You have probably seen the questions on the MBLE test that ask you to analyze your reading, reasoning, syntactical and spelling errors. This can be a very difficult section and will test both your logic and critical thinking skills. If you can’t analyze and explain why you made a mistake, how will someone else understand what you’re trying to say?
The Critical Analysis and Reasons section of the MBLE, also known as MCAT cars section, is basically designed to test you ability to read a sentence, interpret the meaning, and then answer questions concerning the sentence. For example, in the statement, “The president of the U.S. was kicked out of office due to bad leadership,” one might assume that the reason President Bush was kicked out of office is because he was ineffective in leadership. One can easily analyze the sentence using this MCAT practice test. To begin, ask yourself “Why was the president of the U.S. kicked out of office?” You can then go on to answer questions such as: Did President Bush really gets rid of his own cabinet?
A lot of MBLE practice tests center around the sentence “A car is a car” and their answer choices. In this type of situation, it is a good idea to focus on the main idea of the passage and how each word relates to that idea. Most of the main ideas found in good textbooks are easy to analyze and reason about. With this practice test, the first question you should answer is “What does the word ‘car’ mean?”
After answering the main idea of the passage, you should then turn your attention to the various possible ways the main idea can be used. One of the most common ways to use main ideas in MBLE tests is to analyze the sentence as a diagram. With the main idea as the focal point, you would draw one or more diagrams that represent each of the main ideas in the passage. Once you have diagrammed the passage, turn your attention to each of the sub-phrases in the passage and try to analyze how these sub-phrases change the original main idea. This strategy allows a middle school student to analyze the sentence and come to the conclusion that the sentence is grammatically correct.
Another way that you can use this practice test to understand the sample passage is to analyze the language. In this example, the first two sub-phrases “race cars” and” Piston Cup” seems quite ordinary. However, when you analyze them you see that there is some language difficulty here. For instance, in the first sub-phrase, the words “race cars” seem to change tenses during the argument. In the second phrase, you find that the verb “run” is used in the object but not in the subject.
As a last resort, you may want to try a different approach by using the “last race” approach. In this example, you use examples of real people to describe how the last race worked out. You might for instance say something like, “The last race had terrible weather conditions, so drivers tried to beat the weather.” Or you could say something along those lines if you are describing a real person example.