Part 1. Definition
This task is about reading the given passage and construct a question about the information present in the passage. Construct a question in such a way that (i) it is unambiguous, (ii) it is answerable from the passage, (iii) its answer is unique (iv) its answer is a continuous text span from the paragraph. Avoid creating questions that (i) can be answered correctly without actually understanding the paragraph and (ii) uses same words or phrases given in the passage.
Part 2. Example
Passage: The French and Indian War (17541763) was the North American theater of the worldwide Seven Years' War. The war was fought between the colonies of British America and New France, with both sides supported by military units from their parent countries of Great Britain and France, as well as Native American allies. At the start of the war, the French North American colonies had a population of roughly 60,000 European settlers, compared with 2 million in the British North American colonies. The outnumbered French particularly depended on the Indians. Long in conflict, the metropole nations declared war on each other in 1756, escalating the war from a regional affair into an intercontinental conflict.
Answer: When was the French and Indian War?
Explanation: This question is based on the following sentence in the passage- The French and Indian War (17541763) was the North American theater of the worldwide Seven Years' War. It is a common convention to write (start year-end year) beside a historical event to understand when the event happened. You can ask questions like this one about dates, years, other numerals, persons, locations, noun phrases, verb phrases, adjectives, clauses etc. which exist in the paragraph.
Part 3. Exercise
Along with secular matters, readers also favoured an alphabetical ordering scheme over cumbersome works arranged along thematic lines. The historian Charles Porset, commenting on alphabetization, has said that "as the zero degree of taxonomy, alphabetical order authorizes all reading strategies; in this respect it could be considered an emblem of the Enlightenment." For Porset, the avoidance of thematic and hierarchical systems thus allows free interpretation of the works and becomes an example of egalitarianism. Encyclopedias and dictionaries also became more popular during the Age of Reason as the number of educated consumers who could afford such texts began to multiply. In the later half of the 18th century, the number of dictionaries and encyclopedias published by decade increased from 63 between 1760 and 1769 to approximately 148 in the decade proceeding the French Revolution (17801789). Along with growth in numbers, dictionaries and encyclopedias also grew in length, often having multiple print runs that sometimes included in supplemented editions.
Answer:
What ordering scheme did readers prefer?