TEAS reading: craft and structure study guide

What this topic actually asks of you

Craft and structure is the second of the three Reading sub-content areas on the ATI TEAS. ATI publishes its size: it is 6% of the exam and 9 of the 39 scored reading questions. Reading is 26% of the 150 scored questions and is timed separately — 55 minutes.

Two things follow, and they shape how to study it.

• This topic asks about the writing, not the information. Key ideas asks what a passage says; craft and structure asks how it is said — what a word means in this sentence, what the writer is doing, who is speaking, how the passage is built, what a claim assumes. Nothing here is recall either, but the answer is a fact about the writing rather than a fact inside the passage.
• The wrong choices are misreadings of the same line. A distractor here is rarely nonsense: it is a real meaning of the word taken in the wrong sense, a purpose the sentence is not doing, a tone the wording does not carry, or a shape the passage does not have. Naming which of those happened is what turns a miss into a method.

Our practice items are single-answer and text-only. The real ATI TEAS also uses other item types: ATI's own content outline lists multiple-choice, multiple-select, fill-in-the-blank numeric, hot spot and ordered-response items. Elk Ridge Academy's practice items are single-answer only, and they carry no pictures or diagrams — a paired passage is written as two labeled lines of text, and nothing is drawn — so treat the method, not any one format, as the thing you are drilling.

How a practice item is laid out. The passage comes first, as body text; a blank line separates it from the question, which is the only part that is asking. Read the passage through once to hear how it is written before you read the question, then read the question, then go back — the question tells you which sentence to put under the microscope.

ATI's objectives for this topic. ATI's Content Outline names what this sub-content area measures, and every practice item below maps to one of them: R.2.1 distinguish between fact and opinion to identify misconceptions and biases · R.2.2 interpret the meaning of words and phrases using context · R.2.3 evaluate the author's purpose in a given text · R.2.4 evaluate the author's point of view or perspective in a given text. Tone and passage structure ship here as our own extension of R.2.3 and R.2.4 — ATI's objectives do not name them — and Craft and structure is the topic whose own name promises the structure items.

The eight procedures

Every practice item in this topic is one of these eight. Each is worked out in full below — the method, a worked example on its own short passage, and the trap it sets. (The ATI objective each one serves is in brackets.)

1. fact and opinion — what is stated, and what is judged [R.2.1]. Sort the sentences into the ones a reader could check against a record and the ones that pass judgment. The judgment words are the tell: should, wrong, stubborn, overdue, wasteful.
2. misconception or bias — the assumption under the claim [R.2.1]. Most arguments rest on something they leave unsaid; sometimes the premise is printed, and then the job is to see that the conclusion depends on it. Name that assumption, then find the finding that would break it. Bias is the same fault seen from the other side: a leaning the passage never admits, deciding what it counts and what it leaves out.
3. word meaning in context — the sense this sentence gives the word [R.2.2]. This one is a word meaning in context item, never a dictionary entry: the word is usually common and the sense is the surprise — a coat that sets, a quilt that rests, a surface that bleeds.
4. context clue — the words that decide the meaning [R.2.2]. Point at the clue instead of guessing: a definition, a restatement, a contrast, a cause, or an example.
5. author purpose — what the sentence is doing [R.2.3]. To inform, to warn, to recommend, to explain a process, to compare two accounts — and the sentence that proves which one it is.
6. point of view — who is speaking, and from where [R.2.4]. The letter writer, the yard owner, the officer who wrote the report; whose knowledge the passage is limited to, and whose side is never reported.
7. tone — the attitude carried by the wording [R.2.4]. Fond, dry, urgent, impatient, careful, admiring — read from the words on the page, never from the subject matter.
8. passage structure — how the passage is built [Craft and structure]. Chronological, cause then effect, problem then solution, concession then counterpoint — traced through the transition words and the order the sentences come in.

