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MCAT
Course: MCAT > Unit 1
Lesson 1: Critical analysis and reasoning skills (CARS) practice questions- CARS overview
- Foundations of comprehension
- Reasoning within the text
- Reasoning beyond the text
- Worked example: Living in a rational society
- Worked example: The happy American
- Worked example: Seeing color through Homer's eyes
- Worked example: Physical education in the UK
- Worked example: The honest truth about dishonesty
- Living in a rational society
- The happy American
- Seeing color through Homer's eyes
- Physical education in the UK
- The honest truth about dishonesty
- The ultimatum game
- Tools for thought
- Deconstructionism and literature
- Does free will exist?
- Designing courthouses
- Censorship: An unnecessary evil
- Puritan society
- Understanding Thomas Hardy
- Maternal psychology
- Huns and eurasian history
- Energy and sustainable development in Nigeria
- Primordial and complex jealousy
- What is life?
- Antenatal depression and anxiety in Pakistan
- Utilitarianism ethics
- Reflections on leaving Facebook
- Culture crossing and mixing in Mauritius
- Plain packaging tobacco
- Walt Whitman: poet of the people
- Political attitudes
- The human footprint in Mexico
- What separates science from art?
- Post-colonialism in Papuan culture
- Film adaptation of Chinese literature
- Disaster risk knowledge in Nepal
- The ethics of drug-induced happiness
- The roots of capitalism
- Adult learning across cultures
- Sociology of participation
- Let's stop playing politics with vaccines
- Buddhism and pessimism
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Reasoning within the text
Master the MCAT's critical analysis and reasoning skills section with a deep dive into reasoning within the text questions. Learn to identify and evaluate the author's arguments, understand the relationship between claims and evidence, and spot weaknesses in the author's reasoning.
Visit us (http://www.khanacademy.org/science/healthcare-and-medicine) for health and medicine content or (http://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat) for MCAT related content. These videos do not provide medical advice and are for informational purposes only. The videos are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read or seen in any Khan Academy video.
Visit us (http://www.khanacademy.org/science/healthcare-and-medicine) for health and medicine content or (http://www.khanacademy.org/test-prep/mcat) for MCAT related content. These videos do not provide medical advice and are for informational purposes only. The videos are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek the advice of a qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read or seen in any Khan Academy video.
Want to join the conversation?
- At, from what i understand option c seems right to me because i don't see from the passage how paverty cause disasters.thank you! 5:20(14 votes)
- You are correct, the author never mentions in the passage that poverty causes disasters. However, you are looking for the best possible answer. I wouldn't consider this a weakness in his argument because he never tries to argue that poverty does in fact cause disaster. He does, though, generalize in the last sentence that poverty is a cause and a consequence of disasters in ALL underdeveloped countries. HIs current evidence only applies to Nepal and without evidence of similar causality in other underdeveloped countries, this can be considered a weakness in his argument. I hope that helps you!(22 votes)
- So i want to enter the medical field and concerning the MCAT, I will be a freshman in college in 2017 after school and summer ends. My first question is: do you think it's a good strategy to almost completely finish all videos on MCAT here over the summer so then I can just keep up by taking practice tests later? (I am not rich and can't purchase those $300 books). Second question: what is the best time in college to take the MCAT without having any stress of other things (I want to take the MCAT during the calm before a possible storm so I just want to know what year in college is most calm for this). Third question: These videos seem old, has MCAT grading system changed right now from the grading system portrayed here? Fourth question: even if this is old, is all the information in these videos constant in the MCAT despite its format being changed?(4 votes)
- There are a lot of people in these comment sections of Khan Academy MCAT videos who seem to think that it's best to start preparing for the MCAT well ahead of time. That is simply just not true. The earliest you should start studying for the MCAT is 10 months before you are taking it. It's just pointless and possibly damaging to study before hand. The material is all stuff you will cover in your freshman and sophomore pre-med classes.
The MCAT is formatted and graded the same ever since the 2015 format change. None of these videos are outdated and probably won't be for a long, long time (if ever). The format change in 2015 wasn't even really much of a format change other than the addition of biochem, psych, and sociology.
The best time to take the MCAT in my opinion is June.(3 votes)
- I love the videos, but I am not familiar as of where to find the practice problems for "foundations of comprehension" and "reasoning within the text" ?(5 votes)
- The question types are all mixed up together in the practice passages that are listed under the CARS practice questions. Some of them are worked through so that you can see what kind of question it is and which approach is useful(5 votes)
- For those still debating with C in the Nepal question, the author does consider the role of poverty in causing disaster because the author explicitly states that poverty drives people to live in high-risk areas leaving them vulnerable to disasters. However, the weakness in his argument is assuming that every poverty situation is both a cause and a consequence of disasters, which is not really the case. Not every underdeveloped country that has poverty-stricken groups will be a subject of natural disasters. Their main weakness in their argument is stating something as factual when providing one example.(5 votes)
- what do claim and assumption mean?(3 votes)
- In the context of this video, a claim is something that the author puts forward. The example used was "Raising the price of bullets will lower gun violence." The author is stating this as a fact, or maybe an argument that he/she is proposing.
