Part 4 — Reading for Viewpoints

What you'll learn: how Part 4's opinion article plus reader comments is structured, how to track multiple viewpoints without mixing them up, and how to handle the comment-reply cloze section.

What Part 4 gives you

Part 4 is the longest and usually most time-generous part: an opinion-style article on a debatable topic (should employers allow remote work, should cities ban single-use plastics, is social media good for teenagers), followed by two or three reader comments responding to it — each with a distinct stance. A final section presents a new reader's comment with blanks and dropdown options, similar in format to Part 1's reply cloze but responding to the article's topic, not a personal letter.

The core challenge: keeping viewpoints straight

The reason this part is harder than it looks isn't vocabulary — it's tracking who thinks what. You'll have the original author's position, then two or three commenters, some agreeing, some disagreeing, some agreeing partially or for different reasons than the author. Questions frequently ask "Which commenter would most likely agree with the author?" or "How does Commenter 2's view differ from the author's?" — these require you to hold multiple positions in memory simultaneously, not just understand one passage.

A viewpoint-tracking method

1. Skim the article once and note the author's stance in one phrase: "for," "against," or "mixed/cautious," plus their main reason.
2. Read each comment and immediately label it relative to the author: agrees, disagrees, or partially agrees — and note why (comments rarely repeat the author's reason exactly, even when they agree with the conclusion).
3. Keep a simple mental (or scratch-pad) table: Author / Commenter 1 / Commenter 2 / Commenter 3 → stance + one-word reason.
4. Answer viewpoint-comparison questions directly from that table instead of re-reading each text.

Worked example

Article stance: for a four-day work week — reason: productivity data.

Comment 1: "I agree the results look promising, but I worry smaller companies can't absorb the transition costs the article barely mentions." → Partially agrees — agrees with the conclusion, disagrees on completeness of the argument (cost concern).

Comment 2: "This is exactly the kind of study that gets cited without being replicated. I'd want to see results from more industries before drawing conclusions." → Disagrees — skeptical of the evidence itself, not the idea in principle.

Question: "Which commenter raises a concern the article does not directly address?"

Both comments technically raise concerns, but Comment 1's cost concern is the one framed as something the article "barely mentions" — a gap in coverage — while Comment 2 challenges the quality of evidence already presented. If the question is specifically about a gap the article doesn't address, Comment 1 is the precise match; Comment 2 is a distractor because it responds to evidence the article does include, just disputing it.

Handling the reply-comment cloze

Same predict-before-you-look method as Part 1: read the full sentence around each blank, decide what logical connector or claim type fits (agreement, contrast, elaboration, request for more detail), then check it against the dropdown options — and against the stance the new commenter has established earlier in their own comment, since answers must stay internally consistent with the fictional commenter's position, not just grammatically correct.

Part 4 checklist

• Author's stance and reason captured in one phrase before reading comments
• Each comment labelled agree/disagree/partial with a one-word reason
• Comparison questions answered from the stance table, not re-reading
• Cloze blanks predicted for logic/tone before opening dropdown options
• Reply-comment answers checked for consistency with that commenter's own established stance

Common mistakes

• Assuming any commenter who criticizes something disagrees with the author outright — many criticize a detail while still agreeing with the conclusion.
• Losing track of which comment said what after reading three in a row without labelling them.
• Picking a reply-cloze option that sounds reasonable in isolation but contradicts the stance the commenter already stated earlier in their own text.

Recap

Part 4 is a viewpoint-tracking exercise as much as a reading one — label the author and every commenter's stance and reason as you go, and comparison questions become a lookup instead of a re-read. Treat the reply-cloze section as an extension of that commenter's already-established position, not a standalone grammar puzzle.