Reference tables: the methods to know cold

Table A — The eight procedures, and the question each one asks. The tag is what the practice bank labels the item; the middle column is the job; the right column is the wording that names it.

Table B — The seven kinds of wrong choice. Most wrong choices in this bank are one of these seven, and naming the kind is how you stop picking it.

Table C — A stated fact, or an opinion? The line is not "true or false"; it is checkable or judged.

The last row is the one that catches readers: a reported opinion is a stated fact about the speaker. The passage is telling you what someone said, and that much can be checked.

Table D — The five kinds of context clue. When the question asks what a word means here, it is really asking which of these the sentence is doing.

Table E — The author's purpose, and the sentence that proves it. Name the job from the sentence the passage spends its words on, never from the subject.

Table F — Tone, read from the wording.

A tone is carried by words, not by subject matter. A passage about a failing water main is not "angry" because its subject is bad news; it is impatient only when the words say so — a repeated again, a pointed still, or a demand for an explanation that never comes. Point at the words, or the tone you read is your own.

Table G — How a passage is built, and the words that show it.

Table H — Whose voice it is, and what the voice gives away. Point of view is found in the pronouns, and what a voice wants is found in the words it chooses.

Two structural clues do most of this work, and a third adds to them. A transition word is the hinge: it tells you how the sentence you are reading stands to the one before it — added to it, opposed to it, or caused by it. A pronoun — it, they, this, that, which — points back to its antecedent, the noun it stands for. A repeated key phrase — the same noun or verb coming back — is the third: it ties a later sentence to the idea the passage is pursuing. A question about what a which clause does is really a question about what which points at, so read the antecedent back into the pronoun before you answer.

Denotation, connotation, and loaded language. A word's denotation is the meaning a dictionary would print. Its connotation is the feeling the word carries beyond that — which is why thrifty and stubborn can describe the same decision while carrying opposite feelings. Loaded language is a word chosen for its connotation: call a rule stubborn rather than thrifty, call a delay overdue, and the judgment has arrived inside the noun, before the writer has argued for anything.

A five-step method for craft-and-structure items

1. Read once for the writing, not the information. You are not collecting facts; you are listening for how the passage is put together and where the writer stands. Where does it start, where does it turn, and what is the last sentence for?
2. Read the question, and name the procedure. Find the row of Table A that the question's wording points at — "most nearly means" is a word item, "which sentence shows the writer's attitude" is a tone item, "what does the closing claim assume" is a misconception item. Naming the procedure is half the item, because it tells you which tool to pick up.
3. Find the deciding line. Almost every item on this topic is decided by one sentence, and often by one word in it. Point at it before you look at the options. If you cannot point at a sentence, you have not found the answer yet, and you are about to choose by feel.
4. Answer in your own words, then read the choices. Say it plainly to yourself — the sense you would give the word, the job you would name, the tone you heard. Then look for the option that says that. If nothing matches, one option has moved what you said by a single degree, and now you can see which way it moved.
5. Fault each option with a kind name (Table B). Give every option one of the seven names, the ones you are rejecting and the one you are choosing. If you cannot fault the others, you are working on the wrong deciding line: go back to step 3.

Steps 3 and 5 are where the time goes, and they are the two that pay. Most options usually die quickly; the item is decided by the one that survives.

The eight worked examples

Each example below is a short passage written for this guide. None of them is a passage from the practice bank, and no bank item re-asks one of these questions. The pattern is the same every time: the passage, the question, the work, and the trap.

1. Fact and opinion — split what is stated from what is judged

The town's leaf collection ran for three weeks last autumn, the same as every year since 2011. Crews picked up bagged leaves on a Monday schedule, and the tipping fee at the yard rose by four dollars a ton in the spring. Paying the same schedule while the fee climbs is a slow way to spend a surplus, and the council has not explained why it is still collecting in the fourth week of November.

Question: Which sentence of this passage passes judgment on what the town did?

