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• Oefentoets · 15 vragen

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Liever eerst lezen? Hieronder staat elke vraag uit deze oefentoets. Antwoorden en uitleg blijven ingeklapt tot je ze opent.

1. 1. When a museum label reads acquired 1897, the date does a quiet kind of work. It fixes attention on the moment of transfer and away from everything that made the transfer possible: the gunboat in the harbor, the treaty signed under duress, the market that had already priced the object before it left the shrine. Curators who defend such labels say they record only what can be documented. But a record that documents the buyer and not the taking is not neutral. It is a decision about which part of the story deserves a date. Which of the following best states the main idea of the passage?

   • A. Museums should return the objects they acquired during colonial rule.
   • B. Curators knowingly falsify the provenance records of objects in their collections.
   • C. An acquisition date presents a selective account of an object's history as though it were a neutral one.
   • D. Reliable documentation is impossible for objects taken before the twentieth century.
   Toon antwoord en uitleg

   Antwoord: C. An acquisition date presents a selective account of an object's history as though it were a neutral one.

   This is a foundations of comprehension question, main idea. The last two sentences decide it: the record is not neutral, and the date is a choice about which part of the story counts. The return of objects is never mentioned, so that choice is out of scope. Knowing falsification is too extreme, since the author says the labels record what can be documented and objects to what gets left out, not to lying. The last choice states an impossibility the passage never claims.

2. 2. Every generation of critics announces that the last one asked the wrong questions, and every generation is partly right. The formalists were correct that a poem is made of words and not of the poet's biography. Their successors were correct that words do not sit still. What neither camp admits is how much of the quarrel is procedural, a matter of which evidence a critic is permitted to bring into the room. Read the manifestos side by side and the shared assumptions outnumber the disputed ones, though you would never guess that from the footnotes. The author's attitude toward these critical quarrels is best described as:

   • A. Sharply contemptuous of both camps
   • B. Neutral and purely descriptive
   • C. Admiring of the advances each generation made
   • D. Wry and unimpressed by the scale of the disagreement
   Toon antwoord en uitleg

   Antwoord: D. Wry and unimpressed by the scale of the disagreement

   This is a foundations of comprehension question about tone. The closing clause, that you would never guess it from the footnotes, is dry rather than angry, and the author grants each camp a real point, so contempt is too extreme. Purely descriptive misses the evaluation running through the whole passage. Admiring is half right, since the author does credit both sides, but the point of the passage is that the fight is smaller than it looks.

3. 3. Complete the sentence.

   Oral historians once treated memory as a flawed substitute for the archive, valuable only where documents had gone missing. The newer view treats forgetting itself as evidence: what a community declines to repeat marks the shape of an injury as clearly as what it chooses to record. On this reading the interview is not a _____ source but a different kind of source, one that reports on the present at least as much as on the past.

   Opties voor invulveld 1: primary, written, deficient, contemporary

   Toon antwoord en uitleg

   Antwoord: deficient

   This is a foundations of comprehension question about the meaning of a word in context. The first sentence sets up the old view, memory as a flawed substitute, and the last sentence rejects it with a contrast between quality and kind: not worse, just different. Only deficient carries that judgment. Primary, written and contemporary are all classifications rather than criticisms, so none of them is the thing the newer view is refusing.

4. 4. Utilitarians hold that an act is right if it produces the greatest total well-being. Critics answer with the transplant case: a surgeon could save five patients by killing one healthy visitor, and the arithmetic approves. Almost nobody accepts that conclusion. Defenders reply that a world in which surgeons behave this way would soon have no patients willing to walk into a hospital, so the rule forbidding the killing maximizes well-being after all. The reply is clever. It also concedes the critics' real point, which is that the arithmetic alone was never doing the moral work. The second paragraph functions primarily to:

   • A. Introduce a fresh objection that the first paragraph had not raised
   • B. Supply historical background for the transplant case
   • C. Restate the first paragraph in more technical language
   • D. Present a defense of the theory and then turn that defense against it
   Toon antwoord en uitleg

   Antwoord: D. Present a defense of the theory and then turn that defense against it

   This is a reasoning within the text question about the function of a paragraph. The paragraph gives the defenders their answer and then says it concedes the critics' point, so it does two jobs and the second one is the author's. No new objection appears, since the objection is still the transplant case from paragraph one. There is no history in the passage at all, and nothing is merely restated, because the paragraph moves the argument forward.

