How to Make Inferences from What You Read?

At some point in their academic life, students are presented with large bodies of texts along with some related multiple choice questions. These questions often ask you to make inferences regarding the text. Hence, to answer these questions correctly, the student must have some basic knowledge of the process of making inferences from the passage.

Making inference is a technique that requires you to use your knowledge to make a guess about what you do not know or to understand what is written between the lines. The idea of making inferences is to make reading easier, unchallenging, and comfortable.

Most smart, thoughtful, and active readers prefer making inferences while reading. Though this technique is complex but becomes easier with practice. Following are some techniques that will help students get an idea about how to make inferences while reading:

Here are some steps that a student can follow to make inferences from what they read.

Using Prior Knowledge

To make inferences you should use your previous knowledge or information. This can help you in better understanding the message, drawing conclusions, and making interpretations or predictions.

View the text

Once you have understood the question clearly, it is time to refer to the passage again. You will have to let go of all your previous knowledge and prejudice so that you can keep an open mind throughout the text. This will help you in selecting the right option with relevance to the text. Go through the passage. Trust the information of the text. Take out the clue from it. Learn as much as you can from the passage about the question. This step is crucial because it helps in building the basic knowledge to make an inference. The most important step while making inferences is to read the text given to you carefully and attentively to understand the whole message including the minor details hidden in the message. Read the text as many times as you can until it is fully clear to you.

List Relevant Details

The second important step for making inferences is to list out all the relevant details. Read the passage and then identify the clues that are related to the question. These clues could be anything from a character's behavior to dialogues, vocabulary, and descriptions.

Locating the Questions

The main idea behind making inferences is to answer a specific question hidden in the message. Some questions appear to be hidden in the body of the text. Carefully locate all five Wh- 'what, where, why, when, who and how', and try to answer them accurately.

Look For Patterns

After you have listed all the important supporting details, it is time to look for patterns and relationships between them. These connections between the details will indicate a pattern. You will be able to make inferences easily after you have recognized the patterns. This will also require some of your cognitive abilities other than the details to make the inference. Highlight the data or clues that you find relevant while reading. List this data and answer the questions accurately with its help.