Types of Questions that are Generally Asked in the Verbal Section of the MCAT

The Five Kinds of Verbal Reasoning Questions that can be asked in the MCAT examination are,

1. Testing the main idea: The examiner would want to know how well the student understands the main idea of the passage. The central theme of the passage should be comprehended and whether this is done or not is tested. This is the most important question as it determines to the examiner as whether the student is capable of understanding the passage from the writer’s point of view. Some commonly appearing questions in this regard are,

The passage as a whole suggests that the author believes that . . . 

Which of the following would be the best title for the passage? 

The author's main purpose of the passage is to . . . 

2. Testing the author’s tone: The author, while writing the passage has some tone in mind that is used relatively in the entire passage. Some questions will test you to see if you have grasped the tone of the author. It could be neutral or biased, critical or supportive, etc. There sometimes might be subtle hints to guess what tone is the author using, while sometimes these hints will be difficult to spot. The questions of this type are usually of the form:

The author's attitude toward his subject is one of . . . 

Which of the following characterizes the author's likely intended audience? 

The tone of the passage might best be described as . . .

3. Theme of the Passage: These questions are somewhat similar to the main idea type questions. The latter deal with the entire passage as a whole, while the thematic questions take a sentence or a paragraph and demand the point of view or conclusion. Such questions look like this, 

How would the author of the passage respond to . . . 

Which of following would the author probably recommend in a situation where . . . 

It can be inferred from the passage that . . .

4. Conclusion

In this section, one has to interpret a particular section or the purpose of the entire paragraph. For doing this effectively, one has to judge a specific content and even read between the lines. 

These questions are typically like these:

The author uses the term ____ in line ## to mean . . . 

Lines ## - ## imply that the author . . . 

The author brings up the example of ____ in order to . . .

5. Facts one can Learn from the Passage:

There will be some facts and information in the passage that one has to remember and repeat in some questions. This may not be asked frequently but we cannot make sure that this type doesn’t appear at all. Such questions are of the type:

The author states that . . . 

According to the passage, who was the first person to ever . . . 

Which of the following does the author claim . . .