5. 5. The claim that printing caused the Reformation rests on a tidy sequence: presses spread, pamphlets multiplied, doctrine changed. Yet the presses were busiest in cities that were already arguing about the church, and the same technology in Spain produced almost no reformist literature at all. The correlation is real. The causal arrow is not obvious. A technology does not choose its own uses, and the historian who forgets that will find the printing press explaining whatever the century happened to do. The author's argument depends on which of the following assumptions? Select all that apply.

   Selecteer alles wat van toepassing is.

   • A. A case in which the technology spread without producing the outcome is relevant to judging the causal claim.
   • B. A correlation between two developments is not by itself enough to show that one caused the other.
   • C. The printing press had no effect at all on religious change in Europe.
   • D. Conditions already present in a place can shape what a new technology gets used for.
   • E. Spanish printers were less technically skilled than their German counterparts.
   Toon antwoord en uitleg

   Antwoord: A. A case in which the technology spread without producing the outcome is relevant to judging the causal claim., B. A correlation between two developments is not by itself enough to show that one caused the other., D. Conditions already present in a place can shape what a new technology gets used for.

   This is a reasoning within the text question about unstated assumptions. The Spain example only counts as evidence if a case without the outcome bears on the causal claim, and the whole passage turns on correlation not settling causation. The point that presses were busiest where the argument was already under way assumes local conditions steer use. The no effect at all choice is too extreme, since the author says the arrow is not obvious rather than absent, and skill in Spain is a detail the passage never raises.

6. 6. Defenders of the standard concert program argue that audiences want the familiar, and they point to the box office: halls fill for Beethoven and empty for almost anything written after 1950. The figure is accurate. It is also a poor test of the claim, because the programming decides in advance which unfamiliar works get a hearing at all, and then books them late in the season, in smaller rooms, without the marketing the warhorses receive. A preference measured only under the conditions that produce it explains very little. The author's main objection to the box office evidence is that:

   • A. The conditions under which the preference is measured are set by the very practice the evidence is meant to justify.
   • B. The ticket figures the defenders cite are not accurate.
   • C. Audiences in fact prefer new music to the older repertoire.
   • D. Concert halls built after 1950 are too small to hold large audiences.
   Toon antwoord en uitleg

   Antwoord: A. The conditions under which the preference is measured are set by the very practice the evidence is meant to justify.

   This is a reasoning within the text question about the strength of support. The decisive sentence is the last one: the measurement is contaminated by the practice it is supposed to defend. The accuracy choice is directly contradicted, since the author concedes the figure is accurate. The claim that audiences prefer new music is stronger than anything the author says, and the small rooms detail is about scheduling of new works, not about when the halls were built.

7. 7. Translators speak of a text's grain, the resistance it offers to being carried across. A sentence with little grain slides into the new language and leaves no mark, and the reader forgets there was ever another version. High grain does the opposite. Idioms sit awkwardly, rhythms refuse to line up, and the translator has to decide whether to sand the surface smooth or to leave the roughness visible as a sign that the reader is a guest in someone else's house. In the passage, to sand the surface smooth most nearly means to:

   • A. Shorten the text so that it reads more quickly
   • B. Choose a more literal, word for word rendering
   • C. Make the translation read as though it had been written in the new language
   • D. Correct factual errors that appear in the original
   Toon antwoord en uitleg

   Antwoord: C. Make the translation read as though it had been written in the new language

   This is a foundations of comprehension question about the meaning of a phrase in context. The alternative given in the same sentence, leaving the roughness visible so the reader feels foreign, fixes the meaning of the other option by contrast. Word for word is the opposite move, since literalism is what makes idioms sit awkwardly. Shortening and correcting errors are both true things translators sometimes do, but neither is what this sentence sets against visible roughness.

