CARS practice

• The passage loop: Preview, Map, Distill

  Every passage gets the same three moves. Preview sizes it up, Map records what each paragraph does, and Distill turns the map into one sentence about the author’s point. The loop keeps you reading for the argument instead of for facts you will never be asked to recall.

  Preview takes about twenty seconds: length, density, topic, and a triage call. A passage that looks like a wall can wait until the easier ones are done, since every question is worth the same.

  Map as you read. For each paragraph, note its job (claim, evidence, example, objection, concession, history) and its voice (the author, or someone the author is reporting). Mark the four signal-word families as you go: pivots such as “however” and “yet”, voice words such as “unfortunately” and “so-called”, reason words such as “because” and “therefore”, and link words such as “moreover” and “similarly”.

  Distill before the first question: “The author argues X and is skeptical of Y.” If the passage has no voice words, your sentence is the topic and its scope. Every main-idea and tone question gets checked against this sentence.

  1. Preview: length, density, topic, triage
  2. Map: each paragraph’s job and voice, with signal words marked
  3. Distill: the author’s point and attitude in one sentence

• The question loop: Classify, Predict, Prove

  Each question gets three moves. Classify it from the stem alone: which skill it tests and where the answer lives. Predict an answer in your own words before you look at the choices. Prove your pick by pointing to the line that supports it.

  Classify tells you where to look. A detail or function question sends you to one paragraph on your map. A main-idea or tone question sends you to your Distill sentence. A strengthen, weaken, apply or new-info question asks you to carry the passage’s principle somewhere new, so find that principle first.

  Predict is the step people skip. Wrong choices are written to sound right to a reader with no answer in mind, and a prediction gives you something to measure them against. It can be rough: “something about the critics being too narrow” is enough.

  Prove closes the loop. If you cannot put your finger on the line that makes your pick right, run it past the five traps before you commit.

  1. Classify: which skill, and where the answer lives
  2. Predict: answer it in your own words
  3. Prove: pick the match and point to the line

• Timing: ten minutes a passage

  AAMC’s published format for CARS is 53 questions in 90 minutes, spread over nine passages, with everything you need contained in the passages themselves. Divide it out and you get ten minutes a passage, with about six questions in each.

  AAMC also publishes the skill split: Foundations of Comprehension about 30% of questions, Reasoning Within the Text about 30%, and Reasoning Beyond the Text about 40%.

  Ten minutes is a budget to plan around, not a rule. Spend part of it on Preview and Map, under a minute on Distill, and the rest on the questions, then adjust the split in practice until it suits you. Check the clock between passages rather than in the middle of a question.

  If you fall behind, triage. Pick the passage that looks hardest, answer what you can quickly, guess the rest and move on. Your score counts correct answers only, so never leave a question blank.

  1. Preview each passage and make the triage call before reading
  2. Check the clock between passages: 10, 20, 30 minutes elapsed, and so on
  3. Behind? Triage the hardest remaining passage and guess rather than leave blanks

• Main-idea questions

  Main idea · Foundations of Comprehension

  Main-idea questions ask what the passage as a whole is doing: the author’s central claim, or the primary purpose. They test Foundations of Comprehension.

  Your Distill sentence is the prediction. Check each choice against it for scope as well as content: the right answer covers the whole passage, not one paragraph, and does not reach past where the passage stops.

  Watch the pivots. The author’s own view often arrives after a “but” or a “that is not to say”, and a choice built from the view being argued against will sound like the passage.

  1. Reread your Distill sentence
  2. Eliminate choices that cover only one paragraph or go beyond the passage
  3. Prove: the right choice fits the opening and the closing alike
  Try an example

  Restorers like to say they return a painting to the state its maker intended. The claim flatters the profession more than it describes it. Intentions are not visible in varnish; what the restorer sees is a surface altered by centuries of light, smoke and earlier repairs, and every decision about which alteration counts as damage is an interpretation. That is not an argument against restoration. Paintings decay, and doing nothing is also a choice with consequences. It is an argument for honesty: a restored canvas records one generation’s judgment about the past, and it should be presented as such.

  Which statement best expresses the main idea of the excerpt?

  1. A. Restoration should be abandoned because it cannot recover what the artist intended.
  2. B. Centuries of light and smoke have damaged most older paintings beyond repair.
  3. C. Restoration is a legitimate practice, but its results are interpretations and should be presented that way.
  4. D. Restorers understand an artist’s intentions better than art historians do.

