Paragraph Comprehension Skills

Because reading is so important to most military service occupations, the ASVAB and AFQT are designed to measure a recruit's ability to grasp information from written texts. Understanding texts and following instructions is a regular part of any military service job. It is for this reason that the Paragraph Comprehension section of ASVAB is one of the elements of the AFQT score.

The paragraph comprehension test of the ASVAB is designed as a multiple choice format. The test taker is asked to read a passage or series of passages and then answer questions about what he or she has read.

All of the information you need to correctly answer the questions is contained in the paragraphs. However, you have to be able to locate the information you need, and the paragraphs are on a topic you may not have encountered before. The chosen paragraphs may be taken from literature, newspapers, or from a technical manual.

The best approach is to adopt a reading strategy that will help you answer the questions in the shortest amount of time. This does not mean you should skim or read swiftly over the material. It's better if you read the overall passage once and pick up the general idea, determine the type of information that is in the paragraph (technical or informational, for example), and then look at the questions. After looking at the questions, read the paragraph again, this time with a view toward finding answers to the questions beneath it. Now go back and answer the questions.

The tests you took in high school should provide you with some guidance about the types of questions you will find on the reading comprehension part of the ASVAB test. Reading comprehension questions are generally of some well-known types:

• Some questions ask you to pick out specific facts or details in the paragraph and to answer the questions using these facts and details.
• Some questions may ask you to identify the main theme or main idea of the paragraph. You will be given a series of multiple choice answers, and you must choose the one which best explains the main idea.
• A more difficult type of question is the "inference" question. This means that you will have to make a conclusion about some issue that is only related to the topic of the paragraph provided. You must use the information in the paragraph to help you form an opinion about some other related matter.
• Another common type of question is the vocabulary question in which you are asked about the meaning of certain words.