Worked: The first two sentences are a record: a three-week run, a Monday schedule, a four-dollar rise. Neither of them could be argued with by a reader holding the yard's invoices. The third sentence is the judgment — a slow way to spend a surplus is the writer's verdict on the arrangement, not a fact about it — and the second half of the third sentence adds a second complaint rather than a fact (has not explained is checkable only as "no explanation appears in the record"). The deciding line is the third: it is the only sentence that assigns a value.

Trap: The four-dollar rise is the option that looks most like an opinion because it feels like a complaint. It is a stated fact — a checkable figure — offered as a judgment. Test every candidate with the same question: could I look this up? If yes, it is not an opinion, however much the writer dislikes it.

2. Word meaning in context — let the sentence define the word

Before the binding goes on, the quilter squares the quilt: she lays a long ruler across each side and trims the edge with a rotary cutter. A quilt that is out of square will hang crooked no matter how well it is bound. Only then does she cut the strip that binds the edge — a strip long enough to wrap the layers and fold to the back, where she stitches it down by hand.

Question: As the passage uses the word, square means

Worked: The clue is in the sentence the word appears in, and it is a definition clue without the usual signal words: lays a long ruler across each side and trims the edge. To square a quilt here is to make its edges straight and at right angles before the binding goes on. The phrase out of square in the next sentence confirms it, because the consequence named is that the quilt hangs crooked — which is a statement about the edges, not about arithmetic.

Trap: The other sense of the word. Square also means to settle a debt or balance an account, and it means to raise a number to its second power in a math passage — both real meanings, neither one supported by a sentence about a ruler and a rotary cutter. When a common word is used in an unexpected sense, the wrong options are usually its ordinary senses, and they are usually true somewhere else. Read the sentence the word is in; that is the only dictionary that counts.

3. Context clues — find the words that decide the meaning

The stove's damper is left open a hand's width until the wood has settled into a bed of coals. A stove run on dry wood will bank its heat in the iron and give it back for hours; a stove loaded with green wood cannot, because the water in the wood takes the heat for itself.

Question: Which words show what it means to bank heat in this passage?

Worked: The deciding words are in the second sentence, and they are a contrast clue: the dry-wood stove gives it back for hours, and the green-wood stove cannot — because the water in green wood takes the heat for itself. Banking heat, then, is holding heat in the iron and releasing it slowly rather than letting it go up the flue. The answer is not a synonym for the word; it is the words that made the meaning visible, which is exactly why the question asks for words on the page.

Trap: Choosing a phrase that names the benefit instead of the clue. "Warmth lasting through the night" may be true of a banked stove, but nothing in the passage says it, and the question asked which words show the meaning. Point at the sentence, not at what you know about stoves.

4. Author purpose — ask what the sentence is doing

The county's permit form asks for the width of a driveway in feet and its distance from the road in tenths of a mile. Neither figure is on the deed, and neither can be measured without walking the property. Homeowners who have tried report a six-week wait after filing. A form that asks for two figures no one has, in two different units, is a form built to send work back.

Question: What is the writer doing in the passage's last sentence?

Worked: The first three sentences inform — the form's units, what the deed shows, what applicants report. The last sentence draws a conclusion about all of it: the two mismatched units and the missing figures are put together into a claim about the form's design. That is a judgment aimed at a process, so the purpose is to criticize the form rather than to explain how to fill it in. The proof sentence is the last one, and its language is the tell — built to send work back is a verdict, not a fact.

Trap: Wrong purpose. "To explain how to complete the form" is a real purpose a document like this could have — and this passage never gives a single instruction. Ask what the sentence adds: an instruction would help an applicant, and this sentence does not.

5. Point of view — find who is speaking and where they stand

I kept the shop open on the Saturdays the mall stayed shut, and I still do. The mall has four hundred parking spaces and a manager who sends out the notices. My counter holds three people and a jar of pencils. When the council asked the district which of us needed the sidewalk repaired first, the district wrote back about the mall.

