Learn to draw inference from what the passage suggests

A passage may not always come out and state its meaning and purpose. We may have to dig for it!

We all have seen passages of text followed by a bunch of questions.

One such question may be to find the author’s meaning or the passage’s conclusion.

While such meaning or conclusion may be specified, mostly, they are not laid out in passages. So we must draw an inference.

“Inference” means ‘connecting the dots’ to draw a conclusion about the passage.

Inferences are made by putting multiple clues together.

We must use the information presented in the text as our starting point.

We look for keywords in the text that give us little hints or clues of a hidden meaning.

Using our background / world knowledge, we fill in the gaps to arrive at the inference.

We can use a four point mind-map to help us get the author’s inference.

Let us go through a passage to understand this better.

Read the following passage and try to arrive at its inference (or what the author implies) using the mind map.

Let’s put our mind-map to work!

See that similar (depressing) words are contrasted with joyful and motivating words.

While the passage doesn’t say so, but we know a few things about it generally.

It looks like whenever the narrator feels dull, he heads out to the sea.

Bringing the information together, we have...

Let’s see if we can choose the correct option from the possible inferences of the passage.

If you chose inference 4, then you chose the correct one! Due to some reason, the narrator is going to the sea-side.

So now, our complete mind map will look like this.

Thus, we were able to extract the implication or inference from the passage.

Let’s recap!

Inference may not be directly stated in the passage.

We have to understand what is implied in the passage or what the author wishes to state.

That's all folks!