How to increase your inference power

Very recently a friend of mine complained to me of his incapacity of understanding and comprehending English passages. He could easily solve questions that required direct interpretation of the passage, but he failed when it came to inference of the thoughts of the author. I thus developed some techniques to increase the inference power.

Tips for increasing your inference power

    Inference power can be increased only with practise. But there are certain techniques which you can successfully employ in your normal reading practices everywhere and which can yield you better results.

• Go Slow

              When you get a passage to read, I would advise to go slow through it. Especially when you have a tough passage to read, you must always go very slowly through it. The reason for this is that when you read slowly, your mind gets enough time to comprehend the sentences of the passage. A fast reader easily misses out the hidden inferences of the passages, and thus is at a loss to comprehend it completely.

      Consider this passage:

     
He rode with all his speed to the south. The rain beat against his face. On the grounds were little muddy pools and muddy water splashed from them as the horse galloped by. The plains gave way to great grasslands called Truvam grasslands flanked by the Forests of Rangorn on either lateral side. He rode further and came to a great river, River Krunos, the river that sustained life on Medieval Earth. Though the rain was heavy, River Krunos remained mild. The waters were shallow but swift. But for a horse from the lands of the Morlocks, it could pose no threat. The horse crossed it and galloped with all possible speed. Emansur, by now, was completely drenched. He noticed little of the surrounding. He longed to get back to his cozy palace, but he rode on, because he desired to find the token of power to lead his people.

     [Extract from : The Seven Battles for the Triam - The Dethroning of the King]

            This is a relatively easy passage. Now read it fast and think what did you get out of the passage. As of me, I got the following inferences:

• A character's movement
• Description of the character's surroundings
• Character's longing to get back to his home but a desire of so called 'token of power' did not allow him to return to his place
• Galloping of the horse of the character

                 These are just some of the many things which you can see in the passage. Now read it a bit slowly, letting each sentence absorb in your mind. You must try to think what the author means by these descriptions and if they have an inferred meaning. When I read it slowly, some interesting thoughts came in my mind:

1. The weather is stormy and the descriptions include the 'muddy water pools' and the 'shallow but swift river water'. It sets a negative tone to the passage, which means I can guess that the passage following this one may speak of some evil thing.
2. The character is in immense hurry. How ? Did you read this phrase: "galloped with all possible speed". The rider has to command the horse. If the horse just gallops, then it is fine. But here the horse gallops with 'all possible speed', which means the rider has commanded the horse with its reins to gallop at the greatest possible speed and it shows he must be in a great hurry.
3. The character must be desperate. His hurry and his errand in such a stormy weather where he was 'completely drenched' shows that he is desperate to reach his destination.
4. However, the character never wants to take up that errand save for desire. The passage says, 'he longed to get back to his cosy palace' but his desire made him take that errand.
5. And the last and the most important thing, there is no cohesion in the para at all. Did you notice, the focus shifts from the weather to the river to the horse and finally to the motive of the character's errand. This means the author wanted quick transition from one description to another and display a sense of urgency in the para.

Did you get these points in your reading? Well if you did, then you are already beginning to increase your inference power. But if you missed many of them, you can say the sentences failed to penetrate your mind. Practise and it shall improve.       

•   Try to work it out

    When it comes to passages, be it a descriptive or a narrative or a scientific, you must always try and relate the sentences of the passages with one another. Remember, the author always tries to maintain a constant flow of ideas between different sentences. For example- consider this sentence:

                  ..... He got lost in that city. He wandered through the lanes, and gazed in awe at the skyscrapers. ....

        Let me now ask you a question. If there is a sentence preceding 'He got lost in that city.' , what could the sentence be ? The probable options can be - 'Having been separated from his group and being new to the city' or 'Since he knew nothing of the geography of the city' or anything which depicts that he was unknown to the place.

        Now if you ask me, I would rather refuse to go with these or anything of their sorts. On the other hand, I would choose 'A village boy as he was,' or 'Since he knew nothing of the life of big cities,' or anything which brings out his ignorance of the luxuries of the city instead of his separation from his guide or his ignorance of the geography of the place. Now the question arises, Why ? For that, let us consider some points-

         

       Reading this sentence- 'He got lost in that city' brings instantly to the mind the thought that the boy was probably new to the city or was a tourist who got separated from his group or something like that. For a while, let us consider this as the original sentence. Now we read the next sentence, 'He wandered through the lanes, and gazed in awe at the skyscrapers.' In my mind, a question arises- if, in general, a person gets lost in a new city, why would he/she wander in the streets and gaze in awe at the skyscrapers. He/She must instead find some way of meeting his/her lost tourist group or do something like asking for directions to the police station. For these, I expect the author to include words like- alarmed, fear, desperate, or something which denotes a sense of urgency in the situation. I would never expect the author to write words like- awe, mesmerised, or anything that denotes a spontaneous, good response from the character, and that too in a situation of urgency.

       Thus the basic thought is that- the adjacent sentences always support the tone and the purpose of each other. A group of sentences are always in a form of cohesion. No sentence would ever go astray from the basic tone and idea of the para.

•       Avoid Distractions

            This might seem an unlikely point; but actually this is one of the most important when it comes to increase your inference power. This is because in absence of distractions, the mind can easily comprehend the sentences which your read and relate them as well. But when there are many distractions- like noises, music, talks etc. the mind can easily go astray. In such a condition, you may be able to only read the different parts of the passage but would, in most of the case, fail to comprehend and relate the parts and discover the hidden inferences in them. Thus when it comes to reading, always read in a quiet atmosphere to increase your inference power.

