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CARS: The Three Question Categories

Foundations of Comprehension, Reasoning Within the Text and Reasoning Beyond the Text - 30, 30 and 40 percent, and what each really asks.

15 topics · 65 questions

Each topic is a path, not a menu: work down it in order and every question builds on the one above. Click any of them to watch the answer draw itself.

Foundations of Comprehension (30%)

  1. How it worksHow does a Foundations of Comprehension question stay inside one sentence or one short stretch of text?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through answering what a paragraph's purpose is when a question hands you the paragraph number to look at.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't a Foundations question automatically an easy question just because the answer sits nearby?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens when a Foundations question asks about an overall theme rather than about one word?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Passage. A promise, on the standard account, binds because it was made; the maker's later reluctance is beside the point, since that is what binding means. Against this, 7 recent papers argue that a promise binds only while the conditions under which it was made still hold, so that a promise to help with a harvest does not survive the harvest being cancelled. The standard account replies that this collapses promising into forecasting: if every promise carries a silent clause about circumstances, nobody has ever promised anything, only predicted their own future willingness. The rival is unmoved. We release each other from promises constantly without supposing any wrong has been done, and a practice with that many exits was never the iron thing the standard account describes. Both sides agree about the cases. They disagree about which cases are the exceptions. Question: which of the following questions about this passage belongs to Foundations of Comprehension?

Literal Meaning of a Word or Phrase in Context

  1. How it worksHow do the constraints in a single sentence rotate a word's possible meanings until only one survives?
  2. Common mistakeWhy doesn't picking the most common meaning of a word work when the sentence around it pushes the other way?
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through deciding what economy means in the economy of her prose when three choices are all real meanings.
  4. Going furtherWhat changes when an author puts a word in scare quotes instead of simply using it plainly?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Passage. Her prose has an economy that 9 reviewers have mistaken for coldness. Nothing is spent twice. A character's whole history arrives in the cut of a coat, and the reader who wants that history spelled out will find the book withholding. It is not withholding. It has decided that a sentence which does two things is worth more than two sentences that each do one, and it has followed that decision for 7 novels without once relaxing it. Question: as used in the passage, economy most nearly means

The Author's Thesis, Main Point and Theme

  1. How it worksHow does a thesis differ from a topic, and how do you turn a topic into the claim an author makes about it?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through choosing between jazz improvisation is misunderstood and jazz improvisation follows strict rules.
  3. Common mistakeWhy doesn't the opening sentence of a piece of writing reliably contain its thesis?
  4. Common mistakeWhy is a main-idea answer that is completely true still wrong when it covers only one paragraph?
  5. Going furtherWhat changes about the main point when a text ends in a call for more research instead of a conclusion?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Passage. Improvisation in jazz is popularly imagined as freedom from rules, and the 58 years of pedagogy built on that image have produced students who can play anything and say nothing. What a soloist is doing is closer to speech in a language with a grammar: the chord sequence is the syntax, the tradition supplies the idioms, and a phrase that ignores both is not free but unintelligible. The great improvisers are recognisable precisely because their departures are legible as departures. A player who has internalised 46 choruses of a standard can be heard bending it. A player who has not can only be heard playing notes. Question: the passage's main point is that

The Purpose of For Example, Therefore and Consequently

  1. How it worksHow does the word therefore tell you that what follows is a conclusion and what came before was its support?
  2. How it worksHow do you use a signal phrase to tell an illustration apart from a brand new claim?
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through what changes in an argument when and is swapped for but between two sentences about one study.
  4. Common mistakeWhy doesn't the word however always mean the author disagrees with what came just before it?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Passage. Public libraries in the region lend 687 thousand volumes a year and their buildings are full every afternoon. They are, therefore, the most heavily used cultural institution in the district, and the 19 percent cut proposed for them is the least defensible line in the budget. Question: what does the word therefore tell you about the sentence that contains it?

Inferring Meaning from the Immediate Sentence Context

  1. How it worksHow do you draw an inference exactly one step past what a sentence states, without drifting two steps out?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through what an author implies by writing that a reform was greeted with the enthusiasm reserved for tax audits.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't an inference the same thing as a guess about what the author probably believes?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to an inference question when the only clue sits in connotation rather than in literal words?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Passage. The reform was greeted with the enthusiasm normally reserved for tax audits. Attendance at the consultation meetings, all 12 of them, averaged 10 people, of whom a majority were staff. Question: what does the first sentence imply about the reception of the reform?

Local Scope vs Integrated Scope

  1. How it worksHow do you tell a question that lives in one sentence from one that needs paragraphs one and four together?
  2. How it worksHow does the scope of a question change which answer choices you are even allowed to consider?
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through spotting the scope of the author most likely mentions the 1918 flu in order to, before answering.
  4. Common mistakeWhy doesn't rereading the sentence a question points at help when it asks for the author's overall position?
  5. Ties togetherHow does the local-versus-whole-text divide map onto Foundations of Comprehension against Reasoning Within the Text?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Passage, 5 paragraphs. It opens by reporting that a city's transit ridership fell 19 percent after a fare rise, concedes in paragraph 2 that a rail closure fell in the same quarter, spends paragraph 3 on the closure's own effects, and closes by arguing that the fare rise has been blamed for damage the closure did. Question: a question asking why the author mentions the rail closure in paragraph 2 is

Reasoning Within the Text (30%)

  1. How it worksHow do you combine a claim in paragraph one with a qualification in paragraph four into one interpretation?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through resolving an apparent contradiction when an author praises a movement early and criticises it late.
  3. Common mistakeWhy doesn't your own disagreement with an author's conclusion make that conclusion a wrong answer?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens when a text presents three points of view and only one of them belongs to the author?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Passage. In its first 10 years the movement was the only body organising tenants in the city, and its early pamphlets are models of practical argument. By the time it had 69 branches its pamphlets had become liturgical, repeating formulas that had once been findings. The author records both facts without apology and adds that the second is what success does to an argument: a claim that has won stops being defended and starts being recited. Question: how should a reader reconcile the author's praise of the early movement with the criticism of the later one?