  Show the answer

  C. The excerpt turns twice: the restorers’ claim is challenged, then “That is not an argument against restoration,” then “It is an argument for honesty.” The right choice keeps both halves: restoration is legitimate, and its results are interpretations. Calling for restoration to be abandoned takes the challenge for the conclusion, the very reading the author rules out. Paintings damaged beyond repair inflates a passing detail, and the comparison with art historians is never made.

• Detail questions

  Detail · Foundations of Comprehension

  Detail questions ask what the passage says about something specific. They test Foundations of Comprehension, and the answer is always on the page, usually reworded.

  Use your map to find the paragraph, then reread the sentences around the detail before you look at the choices. The correct choice paraphrases the text. A choice that repeats the passage’s exact words but attaches them to the wrong idea is a common decoy.

  Check the voice. If the passage reports a view the author rejects, a choice stating that view is accurate about the critics and wrong about the author.

  1. Classify: find the paragraph on your map
  2. Reread two or three sentences around the detail
  3. Predict the paraphrase, then prove it against the line
  Try an example

  Critics of field guides complain that they teach people to see birds as entries in a checklist. The complaint has some force, but it misreads how most guides are used. A beginner does not open one to tick a box; she opens it because a bird she has already noticed refuses to be ignored. The guide arrives second, after attention, and its real work is to give that attention a vocabulary: wing bars, eye rings, the shape of a tail in flight. Without those terms, the next sighting is as vague as the first.

  According to the author, what is the main work a field guide does?

  1. A. It gives an observer terms for features she has already begun to notice.
  2. B. It turns birdwatching into the completion of a checklist.
  3. C. It prompts beginners to notice birds they would otherwise ignore.
  4. D. It replaces close observation with memorized vocabulary.

  Show the answer

  A. The author says the guide’s “real work is to give that attention a vocabulary”, and the attention comes first: the guide “arrives second”. The right choice restates that. The checklist choice is the critics’ complaint, which the author says misreads how guides are used. Prompting beginners to notice birds reverses the order the author describes, and replacing observation contradicts the point that the terms sharpen the next sighting.

• Inference questions

  Inference · Reasoning Within the Text

  Inference questions ask for something the passage does not state but commits the author to. The right answer must follow from the text, not merely fit with it.

  Build the prediction from the line or lines the stem points to, and say what they commit the author to. If you cannot name the line, you have a guess, not an inference.

  The right inference is usually modest. A choice that reaches further than the text, or brings in a comparison it never makes, fails the Prove step even when it sounds reasonable.

  1. Find the lines the stem points to
  2. Ask what they commit the author to
  3. Prove: choose the most modest claim those lines force
  Try an example

  A translator who renders every pun in a comic novel faithfully will produce a book that is accurate and unfunny. The jokes depended on sounds the new language does not share, and a footnote explaining a joke has never made anyone laugh. The translators I admire most accept a different obligation. They ask what a passage was doing to its first readers, and they look for words that will do the same thing now, even if those words would fail a test of literal correspondence.

  It can be inferred that the author regards literal accuracy in translating comic writing as:

  1. A. The translator’s highest obligation
  2. B. Impossible to achieve in any language
  3. C. More important in comic novels than in serious ones
  4. D. Insufficient on its own to preserve the effect the original had on its readers

  Show the answer

  D. The author never states this outright, but two lines commit the author to it: faithful renderings come out “accurate and unfunny”, and the admired translators accept “a different obligation”. Accuracy alone is not enough. Calling it the highest obligation reverses that; calling it impossible contradicts the first sentence, where the faithful translation does come out “accurate”; and the comic-versus-serious comparison never appears.

• Function questions

  Function · Reasoning Within the Text

  Function questions ask why the author included something: an example, a quotation, a whole paragraph. They test Reasoning Within the Text. The answer is a verb: to illustrate, to concede, to challenge, to qualify, to set up.

  Your map already holds the answer, since mapping records each paragraph’s job. Look at what comes just before and after the detail, and at the signal words around it: “for example” marks an illustration, “admittedly” a concession, “yet” a challenge.

  Wrong choices often describe the detail accurately but give it the wrong job, or hand it to the wrong voice.