8. 8. Complete the sentence.

   Ethnographers who spend years in one village often report a discovery that embarrasses their training: the informants have theories too. They explain their own kinship rules, and the explanations are neither naive nor identical to the anthropologist's. Treating those accounts as raw data to be interpreted, rather than as _____ to be argued with, quietly reserves the work of thinking for the visitor. The fieldworker's authority then rests less on evidence than on _____.

   Opties voor invulveld 1: claims, rituals, errors, artifacts

   Opties voor invulveld 2: fluency, position, patience

   Toon antwoord en uitleg

   Antwoord: claims, position

   This is a reasoning within the text question, since both blanks turn on how the author's argument is built. The contrast is between raw data, which you interpret, and something you can disagree with, and only claims can be argued with. The second blank follows from reserving the thinking for the visitor: if the informants' theories are ruled out in advance, what is left holding up the authority is who the fieldworker is rather than what the evidence shows.

9. 9. Cities preserve buildings for two different reasons that are often confused. One is aesthetic: the facade is worth looking at, and losing it would make the street poorer. The other is evidentiary: the building is the only surviving record of how a group of people lived, and no drawing or photograph replaces standing inside it. The second reason can protect an ugly building. It can also fail to protect a beautiful one, if a dozen near identical examples survive elsewhere in better condition. Based on the author's second reason, preservation would be most strongly justified for which of the following?

   • A. A handsome nineteenth century bank facade of a type found in many cities
   • B. A modern office tower that architects admire and photographers visit often
   • C. A ruined chapel already recorded in a complete set of measured drawings
   • D. A plain, poorly built shed that is the last standing example of a migrant labor camp
   Toon antwoord en uitleg

   Antwoord: D. A plain, poorly built shed that is the last standing example of a migrant labor camp

   This is a reasoning beyond the text question, applying the author's distinction to new cases. The evidentiary reason turns on being the only surviving record, which the shed is and the common bank facade is not. The office tower is defended by the aesthetic reason, which the question does not ask about. The chapel is the case the author explicitly weakens, since full documentation is what the evidentiary reason cares about.

10. 10. The great man account of scientific change survives because it is easy to narrate. A single mind sees what everyone else missed, and the textbook gets a chapter title. Against it stands the pattern of simultaneous discovery: calculus, natural selection, the telephone, each arriving from more than one direction within a few years. If the problem, the instruments and the shared literature were ripe, the argument runs, some competent person was going to solve it, and the name attached is an accident of the calendar. Which finding, if true, would most weaken the argument made against the great man account?

    • A. Several celebrated cases of simultaneous discovery turn out to be separated by more than a decade and to differ substantially in content.
    • B. Many important discoveries were made by research teams rather than by individuals.
    • C. Textbooks devote more space to the biography of scientists than to their methods.
    • D. Scientific instruments improved unusually quickly during the nineteenth century.
    Toon antwoord en uitleg

    Antwoord: A. Several celebrated cases of simultaneous discovery turn out to be separated by more than a decade and to differ substantially in content.

    This is a reasoning beyond the text question of the weaken type. The case against the great man account rests entirely on simultaneous discovery, so removing the simultaneity removes the evidence. Teams instead of individuals cuts against the lone genius, so it strengthens the same side. The textbook choice is about how history gets written, not about how discovery happens, and faster instruments support the ripeness claim the author is defending.

11. 11. Museums report record attendance and conclude that public interest in art is rising. Attendance counts admissions, though, and not interest. A traveling blockbuster, a free evening, a cruise ship in the harbor and a good lobby cafe all raise the number without anyone looking at a painting a moment longer. If the claim is about interest, the evidence has to survive the removal of every reason to walk into a museum that is not the art. By the standard the author sets, which findings would strengthen the museums' conclusion? Select all that apply.

    Selecteer alles wat van toepassing is.

