How Reading Comprehension works
Each passage is followed by several multiple-choice questions, and the Air Force says no outside knowledge is needed: everything you need is in the passage. Passages are written in the style an officer reads at work, on policy, history, science, technology and leadership.
The questions fall into five kinds: what the passage is mainly about, what it says about a detail, what can be inferred from it, what a word means in its context, and why the author wrote it.
The computer test allows 24 minutes. The 2014 paper form allowed 38, so older guides give a pace that is too slow.
How to read for the questions
With a passage and several questions sharing one clock:
- Skim the questions on a passage first, so you read knowing what to look for.
- Read the passage once at a steady pace, noting in a word what each paragraph does.
- For a detail question, find the sentence before you look at the options.
- For an inference, choose the option that must be true from the passage, not the one that might be true or that you know to be true.
- For a word-in-context question, put each option in place of the word and reread the sentence.
Worked example
A short passage: “The base library extended its opening hours in March. Visits rose by a third over the following two months, but most of the increase came on weekday evenings, while weekend visits barely changed.”
“Which statement is best supported by the passage? (A) The longer hours were popular mainly with weekend visitors. (B) Weekday evenings accounted for most of the new visits. (C) The library will extend its hours again. (D) Visits tripled after March. (E) Weekend opening hours were reduced.” Only B follows from the passage. A contradicts it, D misreads “a third”, and C and E may be true but nothing in the passage says so.
Tips for the real subtest
- Pace by passage, not by question: divide the 24 minutes by the number of passages and keep to it.
- Distrust options that use always, never, all or only unless the passage does.
- If time is nearly up, answer the remaining questions anyway. There is no penalty, and blanks are not allowed.
- Practise on dense non-fiction, such as policy briefs and long magazine articles, at a timed pace.
Practise Reading Comprehension on CogniPrep
Our Reading Comprehension game gives you 25 questions in 24 minutes: five passages of a few hundred words, five questions on each, with the passage on screen while you answer. You can move back and change answers until time runs out. Your result is the number right, broken down by question type, with a comparison with other CogniPrep users rather than an AFOQT percentile.