An assumption is what must be true in order for the claim to be true. Think of it as the evidence for the claim. For example, the claim the author made above would not be true unless "people who commit gun violence aren't willing to buy bullets at a higher price." Therefore, the claim 'assumes' that the assumption is true. A lot of times, the author will not flat out say what the evidence/assumption for their claim is, so it is the "unstated assumption" that you have to watch out for.(5 votes)
- what does an 9+ stand for?(2 votes)
- What is the difference between "not introducing your own opinion on the passage" and the assumptions we make base on a claim the author makes?(2 votes)
- Assumptions always have support within the passage. You can logically follow up an assumption based ON the passage. Your opinion may or may not be supported by the information in the passage.(1 vote)
- How to score highly in Critical reading(1 vote)
- Practice, practice and more practice. It should be timed. Review of right and wrong answers should be thorough; you want to look for patterns of the type of questions you consistently get wrong. Work on the "why."(2 votes)
- Why are these questions critical for the exam?(1 vote)
- where are the practice passages?(1 vote)
- Did you ever find out where the practice passages were?(1 vote)
Video transcript
- [Voiceover] The purpose
of this video is to help you understand the reasoning
with the text questions. These are one of three
categories of questions on the critical analysis and reasoning
skills section of the MCAT. The key feature of these
questions is that they ask you to examine the arguments
being made by the author. These questions will
direct your attention to arguments, claims, conclusions, or pieces of evidence that are
presented in the passage. They will ask you analyze and evaluate the author's argument in some way. There are two major
types of these questions. The first type includes
structural questions that require you to
identify how the author is trying to relate various
ideas in the passage. These questions ask you to recognize which claim a particular example or piece of evidence is intended to support. The second type include evaluative questions that require you to be critical, and consider flaws or weaknesses in the author's argument or evidence. Anytime you're being asked
how the author provides support or evidence for their
position or claim, it's a good clue that it's a reasoning
within the text question. Here's an example of the
first type of question that asks you to identify
the relation between claims and evidence in a passage. "Which of the following
quotes is presented as evidence for the author's position?" To answer this question, there are two main things you need to do. The first is that you need to identify the author's position. Then, the second thing you need to do is find each of the quotes in the response options within the passage, and determine which of them is being used to support the author's position. Finding the correct
answer to this question requires identifying how the author uses each piece of information
as part of an argument. In this example question, the response options could include four quotes that actually appear in the text, and you will need to decide between them. However, it's important
to note that this is not true of all reasoning
within the text questions. Sometimes you'll need to eliminate answer options that don't accurately represent statements or ideas from the passage. Here's another example
of this type of question. "Which of the following passage assertions is presented as evidence that computers are affecting people's
conception of the mind?" To answer this question, you would first need to eliminate any answer options that do not accurately summarize statements actually made in the passage. Then, for ideas that do
appear in the passage, you'd need to determine
how the author presents each of them in relation
to the specific claim that computers are affecting
people's conception of the mind. Here's a third example
of this kind of question. "Which conclusion does the author use this example to support?" Instead of presenting
you with a specific claim as part of the question,
and asking you to identify the evidence that the
author provides for it, this question does the reverse. It presents you with a piece of evidence, and asks you to choose which claim the author uses it to support. The second major type of
reading within the text question requires you to
evaluate, be critical, and consider flaws or weaknesses
with the author's argument. For example, as you are reading, you may notice that an author includes statements that seem to be
inconsistent with each other. Other times you may notice
that an author is making conclusions that seem unjustified. Sometimes connections that seem fine when you first read them,
won't seem as strong when you examine them closely. Suppose you read a passage about Nepal that includes these sentences. "Nepal is an underdeveloped country that is one of the most
disaster-prone in the world. In Nepal, poverty drives
people to live in high-risk areas which makes them
vulnerable to disasters. Disasters in Nepal affect
a large number of people by destroying their
houses, productive lands, other personal assets, and livelihoods. Hence poverty is both a cause and a consequence of disasters in
underdeveloped countries." A possible question asking you to evaluate the author's reasoning would be, "What is a weakness in
the argument the author makes to support their conclusion about the relation of poverty to disasters?" Option A, "The author fails to explain how people are affected by disasters." Option B, "The author assumes that the situation in Nepal will generalize to all underdeveloped countries." Option C, "The author fails to consider the role of poverty
in causing disasters." And option D, "The
author fails to consider the role that disasters
play in causing poverty." If you read back through the excerpt, you can see that the author does consider issues A, C, and D. Answering this question requires noticing that although all prior sentences are concerned only with Nepal, in the final conclusion, the author makes a general statement about the causal relation between poverty and disasters for underdeveloped countries. The author is assuming
whatever is true of Nepal would generalize to other
underdeveloped countries. Thus, option B correctly identifies a weakness in the
reasoning within the text. Sometimes a question will ask you to identify an unstated assumption
that the author is making, such as, "What assumption does the author make about gun violence?" For example, if a passage claimed, "Raising the price of bullets
will lower gun violence," a key assumption implied by that statement is that people who commit gun violence aren't willing to buy
bullets at a higher price. Whether the assumption
seems like a reasonable one or not is irrelevant to
answering this kind of question. Assumptions can be facts
that few would question, or can be highly controversial
and unsupported ideas. What's important for answering
this kind of question is that there's something
the author did not explicitly say, but that needs to be true in order for the author's conclusion to make sense. Sometimes an author will
provide irrelevant, subjective, or biased information to
try to support their ideas. It's important to consider
whether the evidence is actually relevant for the point that
the author is trying to make. An example of a question about this is, "Which of these examples is irrelevant for the claim that sugar is unhealthy?" It's also important to consider the kinds of information and sources that the author cites to support their point of view. Does the evidence seem to be subjective? Is it based in fact? Is it possible to objectively verify? An example of a question about this, is "Which of the following statements is an opinion and not a fact?" Finally, it's especially
important to remember that the reasoning
within the text questions want you to evaluate the
strength of an author's argument or reasoning in terms of the information presented in the passage. You'll need to be careful not to introduce your own personal opinion on the topic. You might not agree with the position that the author takes,
or you might know of some critical information that contradicts statements in the passage, but neither of these are important. The key is to just base your responses on the information as
provided in the passage, and analyze it on that basis alone. To better understand
these types of questions, be sure to try some practice items, and check out the other
videos in this section.