  1. Locate the detail on your map
  2. Read the sentence before and after it
  3. Predict a verb for its job, then prove it
  Try an example

  Planners often defend wide suburban roads on grounds of safety: more room, they argue, means fewer collisions. Yet drivers do not treat extra width as a margin to be left empty. Given a broad, straight lane, they tend to drive faster until the road feels as tight as a narrow one did at lower speed. A town that widened its main street to protect pedestrians would, on this account, have bought faster traffic and a longer crossing. Safety, in other words, depends less on the dimensions of a road than on what those dimensions invite.

  The author mentions a town that widened its main street primarily in order to:

  1. A. Provide evidence that wider roads cause more collisions than narrow ones
  2. B. Illustrate where the argument about how drivers respond to width leads
  3. C. Describe a policy the author has seen succeed
  4. D. Concede that planners’ safety concerns are sometimes justified

  Show the answer

  B. The town is introduced with “would, on this account”: it is a hypothetical that shows where the argument about drivers leads, so its job is to illustrate a consequence. Treating it as evidence turns a thought experiment into data and adds a claim about collision counts the author never makes. A policy the author saw succeed, or a concession to planners, would cut against the author’s point.

• Tone and attitude questions

  Tone · Foundations of Comprehension

  Tone questions ask how the author feels about the subject, or about a view the passage reports. They rest on voice words, the places where the author steps in with a judgment.

  Collect the voice words before you look at the choices: “unfortunately”, “so-called”, “rightly”, “merely”, “admirably”. Then decide two things: is the attitude positive, negative or mixed, and how strong is it?

  A choice like “contemptuous” or “adoring” needs language just as strong in the passage; without it, the choice is overstated. A passage with no voice words at all supports “neutral” or “informative”.

  1. List the voice words
  2. Decide the direction: positive, negative or mixed
  3. Decide the strength, and eliminate anything stronger than the text
  Try an example

  Every firm now has a mission statement, and most of them say the same thing: the company exists to empower, to innovate, to serve communities. One can hardly object to these aims, which is precisely the problem. A sentence nobody could disagree with commits its author to nothing. The statements are not lies, exactly; they are something closer to weather, a pleasant background condition that no one expects to change what happens indoors.

  The author’s attitude toward corporate mission statements is best described as:

  1. A. Wry skepticism
  2. B. Outraged condemnation
  3. C. Cautious approval
  4. D. Detached neutrality

  Show the answer

  A. The voice words set the tone: “precisely the problem”, “commits its author to nothing”, and the comparison to weather. The author doubts these statements matter but stops short of calling them lies, which is wry skepticism. Outraged condemnation is too strong for a writer who says “not lies, exactly”. Cautious approval reverses the attitude, and detached neutrality ignores that the excerpt is plainly arguing.

• Strengthen questions

  Strengthen · Reasoning Beyond the Text

  Strengthen questions ask which statement, if true, would give a claim in the passage more support. When the support is a new finding, this is Reasoning Beyond the Text; when the stem asks which evidence already in the passage supports a claim, it is Reasoning Within the Text.

  Classify the claim first, then find the reason words that hold it up: “because”, “since”, “on this view”. Predict what kind of fact would make the step from evidence to conclusion harder to doubt.

  The right choice supports the specific claim named in the stem, not the passage’s topic in general. A choice on the same subject that leaves the claim untouched is a wrong-question trap.

  1. Name the exact claim to be supported
  2. Find its evidence and the gap between them
  3. Predict a fact that closes the gap, then prove the match
  Try an example

  Folklorists once assumed that a ballad sung in two distant villages must have traveled from one to the other, and they spent years mapping the routes. A simpler explanation deserves more attention. Ballads are assembled from a shared store of formulas, set phrases and familiar plot turns, and two singers drawing on that store can arrive at nearly the same song without ever meeting. Resemblance, on this view, is evidence of common materials, not of contact.

  Which finding, if true, would most strengthen the author’s argument?

  1. A. Two villages with nearly identical ballads are known to have traded with each other for centuries.
  2. B. Folklorists have recorded more ballads in the past decade than in any earlier period.
  3. C. Closely matching ballads turn up in communities with no record of contact, and each is built largely from the same set phrases.
  4. D. Some ballad singers can recall where they first heard a particular song.

