Whole-passage questions ask what the text accomplishes across its beginning, middle and ending. A sentence can be true and still be too narrow to summarize the passage. First identify the central problem; then explain how the author develops or changes it.
Reason through the task
Read each paragraph for its job: introducing a concern, giving an example, questioning an assumption or qualifying a proposal. Combine those jobs into a brief account of the movement. Compare an answer with the ending as well as the opening. A conclusion often preserves a limit that a confident-sounding choice erases. Prefer the answer that explains why the main stages belong together, without adding a result the writer never establishes.
Worked example and a tempting error
Original example: a town tests a bicycle lane. Travel times fall on a quiet Saturday, but residents question weekday deliveries. The final paragraph proposes a longer trial including delivery hours. The main purpose is to describe promising preliminary evidence and the broader test still needed. “Prove bicycle lanes reduce every journey” ignores the sampling limit. “Explain why the lane should be abandoned” invents rejection. “Describe Saturday traffic” is accurate but omits the question and follow-up that give the description its point.
Try a different case
Transfer: a narrator initially calls a neighbor unfriendly, notices that the neighbor quietly repairs a shared gate, and ends by asking to help. Which summary fits: the neighbor changes character, or the narrator revises a judgment through observed work? The second fits. Nothing establishes a change in the neighbor. The changed interpretation connects the original assumption, the practical observation and the final invitation.