Reading informational texts on the Ohio English II test: complete overview - Ohio's State Test for ELA II

Reading informational texts is one of the core skills tested on Ohio's State Test for English Language Arts II. The reading sections present unseen articles, essays, speeches, and literary nonfiction and ask you to analyze them and support your answers with evidence. This site breaks the skill into six dot points that cover what the test asks, from central ideas to comparing paired sources. This overview maps the six skills, how they connect, and how to study them.

The six informational-reading skills

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

• Central ideas in informational texts. Stating the controlling point of a text as a full sentence and writing an objective summary. See central ideas in informational texts.
• Analyzing argument and claims. Sorting an argument into claim, reasons, and evidence and judging whether the reasoning holds. See analyzing argument and claims.
• Author's purpose and rhetoric. Determining purpose and point of view and analyzing the appeals to logic, emotion, and credibility. See author's purpose and rhetoric.
• Text structure and organization. Recognizing common structures and explaining how the organization advances the point. See text structure and organization.
• Text evidence and inference. Drawing supported inferences and citing the strongest line, the habit behind the two-part items. See text evidence and inference.
• Comparing and synthesizing paired texts. Relating two sources on a topic and combining them while attributing evidence correctly. See comparing and synthesizing paired texts.

The thread through every skill: evidence and analysis

Two habits run through all six skills. The first is evidence: every reading of an informational text, a central idea, a claim's weakness, an inference, must be backed by a specific line, and the evidence-based two-part items make that line worth a point of its own. The second is analysis over summary: the test rarely stops at "what does it say," asking instead "how is it built and does it work," whether the evidence is sufficient, what a rhetorical choice does, how a structure advances the point. Reading for evidence and analysis ties the whole module together, and both habits feed straight into the extended-response essay.

How the informational skills are tested

• Multiple choice: the best statement of a central idea, the part an argument plays, the effect of a rhetorical or structural choice, one best answer.
• Multi-select: select the two details that support the central idea, or the two appeals an author uses.
• Evidence-based two-part items: Part A asks for the reading (central idea, inference, evaluation), Part B asks for the supporting line, and the two must agree.

How to study reading informational texts

1. Read nonfiction widely (news analysis, opinion, science and history writing) on unseen topics.
2. State the central idea of every text as a full sentence, and practice objective summary.
3. Sort and judge arguments. Separate claim, reasons, and evidence, then ask whether the support is relevant and sufficient.
4. Read choices for their effect. Connect every appeal and structure to what it does for the central idea or argument.
5. Drill inference plus proof on two-part items, and keep paired sources straight by noting each one separately.

For the official exam materials

ODEW publishes practice tests and information on the ELA II assessment and Ohio's Learning Standards. See the ELA II course resources page and the English language arts standards page. Always study from the current released materials, because the item types and standards are set by ODEW.