it’s true that they are usually inviting you to engage in subjective interpretation. The basic idea is to “engage” with the text and come up with your own take.
(By the way, this is why many teachers encourage students to preface their comments on a reading with the phrase “I feel.” Using the qualifier “I feel” is a way of signaling that you consider your inference merely a personal opinion, not a statement of fact.)
The Inference Switcheroo
The makers of the SAT and ACT know very well that schools sometimes encourage students to adopt an imaginative, conjectural, even freewheeling style of drawing inferences. They understand that, in many English classrooms, the focus is not always on the meaning of the text in a strictly objective sense. Rather, what’s often stressed is what the text means to an individual student.
In contrast to the interpretive approach, SAT and ACT Reading maintain a strictly literal standard for drawing inferences. Of course, the test writers don’t tell you that they’re using a different standard. Nothing on the SAT or ACT suggests that you should handle inferences differently than you would in a typical English class.
This isn’t merely a sly deception. Because the SAT and ACT are standardized exams, the answers can’t be a matter of subjective interpretation. They must be provably correct or incorrect according to an objective standard. Many test-takers understand this, as a general rule. However, many also mistakenly believe that Inference Questions are an exception. It’s important to understand that they’re not.
Solving Inference Questions
To solve SAT and ACT Reading Inference Questions, you must understand that there are three types of Allowable Inferences:
Necessary Inferences (the most common type)
Inferred Transitions from Adjacent Sentences
Sole Reasonable Inferences
Necessary Inferences are by far the most important, so we’ll start by discussing those.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Walker Prep to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.