    • A. Attendance rose in years with no blockbuster exhibition and no change in admission pricing.
    • B. The average time visitors spent in front of individual works rose along with attendance.
    • C. Museum cafes and gift shops reported higher revenue per visitor.
    • D. Admissions grew fastest in the cities that had opened new cruise terminals.
    • E. Membership renewals by residents of the museums' own cities rose over the same period.
    Toon antwoord en uitleg

    Antwoord: A. Attendance rose in years with no blockbuster exhibition and no change in admission pricing., B. The average time visitors spent in front of individual works rose along with attendance., E. Membership renewals by residents of the museums' own cities rose over the same period.

    This is a reasoning beyond the text question about new evidence. The author's test is whether the rise survives once the non-art reasons are stripped out, so growth without a blockbuster or a price change, longer looking, and repeat commitment from locals all pass it. Higher spending in the cafe is the author's own example of a confounding attraction, and growth concentrated near cruise terminals is the tourism explanation rather than the interest one.

12. 12. Historians of the plague once wrote as though the mortality figures spoke for themselves. A third of a population dies, labor grows scarce, wages rise, serfdom weakens. The chain looks mechanical. But wages rose in England and did not rise across much of eastern Europe, where landlords met the same shortage by binding peasants more tightly to the land. Demography set the problem. It did not write the answer. What decided the outcome was who already held the power to respond, and that varied by region. The two short sentences, demography set the problem and it did not write the answer, serve mainly to:

    • A. Concede that the mortality figures are unreliable
    • B. State the general principle that the eastern European contrast is offered to support
    • C. Introduce a new topic that the passage then abandons
    • D. Summarize the mechanical chain described in the opening sentences
    Toon antwoord en uitleg

    Antwoord: B. State the general principle that the eastern European contrast is offered to support

    This is a reasoning within the text question about the function of a sentence. The England and eastern Europe contrast is the evidence, and these two sentences are the lesson drawn from it, which the final sentence then spells out. The author never questions the figures themselves, only what follows from them. Nothing is abandoned, and the sentences reject the mechanical chain rather than summarizing it.

13. 13. Complete the sentence.

    Critics of the term folk art point out that it names a position rather than a style. The objects it gathers have almost nothing in common with one another, and everything in common in how they arrived at the museum: made outside the academies, collected by outsiders, exhibited without the maker's own account of the work. The category is therefore best read as a record of _____ rather than as a description of what the objects are.

    Opties voor invulveld 1: technique, geography, reception, chronology

    Toon antwoord en uitleg

    Antwoord: reception

    This is a reasoning within the text question, since the blank has to match the argument the paragraph just made. Every shared feature the author lists is about how the objects were found, collected and displayed, which is reception rather than anything in the objects. Technique is ruled out by the sentence saying the objects have nothing in common with one another, and neither geography nor chronology appears in the list at all.

14. 14. Public apologies for historical wrongs are often dismissed as cheap, on the grounds that the speaker risks nothing and the dead gain nothing. The objection assumes that the audience is the dead. It is not. An apology issued by a state is a statement about what that state will now count as a wrong, made in front of the people who have to live under its judgments. Whether it is cheap depends on what it commits the speaker to afterward, and that is a question about the future rather than the past. The author's primary purpose is to:

    • A. Show that state apologies reliably lead to concrete reparations
    • B. Argue that historical wrongs cannot fairly be judged by present standards
    • C. Reject a common objection by showing that it misidentifies who is being addressed
    • D. Describe the wording that official apologies typically use
    Toon antwoord en uitleg

    Antwoord: C. Reject a common objection by showing that it misidentifies who is being addressed

    This is a foundations of comprehension question about the author's purpose. The structure gives it away: an objection is stated, then the assumption inside it is named and denied, then the real audience is identified. Reliably leading to reparations is far stronger than the passage, which says only that the answer depends on later commitments. Judging the past by present standards is a different debate, and no actual wording is described.

15. 15. A canon is not a list of the best books. It is a list of the books a culture has agreed to keep arguing about. That is why a work can enter the canon by being attacked, and why a novel everyone admires and nobody rereads slips quietly out of it. The test is not praise. The test is continued use: does anyone still have to answer this book in order to say what they think? By the author's test, which of the following would count as evidence that a work belongs to the canon? Select all that apply.

