Part 4: Reading for Viewpoints
Several named people disagree about a local decision, then a reader comments underneath. Understanding the argument is not enough, because every position here belongs to somebody.
The article and the comment
Part 4 is an article from a website, roughly 450 to 600 words, about a decision some Canadian town is arguing over. A bylaw. A pilot programme. A budget line. A proposed closure. Three or four people are quoted by name, they disagree, and one of them is usually an outside expert brought in to say that everybody is a little bit wrong.
Ten questions follow, in two blocks. Questions 1 to 5 are sentence stems about the article. Questions 6 to 10 are five blanks inside a comment posted underneath the article by a reader, which introduces a fifth voice with its own partial agreements. You get about 12 minutes, the most generous ratio in the section, and you will use all of it.
It is the largest single block of questions in Reading, ten of the 38, and the one candidates most often name as their worst. What makes it hard is not the language. The vocabulary in a Part 4 article is ordinary municipal English about ordinary municipal things.
Understanding the article is not sufficient
This is the sentence that separates Part 4 from everything else in the section. In Part 3 a fact is either in paragraph C or it is not. In Part 4 every fact belongs to somebody, and the question is almost never just what was said. It is who said it, whether they meant it, and whether the person who conceded it thereby changed their mind.
You can follow the whole argument, find it interesting, agree with the sensible one, and still lose four marks because you remembered a position without its owner.
That is also exactly how the distractors are built, and it makes them cheap to manufacture. The test writer does not need to invent a wrong opinion. There are already four or five real opinions on the page, and moving one of them onto a different speaker produces an option that is true, familiar and wrong. The critic's cost objection appears under the champion's name. The expert's caution is handed to the sceptic. Every one reads as something you definitely saw, because you definitely did.
Build a ledger while you read
The defence is a short written record built during the read rather than after it. Name, position in three words, and one detail that is theirs alone. Three or four lines, about twenty seconds of work inside a twelve minute part.
It looks like this in practice. Sorensen: wants the bylaw, argues from the hydro bill. Detail, a third of the light goes upward. Devereux: wants dark skies, opposes this bylaw, objects to the costing. Detail, no supplier would confirm the price. Achenbach: not opposed, wants proof before anything is removed. Detail, the marina lot. Trottier: outside expert, takes no side. Detail, surveyed a number of municipalities.
Now read those four lines and notice how much is already decided. Who worries about safety? Achenbach, and only Achenbach, so any option putting that worry in Devereux's mouth dies on sight. Does Trottier think the bylaw should pass? The ledger says she takes no side, so any option in which she recommends something is gone before you reread a word.
The unique detail matters as much as the position. Positions overlap between speakers and details rarely do, so the detail is what lets you tell two people apart when both of them broadly want the same thing for different reasons.
Write a four line ledger as you read the article: name, position in three words, one detail that belongs to nobody else. Twenty seconds of work disarms most of the ten questions, because most Part 4 distractors are a real position filed under the wrong name.
The three recurring roles
The critic is not against the goal. This is the most reliable misreading in the part. The person who objects almost never objects to the aim. They object to the costing, the schedule, the consultation, or the honesty of the pitch. Part 4 articles routinely open the critic's quotation with a concession precisely so that the option saying he does not want the streets safer can catch a fast reader.
The expert does not vote. The outside expert exists to complicate, not to settle. They typically endorse one side's facts, reject that side's conclusion, and decline to say what should be done. Options that make the expert announce a verdict or recommend an outcome are among the most dependable wrong answers in the section.
The local voice has a practical worry, not a position. The resident, the shop owner or the operations manager usually wants one specific thing addressed and is indifferent to the wider argument. Options that recruit them to a side are usually overreach.
Knowing the roles does not answer the questions for you, but it tells you what to watch for while reading, which is what makes a twenty second ledger possible instead of a three minute one.
Treat any option in which the outside expert recommends an outcome as wrong until the article proves otherwise. Experts in Part 4 articles endorse facts, reject conclusions and decline to vote.
Concessions move facts without moving positions
Watch every sentence of the form she does not dispute that or he accepts the figures but. A concession moves a fact across the aisle without moving the argument, and it is the single richest source of distractors in the part.
After a concession, the same fact can be found in two mouths facing opposite directions. The critic now agrees that the savings are real and still opposes the scheme, because their objection was never about savings. An option that says the critic accepts the savings is true. An option that says the critic therefore supports the scheme is the trap, and the two options will sit next to each other.
The habit that catches this is to hold position and fact separately in the ledger. A shared fact is not a shared conclusion. When an option joins the two with a word like so, therefore or and now supports, check that the article actually made that move rather than merely making the concession.
The comment, and the fifth voice
Questions 6 to 10 sit inside a comment posted by a visitor to the page. The commenter is a new voice who usually agrees with one person in part and disagrees in part, so you now have four or five positions to keep straight instead of three.
Add the commenter to the ledger before you fill a single blank, on the same terms as everybody else: position in three words, one detail that is theirs. Then, for each blank, ask which article voice this sentence is really about. The commenter is very often defending somebody against a misreading, which means the blank is constrained by what that person actually said rather than by the commenter's own view.
And as everywhere in this section, the second text does not contain its own answers. Every blank in the comment is settled by a line in the article. If you can fill it from the comment alone, you have been caught by a distractor that was designed to be fillable that way.
Budget about three minutes for the article and the ledger, four for the five stems, and five for the comment. The comment is slower per question than the stems, which is the reverse of how most candidates spend the part.
When an option says someone conceded a point and therefore changed position, separate the two claims. Concessions are common in these articles; changes of position are rare, and the gap between them is where the marks are.
Practise it
Five questions on the viewpoints part: attribution, the standard cast, and what concessions actually mean.