Reading informational texts on the Grade 10 ELA MCAS: complete overview - Massachusetts

Reading informational texts is one of the core skills tested on the Grade 10 ELA MCAS. The reading sessions present unseen articles, essays, speeches, and arguments and ask you to analyze them and support your answers with evidence. This site breaks the skill into five dot points that cover what the test asks, from central ideas to inference. This overview maps the five skills, how they connect, and how to study them.

The five informational-reading skills

Each skill is a way of reading an unseen informational passage closely.

• Central ideas in informational texts. Stating the main point a text makes about its topic, as a full idea, and proving it with a supporting detail. See central ideas in informational texts.
• Analyzing arguments and claims. Finding the central claim, sorting reasons from evidence, telling fact from opinion, and judging whether the support is relevant and sufficient. See analyzing arguments and claims.
• Author's purpose and rhetoric. Identifying why the text was written and reading the appeals of ethos, pathos, and logos. See author's purpose and rhetoric.
• Text structure and features. Naming the organizational pattern, explaining why the writer chose it, and using headings and graphics. See text structure and features.
• Text evidence and inference. Reading between the lines without overreaching and citing the line that proves it, including the two-part items. See text evidence and inference.

The thread through every skill: evidence and critical reading

Two habits run through all five skills. The first is evidence: every reading, a central idea, a claim, an inference, must be backed by a specific detail or line. The MCAS two-part items make this explicit, with Part A asking for the reading and Part B asking for the proof, but the same habit wins multiple-choice and multiple-select points too. The second is critical reading: the informational items reward judging, not just recognizing. A central idea is what the details add up to; an argument is only as strong as its relevant, sufficient evidence; a structure is a choice that serves a purpose; an inference must stay tied to the page. These skills also feed the long composition, where you build a central idea and an argument of your own from the texts.

How the informational skills are tested

• Multiple choice and multiple-select: the central idea, the claim, a fact versus an opinion, the author's purpose, the text structure, a reasonable inference.
• Evidence-selection items: click the sentence that states the main point, supports the claim, or proves the inference.
• Two-part evidence items: Part A asks for the reading, Part B asks for the supporting line, and the two must agree.

How to study reading informational texts

1. Read nonfiction widely (articles, essays, speeches, arguments), practicing on unseen passages.
2. Learn the distinctions (topic versus central idea versus detail, claim versus evidence, fact versus opinion) so the moves are automatic.
3. Judge, do not just recognize. Ask whether evidence is relevant and sufficient and why a writer chose a structure.
4. Find the line. For any claim or inference, locate the specific evidence, because the two-part items make that line a scored point.
5. Stay tied to the text. Draw inferences the passage supports and avoid answers that need outside facts.

For the official exam materials

DESE publishes released test questions and computer-based practice tests, and the Massachusetts Curriculum Framework for English Language Arts and Literacy sets the standards. See the MCAS released test questions and practice tests page and the MCAS home page. Always study from the current released materials, because the item types and standards are set by DESE.