Question: Whose point of view does this passage report?

Worked: The passage speaks in the first person — I kept, my counter — and the speaker's position is given in the same breath: a shop with three people in it, set beside a mall with four hundred spaces. Everything reported comes from inside the shop: the mall's notices, and one letter from the district. The mall's own account is never given, so the point of view is the shopkeeper's, and the reader is limited to what the counter can see.

Trap: Naming the district, because the last sentence is about the district's reply. The district is reported, not speaking — its letter is the last thing the shopkeeper saw, not the voice of the passage. Ask who is doing the talking, then ask what that speaker could not know.

6. Tone — read the attitude in the wording

The commission thanked the engineering firm for a report it had asked for twice, and scheduled the vote for the meeting after the next one, so that everyone would have time to read it. The report is eleven pages. It has been public since April.

Question: What do the last two sentences tell you about the writer's attitude toward the commission's reason?

Worked: The commission's reason is that members need time to read the report. The writer answers it with two flat facts and no comment: eleven pages, and public since April. Set beside a report the commission had to ask for twice and a vote set for the meeting after the next, those two facts are a joke delivered deadpan. The attitude is dry — mocking, or at least skeptical — and it is carried by the wording, not by the subject: the writer never says the delay is silly.

Trap: Reading the commission's polite language as the writer's. Thanked and so that everyone would have time belong to the commission; an option calling the writer grateful has borrowed the wrong speaker's tone. When a passage reports politeness, the report is not the attitude — the two short sentences around it are.

7. Passage structure — trace how the passage is built

A miller's day starts before the sun is on the water. First the headgate is opened a hand's width and the wheel is watched for a quarter turn, because a wheel started dry grinds its bearings. Then the stones are raised clear of each other and the grain is let into the eye. Only when the meal runs cool between finger and thumb is the feed slowed for the rest of the morning.

Question: How is this passage built?

Worked: Trace the transition words and the order they put things in: starts before the sun, First, Then, Only when … for the rest of the morning. Each sentence moves the morning forward, and the one reason in the passage — because a wheel started dry grinds its bearings — explains why a step is done in that order rather than introducing a problem. The shape is chronological: a process told in time order, with a reason attached to its first step.

Trap: Structure mismatch. A wheel started dry grinds its bearings sounds like a problem, so "problem then solution" is a tempting shape — but the passage never stops to fix a bearing; it tells you why the headgate is opened a hand's width. A problem the passage states and then drops is a detail, not the structure.

8. Misconception or bias — name the assumption under the claim

The city's compost program is judged by the tonnage it collects, and by that measure it has grown every year. The tally counts what residents leave at the curb. It does not count what those residents compost in their own yards or throw away, and it has never been adjusted for the three thousand households added since the program began. A program measured only by what it is handed will always look like a success.

Question: What does the passage's closing claim assume about the tonnage measure?

Worked: The claim is that a program measured only by what it is handed will always look like a success. The assumption under it is that the tally can only grow — that the three thousand added households alone keep pushing it up, whatever the residents do. The passage hands you the evidence directly: the tally ignores yard composting and trash alike, and it was never adjusted for the new households, so the number cannot show what residents actually composted. A year in which the total fell despite the new households would break the claim open.

Trap: Restating the passage instead of naming its assumption. That tonnage has grown every year is true and is not what the question asks. The question asks what the claim is built on, and a claim's foundation is usually something the passage does not say outright.

