How do you make an inference from a news passage?

• A. Read only the headline
• B. Copy the first paragraph as truth
• C. Use clues in the text and general knowledge to reach a reasonable conclusion not explicitly stated
• D. Ask a friend for interpretation

Answer: (C)

Inferring in news reading means drawing a reasonable conclusion by combining what the article explicitly states with what you already know or can reasonably assume from context. It’s about reading between the lines and using clues in the text to go beyond the exact wording.

To do this well, you look for hints, patterns, causes and effects, and subtle implications in the reporting. You check how the facts fit together and bring in your general knowledge to connect the dots in a way that makes sense and isn’t just repeating what’s written. Curiosity helps here—asking questions like what this implies for events next, or what might have influenced a particular outcome—and then testing those ideas against the rest of the article.

That’s why using clues in the text plus general knowledge to reach a reasonable conclusion not explicitly stated is the right approach. It relies on evidence from the reading and sensible reasoning, rather than taking things at face value or outsourcing interpretation to someone else.

Relying only on the headline isn’t reliable because headlines are crafted to grab attention and can oversimplify. Copying the first paragraph as truth ignores nuance and details that affect meaning. And asking a friend for interpretation doesn’t substitute for evidence from the text; it can introduce another person’s biases or incomplete reasoning.