Introduction
Cross-Text Connections questions appear in the Craft and Structure domain, which accounts for roughly 28% of operational Reading and Writing questions. In these questions — always labeled "Text 1" and "Text 2" — you read two short passages on a shared topic and then answer a question about the relationship between them. The question might ask how the authors agree, how they disagree, or what one text's claim has in common with the other.
This note covers the foundational move: summarizing each author's stance separately, then locating the precise point of overlap or conflict. A related skill — predicting how Author 1 would explicitly respond to Author 2's argument — is addressed in the sibling note How Would Author 1 Respond to Author 2? and is not re-taught here.
Core Concept
Every paired-text question rests on one insight: two authors can write about the same topic and still hold very different — or very similar — positions. Your job is not to blend the passages into one summary; it is to hold them apart long enough to understand each independently, then bring them together to identify the relationship.
The process has three steps:
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Isolate Author 1's stance. What is the author's main claim? What is the author's attitude (confident, cautious, skeptical, alarmed)? What evidence or reasoning does the author rely on?
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Isolate Author 2's stance. Repeat the same analysis for the second passage without letting Author 1's view color it.
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Map the relationship. Ask: Do the authors agree on the main claim? Disagree? Agree on the facts but disagree on what those facts mean? Agree on the problem but disagree on the solution? The question stem will specify what type of relationship you are looking for.
The correct answer will reflect both stances accurately and name the right relationship. Distractors typically distort one or both stances, confuse agreement with disagreement, or describe a relationship that is true of only one text.
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