The traps, collected

Every one of these is a real item in this topic's practice bank, named so you can go and meet it. Sorted by kind, with the bank's own keys:

The nine traps, with the items that set them

• The other sense of a common word. A real meaning of the word, offered where the sentence needs the other one (r2-009, r2-010, r2-011, r2-040).
• The purpose the line is not doing. A plausible job for the passage, aimed at a line that is doing something else (r2-018, r2-022, r2-023, r2-024).
• The attitude the wording does not carry. Praise or contempt read into words that are neutral, or are saying the opposite (r2-041, r2-042, r2-045, r2-046).
• The shape the passage does not have. A real arrangement, offered for a passage built another way, with no signal for it in the text (r2-050, r2-052, r2-055, r2-056).
• True, and not what was asked. A line genuinely in the passage, standing in for the answer to a different question — a common wrong answer on this topic (r2-003, r2-007, r2-037, r2-062).
• The claim the passage never made. An intention, a motive or a comparison the text does not support (r2-026, r2-057, r2-060).
• The reversed claim. The passage's own fact with its direction turned around, which is hard to see because every word is familiar (r2-008, r2-029, r2-047, r2-059).
• The opinion read as a stated fact. Three true sentences and one judgment, asked in the other order, so the facts themselves are the trap (r2-001, r2-005, r2-006).
• The premise that does the work. The assumption a claim leans on, with the claim's own figures offered as the wrong answer (r2-059).

The walkthrough below takes the same traps one at a time, on the passage that sets them.

• The judgment that looks like a fact. r2-001 asks which choice is an opinion, and the most tempting wrong choice is the county moved the repair money to a road project — a checkable action. The opinion is the verdict on it: a wrong call. r2-005 sets the same trap at the word level: stubborn rather than thrifty is the judgment, and everything around it — the records, the glass, the second Tuesday — is checkable.
• The fact hidden among the feelings. r2-002 runs the same passage backwards: it asks which choice is a fact, and the wrong choices are the writer's views written in the flat register of facts (the county moved too slowly; the walkers deserve a repair the county pays for). A claim can be written in plain declarative prose and still be an opinion.
• The other sense of the word. r2-009 asks what supports means in a passage about a quilt, and the wrong choices are its everyday senses — agrees with, encourages, pays the cost of. The sentence supports only one: holds a loose flap of fabric.
• The clue mistaken for the definition. r2-033 asks which words define a draw-down. The definition is the four days each spring when the level is lowered; the towpath is closed and the water sits too shallow is the consequence of a draw-down, and it is the choice the eye lands on first. r2-039 plays the same trick with a pair of details: the point is the faulty plates are copied before they are filed, and every other instrument has been replaced twice is a true line about a different subject.
• The purpose named for the wrong sentence. r2-021 asks why one step says to turn two leaves over. Three choices name jobs that step is not doing — keeping the leaf's shape, keeping the leaves apart, letting the stem carry flowers. The step is about what shows on the finished sheet. r2-017 widens the same trap to the whole passage: three choices name a purpose for a guide that is only instructions (arguing that pressed plants should replace photographs, recalling the day a rare plant was found).
• The voice borrowed from a source. r2-025 asks who is speaking, and its wrong choices hand the memo a voice it never has — a slip holder writing in, a boatyard owner, a reporter — while the memo itself is the speaker. r2-026 is the mirror image: the yard owner's reply is the voice, and the harbor's own figures are the material it argues with.
• The tone read off the subject. r2-041's wrong choices are neutral facts from the same passage (the building is a single room with a stove and a pump), and the fondness is carried by someone oils the clapper every August. r2-042 offers the report arrived four years late — a fact that names the trouble without the joke — against which will surprise no one who has carried groceries two blocks.
• The structure named from a detail. r2-049 builds a failure, two failed repairs, a ready plan and a verdict; the wrong shapes are a question, then the district's answer, a list of causes, then a list of effects and two districts compared. r2-052 hides a concession in plain sight — That is not the city's fault — and the trap is to read it as a view the writer rejects (it offers the opinion the writer disagrees with) when the writer actually grants it.
• The assumption taken for the argument. r2-057 wants the belief the argument leans on (that the people who use a downtown are not all drivers); the wrong choices are things the passage never uses — honest answers, parking as the city's largest expense. r2-060 runs it the other way: which finding, if true, would weaken the complaint.
• The echo. A common wrong choice in this bank is the passage's own wording, quoted accurately and offered as an answer to a question it does not answer. When a choice reads exactly like the text, ask the question again and then read that choice last.