Integrating Distant Components of a Text

  1. How it worksHow do you tell a sustained train of thought from an isolated detail or a digression?
  2. How it worksHow do paradoxes and inconsistencies across different paragraphs reveal what an author actually believes?
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through inferring an unstated thesis from an opening anecdote and a closing rhetorical question.
  4. Going furtherWhat changes when an author's choice of sources is the only clue to their bias?
Your turnhard1 of 3
Passage. It opens with a boy in 1875 watching his village's only clock being wound, and the winding is described at length and with affection. There follow 16 pages on the standardisation of time by the railway companies, all of it factual, none of it hostile. The final sentence asks what a country gains when every village agrees what hour it is, and does not answer. Question: what is the author's unstated thesis?

Author's Belief, Position, Bias and Assumptions

  1. How it worksHow do tone, imagery and the choice of adjectives leak an attitude into a supposedly neutral sentence?
  2. How it worksHow does an unstated assumption hold up an argument the way a missing block holds up a wall?
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through finding the assumption behind the claim that since literacy rose, the reforms clearly worked.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't every strong-sounding adjective in a piece of writing evidence of the author's own bias?
  5. Going furtherWhat changes when an author states a position only to concede half of it two paragraphs later?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Passage. Literacy in the province rose from 26 to 67 percent in the 34 years after the schools act, and the act is therefore counted among the century's successes. Question: what does that inference assume?

Claims, Evidence, Support and Relations

  1. How it worksHow do you separate the claim an author is defending from the evidence they bring in to defend it?
  2. How it worksHow do premises stack under a conclusion so that pulling one out makes the whole structure sag?
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through labelling claim, evidence and counterclaim in critics say film killed theatre, yet ticket sales rose.
  4. Common mistakeWhy doesn't one vivid example count as evidence for a claim about an entire population?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Passage. Critics have said for 75 years that film killed the theatre. Yet ticket sales for live performance in the 19 largest cities rose over the same period, and the cities with the most cinema screens per head were the cities where theatre attendance grew fastest. Question: which part of this passage is the counterclaim?

Evaluating an Argument and Its Sources

  1. How it worksHow do you test an argument for plausibility, soundness, the reach of its generalisation and its sources?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through evaluating the claim that three interviews show a whole profession has abandoned a technique.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't an argument weak just because the author cites one source you happen to distrust?
  4. Going furtherWhat changes about an argument's strength when its only evidence turns out to be a correlation?
  5. Ties togetherHow does spotting faulty causality inside a CARS argument connect to the reasoning skills the science sections test?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Passage. A commentator interviews 6 practitioners, 3 of whom say they no longer use the older technique, and concludes that the profession has abandoned it. Question: what is the strongest objection to that conclusion?

Reasoning Beyond the Text (40%)

  1. How it worksHow do you lift a principle out of a text and test whether it still holds in a brand new setting?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through predicting how an author who defends slow city planning would react to a 48-hour pop-up park.
  3. Common mistakeWhy doesn't your own ability to solve a problem matter when a question asks you to apply an author's ideas?
  4. Going furtherWhat changes when all four choices are plausible outcomes and only one is consistent with the author?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Passage. The author defends slow city planning: a street should be altered only after 9 years of watching how it is used, because use is legible in wear patterns and complaint records and in nothing else. Rapid interventions, the author writes, test a designer's imagination rather than a street. Question: how would this author most likely respond to a 48-hour pop-up park installed on a closed street?

Applying and Extrapolating a Text's Ideas

  1. How it worksHow do you rule out application answers that clash with the framework an author has already set up?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through applying the claim that ritual preserves memory to a modern hospital shift-handover checklist.
  3. Going furtherWhat happens when a question asks for the outcome most likely rather than the outcome most desirable?
  4. Common mistakeWhy doesn't the most impressive-sounding application win when a duller one matches the author better?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Passage. Ritual preserves memory, the author argues, because it fixes a sequence of 16 steps that must be performed aloud and in company, so that an omission is noticed by someone other than the person who made it. Written records, by contrast, fail silently: nobody notices a page that was never written. Question: applying this, what makes a hospital shift-handover checklist work as the author describes?

Analogy Questions in Reasoning Beyond the Text

  1. How it worksHow do you name a relationship as a connector, then lay that same connector over each answer choice?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through matching a translator is to a poem against four candidate pairs using one relationship sentence.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't the choice that shares an author's subject matter the one that shares the relationship?
  4. Going furtherWhat changes when an analogy is figurative and you have to translate the image into literal terms first?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Passage. A translator, the author writes, is to a poem what a performer is to a score: bound to something fixed, and unable to deliver it without adding what the notation leaves out. The essay returns to this 7 times across 31 pages. Question: which pair stands in the same relation?

Assessing the Impact of New Information

  1. How it worksHow do you test whether a new fact supports, coexists with, or contradicts the logic an author has built?
  2. How it worksHow do you find the answer that would force the smallest change to an author's central thesis?
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through what happens to printing spread literacy if you learn literacy rates rose before the press.
  4. Common mistakeWhy doesn't a new fact the author never mentioned automatically weaken their argument?
  5. Going furtherWhat changes when new information would require an author to narrow a claim rather than abandon it?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Passage. The author argues that printing spread literacy: presses arrived in the 16 towns of the region between 1489 and 1557, and reading rates in those towns rose afterward. Question: suppose it emerges that reading rates in those same towns had been rising for two generations before any press arrived. What happens to the argument?

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