Concept and Strategy Summary

Assess: Main Idea questions ask for the author’s primary Goal.
- These questions often contain words like central thesis, primary purpose, or main idea.
- Less commonly, these questions may ask about a different aspect of the rhetorical situation such as the audience or the medium.
Plan: Look at what you wrote in your Outline for the Goal.
Execute: Reread the Goal in your Outline, taking note of the charge and degree of the verb (positive vs. negative, extreme vs. moderate).
Answer: Match your expectations with the right answer. If there is no clear match, or if you cannot perform any of the earlier steps of the Kaplan Method for CARS Questions, use process of elimination.
- Wrong answer choices may be too narrow (Faulty Use of Detail) or too broad (Out of Scope).
- Wrong answer choices may have the wrong tone (positive, negative, ambivalent, or impartial) or degree (too extreme or too moderate).

Assess: Detail questions ask about what is stated explicitly in the passage.
- These questions tend to use words like the author states or according to the passage, with declarative language like is and are.
- Detail questions are the most likely to use the Scattered format, which uses Roman numeral options or words like EXCEPT, NOT, or LEAST.
Plan: Look for content buzzwords in the question stem, and check your Outline to determine where the relevant information will be found.
Execute: Reread the relevant sentence as well as the sentences before and after. Create your prediction by putting the answer in your own words.
- Make the prediction brief so you can repeat it to yourself between answer choices.
- For Scattered Detail questions, locate all three of the wrong answers in the passage so you can eliminate them from the options.
Answer: Match your expectations with the right answer. If there is no clear match, or if you cannot perform any of the earlier steps of the Kaplan Method for CARS Questions, use process of elimination.

Assess: Function questions ask about what the author is trying to do during the passage.
- These questions are similar to Main Idea questions, although they focus on the purpose of only one portion of the passage (usually one sentence or one paragraph).
- Function questions tend to use words like purpose, motive, or intention or phrases like in order to or because.
Plan: Use your Outline to locate the relevant paragraph.
Execute: Look at your Label for the relevant paragraph and at the Goal at the bottom of your Outline. If buzzwords in the question stem direct you to specific sentences, reread those portions, thinking about how they fit into the purpose of the paragraph and the overall passage.
Answer: Match your expectations with the right answer. If there is no clear match, or if you cannot perform any of the earlier steps of the Kaplan Method for CARS Questions, use process of elimination, removing any answer that conflicts with the author’s main argument or the paragraph’s purpose.

Assess: Definition-in-Context questions ask you to define a word or phrase as it is used in the passage.
- These questions often call attention to the term to be defined using quotation marks or italics, but not always.
- Definition-in-Context questions always reference a word, phrase, or an entire claim from the passage.
Plan: Use your Outline to locate the relevant paragraph.
Execute: Reread the sentence with the word or phrase, and perhaps the surrounding context. Rephrase the author’s definition of the term in your own words.
Answer: Match your expectations with the right answer. If there is no clear match, or if you cannot perform any of the earlier steps of the Kaplan Method for CARS Questions, use process of elimination.