Answer-choice strategies: three moves for when the answer will not come

1. Read the end of the question first. These questions name their object in the last few words — which words show, how does the passage move, what does the closing claim assume. That tail tells you whether you are looking for a phrase, a shape, a tone or a belief, and it takes five seconds.
2. Say the answer in your own words before you read the choices, and keep saying it. If two choices look right, the difference between them is the item: one of them will have moved your sentence by a degree — a purpose switched, a tone sharpened, a shape exchanged. Ask which one still lets you point at the deciding line.
3. Fault the choice you are about to take, too. Name its kind as well. It should be faultless, and the act of naming is what catches the item you were about to hand back — the one where the correct answer was the facts are checkable and you had already talked yourself into a judgment.

How to practice this

Sixteen of the 63 items in this topic's bank are free — two for each of the eight procedures — and they carry a hint and the same seven kinds of wrong choice as the paid items; the paid items give no hint. They are the teaching set. Use them in this order:

1. Work the free items one procedure at a time. Two items each on fact and opinion, word meaning in context, context clues, author purpose, point of view, tone, passage structure, and misconception or bias. Take a pair, answer both, then read both explanations before moving on. Reading the explanation for the one you got right is what turns a lucky answer into a usable method.
2. Write the deciding line down — for every item, right or wrong. One line is enough: the sentence (or the words) you pointed at. If you cannot write one, you answered by feel, and that is the answer you will not be able to reproduce under time.
3. Name the kind that caught you. Keep Table B in front of you and tally the seven kinds as you miss them. When one name comes up twice, that is your next session's work — not more items, the same kind of item, slowly.
4. Practice on text you did not choose. An op-ed, a park sign, an appliance manual, a press release about a road project. For each one ask the eight questions in Table A, out loud, in one pass. This is the whole of the drilling for this topic, and it is free.
5. Time it the way it is timed. Reading gives you 55 minutes for 45 questions (39 scored and 6 unscored that you cannot tell apart) — about 73 seconds each, and this topic is roughly nine of those 39. Stop an item at the two-minute mark, mark it, and come back; a craft item that has not yielded by then is almost always waiting on one word you have not found.
6. Do not memorize a word list for this topic. The words are common; the sense this sentence gives them is the item. Drill the clue types in Table D instead of a vocabulary column.

One note on the size of the prize. At 6% of the exam this topic is the smaller of the two comprehension areas, and it should get the smaller share of your reading time. The method still pays across the whole section, because the same three moves — name the procedure, point at the deciding line, fault each option by its kind — are what a key-ideas item asks you to do as well.

What this guide covers, and what it does not

• It covers everything R.2.1 to R.2.4 name — fact and opinion, the assumption a claim rests on, word meaning in context and the context clues that decide it, author purpose, point of view and tone, and the passage-structure items this guide adds on our own account.
• It does not teach grammar, punctuation or the writing process — those belong to the two English sub-content areas — and it does not ask you to compute anything from a chart or a table; that belongs to math and to scientific reasoning.
• Comparing two texts, judging an argument's evidence and integrating two sources belong to Integration of knowledge and ideas (R.3), and the R.1 procedures — what a passage is mainly about, the detail that carries that point, and the order of events — belong to Key ideas and details (R.1). Nothing from those topics is re-taught here, and nothing here is re-taught there.
• The practice passages in this topic are original, written for this bank. ATI publishes no passage length and no passage count, and this guide claims neither.

Where to go next

• Next topic — Integration of knowledge and ideas
• The rest of the section — Key ideas and details and Integration of knowledge and ideas.

This topic sits inside the Reading section and carries ATI's published 6% of the exam and 9 of the section's 39 scored items — the blueprint's own split.