Reading

• Skimming: Rapid reading technique employed to obtain a quick general overview or gist of a passage. You read the title, introduction, topic sentences of paragraphs, and conclusion to understand the author's main thesis and structure.
• When to use: At the beginning of an examination to preview an unseen passage or when deciding if an article is relevant.
• Scanning: A fast search technique where your eyes sweep across text looking for a specific target detail (such as a date, name, number, or keyword) while ignoring everything else.
• When to use: When answering direct factual questions (e.g., "In what year was the treaty signed?").

• Fact: A statement of objective reality that can be tested, proven, or disproven by verifiable empirical evidence, scientific measurement, or historical documentation.
Examples:
1. "Water boils at $100^\circ\text{C}$ at standard sea-level atmospheric pressure."
2. "William Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon."
• Opinion: A subjective personal belief, interpretation, feeling, or value judgment that cannot be proven true or false by objective measurement.
Examples:
1. "Summer is the best season of the year."
2. "Shakespeare's Hamlet is the greatest play ever written."

• Inferential Reading: The critical reading skill of "reading between the lines"—drawing logical deductions and reaching conclusions based on subtle evidence, indirect hints, and descriptive clues provided by the author, combined with the reader's common sense.
• Example:
Text: "Meera stared at the empty stage. She took a deep breath, wiped her trembling, sweaty palms on her skirt, and swallowed hard as her name was called over the microphone."
Inference: Meera is experiencing acute stage fright, nervousness, and anxiety before a public performance.

• Mechanism: Authors frequently contrast an unfamiliar, complex word with a familiar, simple concept using contrasting signal transition words like unlike, but, however, whereas, on the other hand, in contrast.
• By identifying the familiar opposite concept, the reader immediately deduces that the target word means the direct opposite.
• Example: "Unlike her talkative and loquacious brother, Priya was quiet and reserved." $\implies$ The word "unlike" signals an opposite; since Priya is quiet, loquacious must mean extremely talkative.

1. Exposition: Introduces the background setting (time and place), primary characters, and initial situation.
   2. Rising Action: The inciting incident introduces a conflict; complications arise, building dramatic suspense and tension.
   3. Climax: The highest emotional peak, crisis, or decisive turning point of the story where the conflict peaks.
   4. Falling Action: Events resulting from the climax unfold; the tension begins to ease as characters resolve issues.
   5. Resolution (Denouement): The final conclusion where the central conflict is resolved and a new normal is established.

• Simile: An explicit, direct comparison between two fundamentally different things using comparative conjunctions "like" or "as".
Example: "Her eyes sparkled like diamonds in the moonlight."
• Metaphor: An implicit, direct figurative equation that asserts one thing IS another thing, transferring the qualities of one directly to the other without using "like" or "as".
Example: "Time is a thief that steals away our youth."

• Definition: Personification is a figurative literary device in which human emotions, intentions, consciousness, or physical actions are attributed to non-human entities, animals, inanimate objects, or abstract ideas.
• Examples:
1. "The hungry ocean swallowed the wooden ship." (Assigns human appetite and action to the sea).
2. "The stars danced playfully in the moonlit sky." (Assigns human joyous dancing to stars).

• First-Person Point of View: The story is narrated by a character inside the story using personal pronouns "I", "me", "we". The reader experiences events solely through that narrator's limited perspective, thoughts, and biases.
• Third-Person Omniscient Point of View: The story is told by an external, "all-knowing" narrator who is not a character in the story, using pronouns "he", "she", "they". This narrator can reveal the inner thoughts, private feelings, and secret motivations of all characters simultaneously.