    Selecteer alles wat van toepassing is.

    • A. Scholars publish sustained refutations of the book decades after it first appeared.
    • B. The book won the most prestigious literary prize of its year.
    • C. New writers structure their own books as replies to it.
    • D. The book outsold every other novel of its decade.
    • E. Critics who dislike the book still assign it so that they can argue with it.
    Toon antwoord en uitleg

    Antwoord: A. Scholars publish sustained refutations of the book decades after it first appeared., C. New writers structure their own books as replies to it., E. Critics who dislike the book still assign it so that they can argue with it.

    This is a reasoning beyond the text question, applying a stated criterion to new cases. The author's test is continued use, and refutation, imitation in the form of reply, and hostile teaching are all cases of people having to answer the book. A prize and high sales are both forms of praise or popularity at a single moment, and the passage separates those from the test on purpose, since a book everyone admires can still drop out.

Wat het CARS-onderdeel van de MCAT echt van je vraagt

CARS is het onderdeel van de MCAT dat helemaal geen natuurwetenschappen toetst. Je krijgt 9 teksten en 53 vragen in 90 minuten, wat neerkomt op ruwweg tien minuten per tekst inclusief de vragen. De teksten zijn elk enkele honderden woorden lang en komen uit de geesteswetenschappen en de sociale wetenschappen: filosofie, ethiek, geschiedenis, literatuurkritiek, cultuurwetenschap, kunstgeschiedenis en muziek. Alles wat je nodig hebt om te antwoorden staat in de tekst. Lijkt een vraag een feit uit een van je vakken te vragen, dan is dat een teken dat je iets hebt binnengebracht wat de tekst nooit zei. Net als de andere onderdelen wordt CARS beoordeeld van 118 tot 132, en de vier onderdeelscores tellen op tot een totaal tussen 472 en 528. Details van het format worden wel bijgewerkt, dus behandel de gepubliceerde omschrijving van de AAMC als de autoriteit en controleer die voordat je een getal op een voorbereidingspagina vertrouwt, deze pagina inbegrepen.

De AAMC deelt CARS-vragen in drie categorieën in, en weten naar welke je kijkt verandert hoe je antwoordt. Foundations of comprehension, ongeveer 30 procent van het onderdeel, vraagt wat de tekst zegt: de hoofdgedachte, de betekenis van een zinsnede in context, de toon van de auteur. Reasoning within the text, nog eens ongeveer 30 procent, vraagt hoe de tekst is opgebouwd: wat een alinea daar doet, wat de auteur aannam zonder het te zeggen, of de aangedragen onderbouwing sterk genoeg is om de bewering te dragen. Reasoning beyond the text, ongeveer 40 procent, is de grootste groep en degene die mensen onderschatten. Die geeft je iets wat de tekst nooit noemde, een nieuw geval, een nieuw stuk bewijs, een heel ander vakgebied, en vraagt je het betoog van de auteur daarheen mee te nemen of te zeggen wat het zou verzwakken.

Twee dingen aan CARS verrassen mensen. Het eerste is dat breed lezen minder helpt dan verwacht en dat sterke meningen helemaal niet helpen. Bekende stof verleidt je om uit je geheugen te antwoorden, en een tekst die iets betoogt wat jij fout vindt, verleidt je om uit onenigheid te antwoorden. Allebei kosten punten. Het tweede is dat de foute antwoorden niet willekeurig zijn. De meeste zitten dichtbij: te stellig voor wat de auteur werkelijk zei, waar in de wereld maar nooit beweerd in de tekst, kloppend voor de helft van de zin, of een juiste uitspraak die een vraag beantwoordt die niemand stelde. Die vier vormen leren kennen is meer waard dan welke stof dan ook, want ze komen bij elke tekst weer terug.