  Show the answer

  C. The claim is that shared formulas, not travel, explain why ballads resemble each other. Matching ballads in communities with no contact, built from the same set phrases, is exactly the case that view predicts. Centuries of trade between two villages fits the older travel explanation, and singers who recall where they heard a song point toward transmission too. The number of ballads recorded recently bears on neither explanation.

• Weaken questions

  Weaken · Reasoning Beyond the Text

  Weaken questions mirror strengthen questions: which statement, if true, would most undermine a claim? They ask you to take the passage’s reasoning somewhere new and see whether it holds.

  Pin down the exact claim in the stem. Then ask what the author takes for granted in moving from evidence to conclusion. The best weakener usually breaks that link, or shows the conclusion failing where it ought to hold.

  Two decoys are common. One supports the claim instead, which is a flipped reading. The other attacks a different claim from the passage, which is a wrong-question trap.

  1. Name the exact claim to be undermined
  2. Find the link between its evidence and its conclusion
  3. Predict what would break the link, then prove the match
  Try an example

  Archivists are right to worry that digital records decay faster than paper, but the worry is usually framed in the wrong terms. Files do not fade the way ink does; they become unreadable all at once, when the software that opens them disappears. The threat to a digital archive is therefore not age but obsolescence, and the remedy is not better storage but a standing habit of migrating files to current formats before the old ones are abandoned.

  Which finding, if true, would most weaken the author’s claim about the remedy for digital decay?

  1. A. Some paper records in municipal archives have survived for several centuries.
  2. B. Software for opening old file formats is often withdrawn with little warning.
  3. C. Archivists disagree about how often files should be migrated.
  4. D. Migrating files between formats frequently corrupts or silently drops parts of their content.

  Show the answer

  D. The author’s remedy is routine migration to current formats. If migration itself corrupts or drops content, it cannot be the cure, so that finding attacks the claim directly. Software being withdrawn without warning supports the author’s account of the threat. Paper surviving for centuries concerns the medium the excerpt sets aside, and disagreement over how often to migrate leaves migration itself standing as the remedy.

• Apply questions

  Apply · Reasoning Beyond the Text

  Apply questions give you a new situation and ask what the passage’s reasoning says about it. They test Reasoning Beyond the Text, and they change the surface on purpose: the passage is about law, the question is about a kitchen.

  Ignore the topic and extract the principle. Phrase it as a conditional, “when X, do Y”, then check each choice against the conditions rather than the vocabulary.

  A choice that shares words with the passage but fails the conditions is a decoy. Match the logic, not the wording.

  1. State the passage’s principle as an if-then
  2. Check each new case against the “if”
  3. Prove: the right case meets every condition
  Try an example

  A rule tells you exactly what to do; a standard tells you what to aim for and leaves the judgment to you. Rules are cheap to follow and easy to check, which is why they suit settings where many strangers must coordinate quickly. Standards cost more, since someone must interpret them case by case, but they adapt to situations no drafter foresaw. The choice between them is less a matter of principle than of asking who will apply the guidance, how often, and how varied the cases will be.

  Based on the excerpt, a standard rather than a rule would be most appropriate for guiding:

  1. A. Drivers deciding which side of the road to use
  2. B. A small panel of experienced editors deciding which unusual manuscripts merit publication
  3. C. Thousands of ticket-takers checking passes at a stadium entrance
  4. D. Pharmacists printing dosage labels on routine prescriptions

  Show the answer

  B. The principle: rules suit many people coordinating quickly on predictable cases; standards suit varied cases that need judgment, where someone can afford to interpret each one. A few experienced editors weighing unusual manuscripts meet every condition for a standard. Drivers choosing a side of the road and thousands of ticket-takers are the coordination case for rules, and routine dosage labels are predictable work an exact rule handles cheaply.

• Analogy questions

  Analogy · Reasoning Beyond the Text

  Analogy questions ask which new situation shares the structure of something in the passage. They test Reasoning Beyond the Text. The subject matter will differ; only the relationships need to match.

  Before reading the choices, strip the passage’s case down to its parts: who intended what, what happened instead, and why. Placeholders help: “a thing meant to do X ends up doing Y because Z.”

  Check every part. Wrong choices usually match one or two pieces and quietly drop the one that matters most.

