In This Chapter

1. 9.1
   Main Idea Questions

   • Sample Question Stems
   • Strategy
   • Worked Example—A Psychology Passage
2. 9.2
   Detail Questions

   • Sample Question Stems
   • Strategy
   • Worked Example—An Arts Passage
3. 9.3
   Function Questions

   • Sample Question Stems
   • Strategy
   • Worked Example—An Ethics Passage
4. 9.4
   Definition-in-Context Questions

   • Sample Question Stems
   • Strategy
   • Worked Example—A History Passage

Concept and Strategy Summary

Worked Example

Introduction

Learning Goals

After Chapter 9, you will be able to:

• Identify Main Idea, Detail, Function, and Definition-in-Context questions
• Solve Foundations of Comprehension questions with strategies based on question type
• Recognize common features of Foundations of Comprehension questions

In order to get into college, you likely had to take an exam like the SAT^® or ACT^®, both of which feature sections that test reading comprehension. Most of the questions in these sections were straightforward, requiring you merely to search the text for a key fact, to define the meaning of a term used in a passage, or to identify the author’s thesis. Some of the more challenging questions may have required you to understand what the author was doing with a part of the passage, to imagine things from the writer’s perspective, or to explain why she used a certain word or phrase. Such questions can also be found in the Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills (CARS) section of the MCAT. However, these will constitute only approximately 30 percent of the questions you encounter on Test Day, and they will take more difficult forms than you saw on those precollege exams. Our research of all of the released MCAT material indicates that Detail questions make up about half of the Foundations of Comprehension questions, or about eight or nine questions. The other question types in this category show up in about two or three questions each.

This chapter and the next two will follow the same general pattern. For each question type, we will briefly discuss what makes that type distinctive before examining some sample question stems. Then, after discussing strategy, we’ll revisit one of the passages first introduced in Chapter 7 of MCAT CARS Review, providing at least one sample question of each type. The question types in this chapter all fall under the Foundations of Comprehension category and will be examined in this order: Main Idea, Detail, Function, and Definition-in-Context.

Note: The Question Types, as well as the Kaplan Method for CARS Passages, Kaplan Method for CARS Questions, and Wrong Answer Pathologies are included as tear-out sheets in the back of this book.