Reading to Apply a Diagram

Answering needs both the text and the visual, so the task tests whether you can combine them. Understanding either one on its own isn't enough. Treat the text as your source of conditions. If it describes a person's situation, each detail about their needs, limits or plans is a condition. Treat the visual as the place where you test those conditions. Apply them one by one until only one answer fits.

Step by step

1. 1

   Learn how the visual is organized before you read closely

   Look quickly at what the rows, columns, labels and symbols stand for, and notice any small print or key. Don't read every cell yet. Once you know where each kind of information is, you can go straight to it later.

2. 2

   Read the text for its conditions

   As you read, pick out every limit or preference the text sets. If it describes a person, look for when they are free, what they can spend, where they need to be and what they want to avoid. Keep these in mind as a short list, or write them down if the test allows it. They are the filters you will apply to the visual.

3. 3

   For each question, work out which conditions apply

   Before you look at the choices, decide exactly what the question wants (the earliest option, the cheapest, the closest, or the one that meets a need) and which conditions from the text matter. If you know this before you look, a choice that only sounds right is less likely to pull you in.

4. 4

   Filter the visual, then check the winner against every condition

   Use the conditions to rule out entries in the visual until only a few are left. Then test your answer against every condition again, including any notes, exceptions or symbols in the visual. A wrong answer can fail on a single condition you forgot to check.

5. 5

   Decide and move on

   If you can't settle a question after a proper check, choose the answer that meets the most conditions and keep going. The clock doesn't stop, and some questions are trial questions that aren't marked, so you can't tell which ones count. Don't let one hard question take time away from the rest.

Using the time

At the start, take a short look at the visual's layout and read the text for its conditions. This small investment makes every later lookup faster. Spend most of your time going back and forth between each question and the visual, checking conditions. At the end of the part, quickly recheck any answer where you had to read a number, time or date from a crowded row. Then move on so the other parts have enough time.

What usually goes wrong

• Reading the wrong row or column

  In a dense table or schedule, it is easy to take a time or price from the line next to the one you meant. Before you commit, trace the row and the column to the exact spot where they meet, and check that both labels are the ones you intended.

  In your feedback: Number or date

• Picking the choice that repeats a label

  A choice may use a name or heading taken straight from the visual, but it may belong to a different day, place or condition from the one the question is about. If a choice looks familiar, see that as a reason to check it, not a reason to pick it. Confirm that it meets the conditions in the text.

  In your feedback: Partial match

• Missing a condition the text only implies

  The text may never state a limit directly. It may say someone works until the evening, has a young child, or has no car, and leave you to see what that rules out. For each detail about a person's situation, ask what it makes impossible in the visual.

  In your feedback: Literal reading

• Not seeing the same fact in different words

  The text and the visual may describe the same thing differently. The text might use a general time of day, a direction or a description where the visual uses exact times, codes or place names. Put the text's wording into the visual's terms before you search. Otherwise you may decide the answer isn't there.

  In your feedback: Missed paraphrase

Drafted by an AI writer and passed by a separate AI editor after one rewrite, checked against our content rules: structure and approach only, no wording to reuse. How our content is made