  1. Reduce the passage’s case to a skeleton
  2. Test each choice against every part
  3. Prove: the right choice keeps all the relationships
  Try an example

  The compilers of the first national dictionaries believed they were fixing the language in place, recording correct usage so that later speakers would have a standard to obey. What they actually produced was a snapshot. Speech kept moving, and within a generation the dictionaries had become records of how people once talked, consulted mostly by readers who wanted to know what had changed. The compilers had mistaken a description for a rule, and time turned their rule back into a description.

  Which situation is most analogous to the one the author describes?

  1. A. A cartographer maps a coastline that has not changed in centuries.
  2. B. A committee drafts a rule for a game, and players follow it unchanged for decades.
  3. C. A historian writes an account of a war that later turns out to contain errors.
  4. D. A city issues an official street guide meant to govern how routes are used, and as neighborhoods change it becomes chiefly a record of the old layout.

  Show the answer

  D. The skeleton: a document meant to govern a changing practice ends up as a record of how that practice used to be. The street guide has every part: intended authority, a practice that changes, and a guide that becomes a record of the old layout. The coastline has no change, the game rule keeps working, and the war history is about errors rather than a rule outlasted by change.

• New-information questions

  New information · Reasoning Beyond the Text

  New-information questions add a fact the passage did not have and ask how it bears on the argument: does it support a claim, undermine it, or leave it untouched? Some ask how the author would respond. They test Reasoning Beyond the Text.

  Treat the new fact as a test of a specific claim. Find the claim it touches, recall what the author’s reasoning predicts, and compare.

  “No effect” is a real possibility, but only if the new fact misses every claim. Check the passage’s stated scope before you choose it.

  1. Find the claim the new fact touches
  2. Recall what the author’s reasoning predicts
  3. Compare: supports, undermines or irrelevant, then prove it
  Try an example

  The decline of the town square is usually blamed on the car, which carried shopping and leisure out to the edge of town. That account is incomplete. Squares emptied first in towns where the market hall closed, whether or not traffic had changed, because a square without a daily errand gives people no reason to cross it. Civic space, I would argue, lives on routine: ceremonies and festivals fill it occasionally, but only ordinary business keeps it occupied.

  Suppose a town reopened its market hall and the square around it soon became busy again on ordinary days. How would this affect the author’s argument?

  1. A. It would support the claim that routine business, not occasional events, keeps civic space occupied.
  2. B. It would undermine the claim that the car contributed to the decline of town squares.
  3. C. It would show that festivals are the most effective way to revive a town square.
  4. D. It would have no bearing on the argument, which concerns only towns where traffic changed.

  Show the answer

  A. The author’s claim is that daily errands keep a square occupied. Restoring the errand and seeing ordinary-day traffic return is what that claim predicts, so the new case supports it. It says nothing about cars, and the author called the car account incomplete, not false. Festivals, in the author’s words, fill a square only occasionally. And the argument explicitly covers towns “whether or not traffic had changed”, so “no bearing” misreads its scope.

• Assumption questions

  Assumption · Reasoning Within the Text

  Assumption questions ask for an unstated premise: something the author must believe for the argument to work, but never says. They test Reasoning Within the Text.

  Find the conclusion and its stated evidence using the reason words, then look for the gap between them. The assumption is the bridge across that gap.

  Test a candidate by negating it. If the argument collapses when the choice is false, the author was relying on it. If the argument survives, the choice may be true, but it is not required.

  1. Split the argument into evidence and conclusion
  2. Name the gap between them
  3. Negate each choice: the one that sinks the argument is the assumption
  Try an example

  Anthologies are often accused of narrowing the canon, since editors reprint what earlier editors chose and the same poems circulate for a century. But the charge can be turned around. Because every anthology must justify its existence against the ones already on the shelf, each new editor has a reason to include something the others left out. Over time, then, the pressure to be different should widen the range of poems in print, not shrink it.

  The author’s conclusion depends on which unstated assumption?

  1. A. Earlier anthologies were assembled with little care.
  2. B. Readers prefer poems they have already met in other collections.
  3. C. Editors act on the pressure to set their anthologies apart, rather than mostly repeating established selections.
  4. D. The canon has grown narrower over the past century.

