What Part 4 actually is
Part 4 carries ten of the 38 Reading marks, and the pages people study from cannot agree on what is even on the screen. One says an article plus a reader's comment. One says a four-paragraph article. One says two separate passages. Two of those are the wrong task.
The official description is specific: an article that includes two or more opinions about a community issue, then a short comment from a reader of that article, with blanks to fill in. Five questions on the article, five blanks in the comment. Register: "formal, complex: similar to a news article".
Getting the format right is the easy half.
The failure: answering the concession
Someone arguing in a news article rarely says only what they think. They grant something first, then say what they want. Part 4's wrong answers are harvested from the granting half. Three traps do most of the damage:
- Partial agreement. Someone accepts the problem but rejects the fix. An option can restate what they said, word-accurately, and still be wrong — it came from the concession, not the position.
- Attribution. Two or more opinion-holders means every view in the article is available as a wrong answer under the wrong name.
- Strength. An option states a firmer version of the right person's view than they held. They wanted a delay — the option has them wanting a cancellation.
A worked example (original AlmiWorld practice item)
Dr. Renata Vasquez, who advises the city on transportation, called the Mill Street lot "eleven thousand square metres of asphalt on the best riverbank in the region," and said the conversion should proceed on the schedule council has proposed. She allowed that some merchants would face a hard first season, but insisted the parking study showed the district's three parkades under half full on every day surveyed.
Colin Ferris, of the Mill Street Business Association, conceded that the lot is an unlovely piece of land few residents would defend on its merits. His objection is to the timing. The parkades Dr. Vasquez cites are a ten-minute walk from the north-end shops, he said, and he wants the conversion held back until a shuttle is running. "Nobody here is arguing for asphalt. We are arguing for a sequence."
Question: What is Ferris's position on the conversion?
- A. It should go ahead as scheduled, because the district's parkades are already underused.
- B. It should be delayed until transport to the north-end shops is in place.
- C. It should be abandoned, because the north-end shops depend on the lot.
- D. It is a poor use of land that few residents would defend.
B is correct — "his objection is to the timing", "held back until a shuttle is running", "we are arguing for a sequence".
A is the attribution trap. Every word is true of the article — none is true of Ferris. The parkade figures are Dr. Vasquez's, introduced by "insisted", and the schedule is hers. Scan for "parkades", take the sentence you land in, and you answer the wrong person.
C is the strength trap. Right direction, too far. Ferris wants the conversion held back, not abandoned, and says outright that nobody is arguing for asphalt. An option that turns "later" into "never" is wrong even when the direction is right.
D is the partial-agreement trap, and it catches good readers. It accurately reports a sentence Ferris said — but he said it in a concession, and a concession is what you give away before stating a position. The question asked what he wants done. D answers what he will admit.
The other half: five blanks that have to stay loyal
The reader's comment is a different task. It asks whether your sentence stays consistent with the positions in the article. Several options will be grammatical. One keeps the commenter agreeing with the person they are agreeing with.
Dr. Vasquez's parkade figures are hard to argue with, but they are district-wide numbers. Mr. Ferris is not disputing them. He is saying they ________ the north end, where the walk is longest.
- A. do not describe
- B. have overstated
- C. were disproved in
- D. do not matter to
All four fit the grammar. A is correct. B and C make Ferris attack the figures, and the sentence before the blank says he is not disputing them — a commenter contradicting himself. D takes Ferris's side but overshoots into the strength trap: the article has him accepting the study and questioning its reach, not waving it away.
Signal phrases: reading opinion in prose
Concession markers — what follows is not the position. granted · admittedly · to be fair · it is true that · no one denies that · while X is real · of course. Downstream of these sits a candidate wrong answer.
Reversal markers — the position starts here. but · yet · still · even so · that said · the trouble is · his objection is to · what worries her is. Read the sentence after the pivot first.
Hedges — calibrate strength. may · might · tends to · in most cases · largely · for now · up to a point · not yet. A hedged claim cannot license an absolute option (always, never, only, must).
Attribution verbs that carry a stance. These do half the work for you:
- conceded, allowed that, acknowledged, admitted — a concession. Do not answer from it.
- insisted, maintained, argued, urged, stressed — the real position.
- suggested, noted, wondered whether, floated — held weakly. A firm option misrepresents it.
- dismissed, rejected, disputed, countered — opposition, usually to a named other view.
Ownership scaffolding — who owns the sentence. the figures Vasquez cites · for his part · critics of the plan say · she went further. Losing ownership for one sentence is how a correct fact becomes a wrong answer.
The shape that works
- Read the whole article once at news-article pace before touching a question.
- Name the opinion-holders and write one line each: what they want, not what they think.
- Mark the pivot in each paragraph. Everything before it is concession territory.
- On each question, ask "whose view is this option?" before "is this option true?"
- Check strength last — compare the option's verb to the article's verb.
- Read the reader's comment through before filling any blank — consistency needs both sides.
What actually costs you the mark
- Answering from the concession. The most common Part 4 error, and it feels like success.
- Matching a keyword and taking the sentence it landed in. That selects the wrong person's view.
- Upgrading "delay" to "oppose", "some" to "most", "rarely" to "never".
- Treating the reader's comment as five vocabulary questions rather than one argument.
- Leaving a blank. No points are deducted for wrong answers, so an unanswered item is a chosen zero.
- Drifting. Reading is timed per part, the test advances by itself, and you can't go back.
Try one
[Try Reading Part 4 →] — one full task, marked, no card required.