General Education Drills Practice Test

In reading, inferring means drawing a conclusion from clues the author provides, even when the exact idea isn’t stated outright. It’s about putting together hints from the text—like actions, dialogue, descriptions, and tone—to understand what the author implies. That makes deduce the best match, because deduce and infer both mean arriving at a conclusion from evidence in the text. For instance, if a character avoids others, speaks softly, and keeps glancing toward the door, you can infer they’re anxious about something, even if the story doesn’t say it directly. Explaining would be clarifying why something happened, often based on explicit details; memorizing is just remembering information; applying is using knowledge in a new situation. So deduce fits best as the synonym in this reading context.