•          Get Involved

            Ask yourself a question- when you read, do you simply read ? Or do you do something else apart from reading. If you have the answer, well and good; but if you don't, try finding the answer by reading the following:

          Returning from the stables, Emansur again knocked. This time the door opened slightly and a beam of yellow light fell on the floor before Emansur. Emansur pushed the door and it opened with a creaking sound. The light flooded out and illuminated the thickets and the bark of huge trees near the house. Emansur got in and shut the door behind him. When he looked around, he saw not a single soul there. He concluded that the forger had gone out. But why did he leave his door open? Did he expect the King to drop in at his house at the dark hour, in the heavy storm? For such things, Emansur had no time. He went straight to the forger’s workplace. There was a fireplace where a bright fire was burning. Close to the fireplace, lay the tools of the forger. On the mantle lay a block of a metal unknown to Emansur. But he could say that all the tools of the royal house were forged of it. He quickly sat down to work. Outside the wind and rain beat against the window. The glass pane clattered. The fire from the fireplace warmed Emansur’s feet and hands. But he, oblivious to everything, never took his eyes from the tools.

        [Excerpt from- The Seven Battles For the Triam- The Dethroning of the King]

          Have you read and understood ? Now try to get involved with the passage. Imagine yourself to the author; now you are given the task of predicting what came before the passage and what comes after the passage. 

Before the passage:

                             When the passage is read, it is found that the the passage takes place in some forger's house. But surprisingly, the owner of the house is not present. Instead, another character is present there. Some important points that may help in predicting the earlier passage may be:

• The very first line, 'Returning from the stables'- this would definitely mean there must be information in the earlier passage about the character moving to the stables. 
• The phrase- 'Emansur again knocked' means that the character had already knocked before going to the stables. So this information must be there in the previous passage.
• Also a sense of failure of the character's attempt comes to mind when the line is read- 'This time the door opened slightly'. It conveys the thought that in the preceding passage, when the character knocked at the door, nothing happened. This detail must also be there in the previous passage.
• The sentence- 'Outside the wind and rain beat against the window' may denote their inclusion in the preceding para. I say may as it is not clear whether the stormy conditions were already present when the character knocked and went to the stables or the rain and wind started when the character started his work. But wait ??? Did you read another sentence- 'Did he expect the King to drop in at his house at the dark hour, in the heavy storm?' It means the storm was already there when the forger had gone out of his house, way before the arrival of the King at his place. This concludes that the inclusion of this information must be there in the preceding para.
• Rest of the information is about the house itself, so it won't find any reference in the previous para.

                       Now since we have thought of the points, lets have a look at the original previous para from the novel itself:

       Emansur reached the forger’s house. He knocked. Outside the wind howled and doors of other houses banged against their posts due to the heavy wind. Lightning flashed in the sky and a heavy darkness fell all around. The wind raced through the high trees and they moved monstrously like huge giant shadows in the darkness. Emansur’s horse neighed loudly. The sound travelled all around and died in the distance. Emansur led his horse inside the stables and the rain kept on banging against the stony path and the walls of the houses.

                [Extract from: The Seven Battles For the Triam: The Dethroning of the King]

After the passage:
             
                  Now what can be the succeeding para. Well, in a generalised tone; the descriptions of the weather and all, won't find a place in the succeeding para. Since the focus has now shifted to the events inside the forger's house; thus the succeeding para must talk about the work of the character- either of the work's completion or its duration. Lets try and guess:

• I can find no information from the passage which may help me with my guesses. Can you ? Well, if you can't, then lets think of the transition of the paras. The transition from one para to another is always a spontaneous flow of events. To me, the last line- 'But he, oblivious to everything, never took his eyes from the tools.' simply means that the author never wants to speak of how the work was accomplished. This is because- there are descriptions of the house of the forger. As the first sentence of the work was introduced- 'He quickly sat down to work'; the flow was deliberately broken by the author and another idea was introduced by writing- 'Outside the wind and rain beat against the window.' I would have expected the author to write about how the character works. But the author wrote about the weather outside.
•  'But he, oblivious to everything, never took his eyes from the tools.'  Here we get an idea of the concentration of the character; but no idea of how the task of the character is going on, Thus we may conclude that there must be no information of how the character completed his work.
• If there is no information of how the work is completed, then there must be information about the completion of the work as a whole- to maintain a spontaneous flow of ideas.
• The character was forging, wasn't he ? There is no information in the para whether he was forging or not. But common sense says that if the character is doing some work in the house of a forger, he would be forging. Thus if there is information of the completion of the work, there must be some information of what the work was. You see, in both the above paras, the author has not included what the work was. Thus for a logical sequence and transition to a whole new set of idea; there must be some reference to the work. And since the description of the motive of the task is not in the above two paras, it must be in the third one.  

                After hours of working, he finally kept the tools aside and looked in amazement at the thing he had created. A round thing it was, with sharp pointed spikes on its circumference and a blue gem in its centre. The spikes were of gold. Around the blue gem, there was a circular disc made of gold. There was a small hole at the aperture of the gold disc and the spikes through which a small chain could be passed. In a nutshell, it looked like a small gold and queer locket.

     [Extract from: The Seven Battles For the Triam: The Dethroning of the King]

        So these were few methods to increase one's inference power. They have proved beneficial in increasing the inference power of many. Try to incorporate them next time you read anything, and see the effects yourself. You can share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below. 

About Nimish Mishra

Nimish is an avid lover of learning. Being a student, he himself takes up learning from the web. He is particularly interested in Sciences, Computers, and Research(researching in his little lab at his home). He has made a game on a non-programming interface, some android apps for his smartphone, and models on 3D modelling softwares. He has done sensible research on space-time and on applied mathematics. He has also written a novel.

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