  Show the answer

  C. The argument runs from “each new editor has a reason to include something the others left out” to “the range should widen”. That only follows if editors act on the reason. Negate it, so that editors mostly reprint the established poems anyway, and the conclusion fails. Careless earlier editors and readers’ tastes are not needed by the argument, and a narrowing canon is the critics’ charge, which the author disputes.

• Trap: overstated

  Overstated, too extreme

  An overstated choice starts from a real idea in the passage and claims more than the text supports. The passage hedged; the choice did not.

  The tell is usually a single word: always, never, all, only, must, proves, the sole cause. Compare it with the passage’s own qualifiers, such as “may”, “often”, “some”, “tends to” and “in part”. If the choice is stronger, it needs a line just as strong behind it.

  Strong wording is not wrong in itself. If the author does say “never”, a choice that says “never” can be right. The test is whether the text goes as far as the choice.

  1. Find the strongest word in the choice
  2. Find the matching claim in the passage
  3. Compare strength; eliminate the choice if it goes further
  Try an example

  For most of their history, universities examined students by talking to them. The written examination spread partly because it was easier to administer to large numbers, and partly because it seemed fairer: every candidate faced the same questions on the same page. Something was lost in the exchange. An examiner in conversation could follow a weak answer with a better question and discover what a student half-knew. Paper can record only what the student already knows how to say.

  The author’s view of written examinations is that they:

  1. A. Were introduced over the objections of most students
  2. B. Cannot capture knowledge a student holds only partially
  3. C. Are worse than oral examinations in every respect
  4. D. Were less fair than the oral examinations they replaced

  Show the answer

  B. “Worse than oral examinations in every respect” is the overstated trap. The author does see a loss, but grants written exams two real advantages, easier administration and apparent fairness, so the choice goes well past the text. The correct choice rests on the last two sentences: conversation could uncover what a student half-knew, and paper records only what she can already say. Student objections are never mentioned, and calling written exams less fair reverses the excerpt. Its “cannot” survives the strength test because the excerpt goes just as far: paper “can record only” what the student already knows how to say.

• Trap: never said

  Never said, out of scope

  A never-said choice may be true, sensible, even something you learned in a course, but the passage does not support it. CARS rewards only what the text supports.

  It tempts because nothing in it is false. Outside knowledge makes it feel familiar, and familiar feels right.

  The defense is the Prove step. For every choice you are about to pick, put your finger on the line that backs it. If there is no line, the passage never said it.

  1. Ask: where does the passage say this?
  2. No line, no credit, however true it sounds
  Try an example

  Apprenticeship is sometimes described as an inefficient way to pass on a craft: years of sweeping floors and watching before a novice is trusted with real work. The description misses what the watching accomplishes. A master’s skill lives largely in judgments she could not put into words, such as when to stop planing or how a joint should sound as it seats. A novice who watches long enough absorbs those judgments the only way they can be absorbed, by seeing them made again and again.

  Which claim is supported by the excerpt?

  1. A. Apprenticeship declined as industrial production spread.
  2. B. Masters can state most of their knowledge as explicit instructions.
  3. C. Watching is largely a waste of a novice’s time.
  4. D. Some of a master’s skill can be passed on only through repeated observation.

  Show the answer

  D. The decline of apprenticeship under industry is the never-said trap: a reasonable historical claim, but the excerpt mentions neither industry nor decline. The correct choice rests on the last two sentences: judgments the master “could not put into words” are absorbed “the only way they can be”, by watching. Masters stating their knowledge as instructions contradicts that, and calling watching a waste is the view the author argues against.

• Trap: flipped

  Flipped, the opposite

  A flipped choice says the reverse of what the passage says. It often hides inside a long sentence that is accurate everywhere except one word.

  Read negations on purpose. “Not”, “fails to”, “rather than”, “unlike”, “less”, and prefixes such as “un-” and “in-” all reverse meaning. So does reversing the author’s stance: a choice saying the author rejects what she endorses is flipped too.

  Flipped choices are easiest to catch with a prediction in hand. If you know which way the author leans, a choice leaning the other way stands out.

  1. Mark every negation in the choice
  2. Compare its direction with your prediction
  3. Prove: the right choice points the same way as the line
  Try an example

  Professional historians have long treated local amateur histories with polite condescension: charming, unreliable, best used for anecdote. The condescension is misplaced. Amateurs often had access to family papers, oral accounts and parish records that never reached a university library, and many of them transcribed those sources with great care. Their interpretations can be naive, but their transcriptions are frequently the only surviving copies. A historian who ignores them does not avoid amateur error; she simply loses evidence.