Hoe je deze oefenset gebruikt

Deze oefenset geeft je 15 vragen bij 15 korte fragmenten, dus hij ruilt het uithoudingsvermogen dat de lange teksten van het echte onderdeel vragen in voor dekking van de vraagtypen. Elk fragment is 70 tot 110 woorden lang en is door het StudyPDF-team geschreven in de toon die CARS gebruikt. Het zijn geen echte MCAT-teksten en geen AAMC-vragen. De mix volgt de echte categorieën: sommige vragen vragen wat de tekst zegt, sommige hoe het betoog is opgebouwd, sommige geven je een nieuw geval of een nieuwe bevinding en vragen je daarmee te redeneren. Drie vragen zijn invulvragen, waarbij het ontbrekende woord het woord is dat het standpunt van de auteur draagt, en dat is een goede manier om te oefenen in het opmerken van slagen om de arm, nuanceringen en het verschil tussen een stellige en een gematigde bewering.

Maak hem in een keer, zonder aantekeningen en zonder eindeloos te herlezen. Lees daarna elke uitleg, ook die bij vragen die je goed had, want een goed antwoord dat je langs de verkeerde route bereikte, herhaalt zich niet. Elke uitleg wijst de zin aan die de vraag beslist en noemt waarom de andere keuzes falen. Houd de vorm van je fouten bij en niet het aantal. Twee te stellige antwoorden missen is een ander probleem dan twee antwoorden buiten het bestek missen, en de oplossingen verschillen. Het eerste betekent dat je de auteur naar boven afrondt en een voorzichtige bewering als een stoere leest. Het tweede betekent dat je antwoordt vanuit je eigen kennis in plaats van vanuit de bladzijde voor je.

Verder dan een oefenset komen mensen bij CARS vooruit door volume plus nakijken, en het nakijken is het deel dat het werk doet. Doe een tekst en schrijf daarna, voordat je iets nakijkt, één zin op met wat het punt van de auteur was en één met waar de auteur tegenin ging. Kun je die twee zinnen niet schrijven, dan waren de fouten leesfouten en geen vraagfouten. Lees moeilijke non-fictie over onderwerpen waar je niets om geeft, want dat komt in het dagelijks leven het dichtst bij een CARS-tekst. Oefen uiteindelijk hele onderdelen op tijd, want het onderdeel is deels een uithoudingstest en negen teksten achter elkaar voelt totaal anders dan negen teksten verspreid over een week.

Zo bouwt StudyPDF CARS-oefening uit je eigen materiaal

Vijftien vragen laten zien welke leesgewoontes ontbreken. Ze kunnen niet het uithoudingsvermogen opbouwen dat het echte onderdeel vraagt, en geen enkele vaste set vragen blijft werken zodra je de antwoorden hebt gezien. CARS is het onderdeel waar de aanvoer van nieuwe teksten het meest telt, want een tekst herlezen waarvan je het antwoord al kent, leert je bijna niets.

StudyPDF werkt met materiaal dat je zelf meebrengt. Upload je MCAT-voorbereidingsboek, een CARS-werkboek, je eigen collegeteksten of een willekeurig dicht artikel waarop je wilt oefenen, en Bo, de studie-agent, bouwt uit precies die pagina's oefenvragen. Elke uitleg noemt waar het antwoord vandaan komt, dus je gaat meteen terug naar de bron als een keuze aanvechtbaar lijkt. Je kunt zo vaak als je wilt nieuwe sets maken en ze richten op één vaardigheid, bijvoorbeeld onuitgesproken aannames of vragen die een betoog verzwakken, zodat je juist de categorie traint waar je punten op blijft laten liggen.

Je hebt helemaal geen document nodig. Heb je niets om te uploaden, noem dan een onderwerp, bijvoorbeeld betogen over de ethiek van herinneren of negentiende-eeuwse reisliteratuur, en Bo schrijft de tekst en de vragen daarover. Beginnen is gratis. Alles op deze pagina is examenoefening, geschreven door het StudyPDF-team op basis van de openbaar gepubliceerde CARS-vraagcategorieën. Het is geen medisch advies, het is geen echt examenmateriaal, en StudyPDF heeft geen band met de AAMC of met welke examenmaker dan ook.