Reading nonfiction texts: complete overview - Virginia EOC Reading nonfiction

Reading nonfiction texts is the second major skill area on the Virginia EOC Reading SOL. You meet unseen nonfiction passages, expository, argumentative, biographical, and historical, and analyze them through multiple-choice, technology-enhanced, and paired evidence questions. This site breaks nonfiction reading into five skills that together prepare you for any informational or argumentative passage. This overview maps the five skills, how the EOC tests them, and how to study them.

The five nonfiction-reading skills

Each skill is a way of analyzing an unseen nonfiction text.

• Central idea. Stating the main point as a full sentence, not a topic, and telling it apart from supporting detail. See determining the main idea.
• Inferences and conclusions. Reasoning from stated details to a supported conclusion, and choosing the best evidence. See making inferences and drawing conclusions.
• Text structure. Recognizing organizational patterns and explaining why a structure suits the author's purpose. See text structure and organization.
• Author's purpose and craft. Identifying purpose and point of view and reading craft choices for stance and effect. See author's purpose, craft, and point of view.
• Argument and evidence. Breaking an argument into claim, reasons, and evidence, and judging the support. See analyzing argument and evaluating evidence.

The thread through every skill: read for the point and prove it

The habit that runs through nonfiction reading on the EOC is reading past the surface facts to the point, and anchoring every answer in the text. The central idea is the claim the details support; an inference is a conclusion the details justify; a structure is a choice that serves a purpose; an argument is only as strong as its relevant, sufficient evidence. The low-scoring answer seizes on a topic word or a true-but-irrelevant detail; the high-scoring answer captures the main point and points to the evidence that proves it. The EOC's paired evidence items reward exactly this discipline.

How the EOC tests nonfiction reading

• Multiple choice asks for the central idea, an inference, a structure, or a craft effect, with distractors built from topics, single details, and overreaches.
• Hot text asks you to click the sentence that states the main claim or supports a conclusion.
• Drag-and-drop asks you to organize information by its structure.
• Fill-in-the-blank asks you to type a short answer.
• Paired evidence items ask for a conclusion, then which detail best supports it.

How to study nonfiction reading

1. Read widely (essays, articles, speeches, history) so unfamiliar topics do not throw you; the questions test reading, not content knowledge.
2. State the central idea as a sentence, then apply the umbrella test against the details.
3. Reason to inferences from the text, rejecting guesses and overreaches, and matching evidence to the conclusion.
4. Name structures and explain the choice, linking each pattern to the author's purpose.
5. Evaluate evidence on relevance and sufficiency, distinguishing fact from opinion and spotting faulty reasoning.

For the official exam materials

VDOE publishes the 2017 English Standards of Learning and SOL practice items on its website. See the 2017 English Standards of Learning and the SOL Practice Items (All Subjects) page. Always practice from released nonfiction passages and study the current standards, because the item types and scoring are set by VDOE.