  The author’s position on local amateur histories is that:

  1. A. Their interpretations may be weak, but the sources they preserve make them valuable.
  2. B. Their transcriptions are generally unreliable, though their interpretations are often insightful.
  3. C. Professional historians are right not to rely on them.
  4. D. They are more reliable than university archives.

  Show the answer

  A. The author’s view has two halves: interpretations “can be naive”, but careful transcriptions are often the only surviving copies. The correct choice keeps both. The flipped trap keeps the same two-part shape and reverses each half. Saying professionals are right not to rely on amateurs reverses the author’s verdict, and the comparison with university archives claims more than the excerpt does.

• Trap: distorted

  Distorted

  A distorted choice is built from real pieces of the passage, put together wrong. The words are familiar; the relationships between them have changed.

  Common forms: a view assigned to the wrong voice, so that a critic’s claim becomes the author’s; a correlation the passage reports turned into a cause; a condition dropped, so that “when X, then Y” becomes simply “Y”; two separate claims fused into one.

  Overstated changes how strong a claim is, and flipped reverses its direction. Distorted changes what it is connected to. Check who said it, what it is linked to, and under what conditions.

  1. Who holds this view in the passage?
  2. What is it connected to there, and how?
  3. Did the choice drop a condition or swap a relationship?
  Try an example

  Preservationists argue that old buildings should be protected because they carry a city’s memory. Developers reply that memory is a luxury for cities with room to spare, and that a growing city needs housing more than facades. Both sides, I think, misjudge the trade. Where old buildings are adapted for new uses, cities have often gained housing and kept their character at once. The real conflict is not between memory and growth but between adaptation and demolition, which is cheaper only when its costs are counted narrowly.

  Which statement would the author most likely endorse?

  1. A. Memory is a luxury that only cities with room to spare can afford.
  2. B. Old buildings should be protected from any change in use.
  3. C. Adapting old buildings can let a city add housing without losing its character.
  4. D. Demolition is always more expensive than adaptation.

  Show the answer

  C. “Memory is a luxury…” is the distorted trap: the wording comes straight from the passage, but it is the developers’ view, and the author says both sides misjudge the trade. The correct choice restates the author’s own claim about adapted buildings. Protecting buildings from any change in use reverses the author’s support for new uses, and “always more expensive” turns “cheaper only when its costs are counted narrowly” into an absolute.

• Trap: wrong question

  Wrong question, true but not an answer here

  A wrong-question choice is accurate to the passage and still wrong, because it answers something the stem did not ask. It may be true of a different paragraph, a different claim, or a different kind of question.

  It works on recognition. You see wording you just read, feel the jolt of familiarity, and stop checking. Being in the passage is necessary for a right answer, not sufficient.

  The defense is the Classify step. Know exactly what the stem asks, which claim, which paragraph, which relationship, and test every choice against that question rather than against the passage in general.

  1. Restate the stem in your own words before reading the choices
  2. For each choice ask two things: is it true, and does it answer this question?
  Try an example

  Defenders of public arts funding usually point to the economy: theaters fill restaurants, and festivals draw tourists. The argument is true as far as it goes, but it concedes too much. If art earns its subsidy by generating spending, then any project that generates more spending has a stronger claim, and a stadium will beat a string quartet every time. The better case is that a city funds art for the same reason it funds libraries: because some goods are worth having even when they do not pay for themselves.

  The author objects to the economic argument for arts funding chiefly because it:

  1. A. Relies on tourism figures that are hard to verify
  2. B. Commits its defenders to judging art by a standard on which other projects can outscore it
  3. C. Notes that theaters bring customers to nearby restaurants
  4. D. Is false, since arts spending does not actually help local economies

  Show the answer

  B. Noting that theaters bring customers to restaurants is the wrong-question trap: the passage says it, but it is the argument’s content, not the author’s objection to it. The objection follows “but it concedes too much”: judged by spending, “a stadium will beat a string quartet every time”, so the argument hands the contest to other projects. Calling the argument false contradicts “true as far as it goes”, and unverifiable tourism figures are never raised.

The method itself is in the Codex: CARS strategy. The CARS Skills questions drill it, free.