Writers use supporting details to strengthen their claims, add relevant details, and provide examples that add to the persuasiveness of the passage. Three or four questions on each test ask you to identify these details.
The most important thing to remember about supporting detail questions is that they are also testing your ability to find the main idea of a passage because you can’t pick the right details unless you know what the main point is.
There are multiple ways that a supporting detail question could be phrased. For example:
For example:
A Tale of Two Cities is widely acclaimed as Charles Dickens’ best novel. Its iconic first paragraph introduces a series of contrasts that illustrate the human tendency to take extreme positions. What begins as a dramatic statement–”It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”-- becomes ironic by the end, almost as if Dickens was having trouble taking his own words seriously. For example, the second phrase, “…it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…” could be seen as a serious reference to the state of human knowledge at the end of the eighteenth century, but by the time Dickens says “we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way,” astute readers will sense that he is laughing a little at all the stark extremes that he has just listed.
Which quote from the first sentence of the novel would best support the writer’s point? sentence?
a. “…it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of despair…”
b. “…it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…”
c. “…it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…”
d. “…we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…”
e. “…we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…"
Answer: “…we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way…" is correct because “we were all going direct the other way” mocks the extremes that have come before it by extending to the afterlife, which is unknowable to the living. Here, Dickens is mocking the human tendency to believe in absolutes.
“…it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of despair…” is incorrect because it alludes to the terrible conditions that existed in France before the revolution.
“…it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness…” is incorrect because it is totalizing: all light or all darkness.
“…it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…” is incorrect because it illustrates the emotional extremes to which people are prone.
“…we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…” is incorrect because it echoes the other contrasts that precede it in the sentence.
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