Negative factual information question example

  • Read the paragraph

The cinema did not emerge as a form of mass consumption until its technology evolved from the initial “peepshow” format to the point where images were projected on a screen in a darkened theater. In the peepshow format, a film was viewed through a small opening in a machine that was created for that purpose. Thomas Edison’s peepshow device, the Kinetoscope, was introduced to the public in 1894. It was designed for use in Kinetoscope parlors, or arcades, which contained only a few individual machines and permitted only one customer to view a short, 50-foot film at any one time. The first Kinetoscope parlors contained five machines. For the price of 25 cents (or 5 cents per machine), customers moved from machine to machine to watch five different films (or, in the case of famous prizefights, successive rounds of a single fight).

  • Read the question and answer options:

According to the paragraph, all of the following were true of viewing films in Kinetoscope parlors EXCEPT:
    1. One individual at a time viewed a film.
    2. Customers could view one film after another.
    3. Prizefights were the most popular subjects for films.
    4. Each film was short.

Negative factual information questions are opposite to factual information questions. They ask you to identify false information, something that hasn’t been mentioned in the text or is not true. In this example, we can see that it’s option (3) – “Prizefights were the most popular subjects for films” that hasn’t been mentioned. We can see all the other options in the paragraph:

The cinema did not emerge as a form of mass consumption until its technology evolved from the initial “peepshow” format to the point where images were projected on a screen in a darkened theater. In the peepshow format, a film was viewed through a small opening in a machine that was created for that purpose. Thomas Edison’s peepshow device, the Kinetoscope, was introduced to the public in 1894. It was designed for use in Kinetoscope parlors, or arcades, which contained only a few individual machines and permitted only one customer to view a short, 50-foot film at any one time. The first Kinetoscope parlors contained five machines. For the price of 25 cents (or 5 cents per machine), customers moved from machine to machine to watch five different films (or, in the case of famous prizefights, successive rounds of a single fight).

Negative factual information questions usually contain phrases like “which of the following is NOT true?” or “The author mentions all of the above EXCEPT”