3-1 Reading Skills: Understanding

This group of reading skills focuses on understanding relationships between different parts of the text; between questions and the text; or on using certain features to locate information. These questions could ask you to locate specific information; recognize repetition; understand the order of events; discern connections between different parts of the text; and recognize certain terms through context, synonyms, and typographical style. Utilizing these skills will help you better understand the text and more accurately answer the questions.

Some textbooks provide definitions for new or unusual terms. In the CAEL Assessment, you may need to demonstrate that you can find the definition of a term in an academic text. Remember that these definitions are usually found after the first mention of the term in the book.

Here, you are explicitly required to define a term. Questions of this type may often by prefaced by "define" or "what is?".