انواع سوال - جزئیات

Question Type: Detail

Our next question type is detail questions. These are exactly what they sound like. They ask about details. You need to find one piece of information in the text. It might be a sentence. It might be two sentences.

It might just be a couple of words, or one phrase. These are very common. There are two to four of them per passage, so they are high frequency. They are in fact almost as common as vocabulary questions. It’s possible that on your TOEFL, you’ll see more detailed questions than vocabulary questions.

Usually, there are more vocab questions, but they’re very similar, both are very, very common. You’ll have to find the fact in order to answer this correctly. That is, you’ll need to go back to the passage, and read it, and find the specific information that the question asks about. That information is usually just in one sentence or phrase.

Sometimes, it’s in two sentences, but if it is, those sentences are pretty close together. Usually, it will say in paragraph two, or according to paragraph five, or something like that, so you know exactly where to look. It’s also important to note that sometimes, there’s more than one answer. You’ll know this on your TOEFL because you’ll see boxes for answer choices.

If you see squares like this, and not circles, then it means there’s more than one answer. The instructions will also tell you if there is more than one answer like in this case. Okay. Let’s see an example.

Our sample question is using the lesson, Reading Sample Passage. So if you haven’t read that passage yet, please go back, watch that lesson, and read that passage, then come back. Now, here’s our question. According to the second paragraph, what is true of sexual reproduction in clonal plants?

Okay. On the actual TOEFL, we will be able to see the second paragraph next to the question. So, let’s see it. A clonal colony is a group of genetically identical individuals that have grown in a given location, all originating vegetatively, not sexually, from a single ancestor.

Notice the keyword here. We’re looking at sexual reproduction in clonal plants. And in paragraph two, we have this. That tells us that maybe the information is here. But if we read on, we’ll find those keywords again. We see more about clonal plants down here, and more about sexual reproduction in those plants.

So, maybe, we should be looking here. You’ll want to read both these sentence carefully, then come back to the question and select the answer that looks like either of these sentences. Okay. According to the second paragraph, what is true of sexual reproduction in clonal plants?

It inhibits the spread of new stems produced vegetatively. Well, this isn’t quite right, because we know that sexual reproduction makes new plants, which are not part of the colony. It doesn’t stop the colony from growing, it’s just that the new plants aren’t a part of it. So, that’s not it.

Without seeds, plants in a colony cannot be considered genetically identical. Okay. This looks good at first, but if we’re careful, we notice without seeds, so that would be plants which make clones. Plants in a colony cannot be considered genetically identical, that means that the clones are not identical and that’s not true.

The clones are identical. That’s the opposite of the truth. And in fact, plants in a colony cannot be considered identical. Well, if they’re in a colony, then they are identical. So this cannot be correct. As the resulting plants are not created via vegetative reproduction, they are excluded from the colony.

Okay. Via means through or by, using, and excluded means not included, not in. So the plants that come from sexual reproduction with seeds are not included in a colony. That sounds right.

That looks a lot like our second sentence from the paragraph that we thought might be our answer. So we’re going to keep this. Although possible, it is unlikely that the plant created will be a clone. This is simply not in the passage. Sexual reproduction does not create clones.

It creates a new different individual with genes from two parent plants. So that’s incorrect. And our answer then is C. All right. That’s all for detail questions.