Management Admission Test (GMAT) Exam

GMAT Reading Comprehension Questions

Passage

Most educated people of the eighteenth century, such as the Founding Fathers, subscribed to Natural Rights Theory, the idea that every human being has a considerable number of innate rights, simply by virtue of being a human person. When the US Constitution was sent to the states for ratification, many at that time felt that the federal government outlined by the Constitution would be too strong, and that rights of individual citizens against the government had to be clarified. This led to the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments, which were ratified at the same time as the Constitution. The first eight of these amendments list specific rights of citizens. Some leaders feared that listing some rights could be interpreted to mean that citizens didn’t have other, unlisted rights. Toward this end, James Madison and others produced the Ninth Amendment, which states: the fact that certain rights are listed in the Constitution shall not be construed to imply that other rights of the people are denied

Constitutional traditionalists interpret the Ninth Amendment as a rule for reading the rest of the constitution. They would argue that “Ninth Amendment rights” are a misconceived notion: the amendment does not, by itself, create federally enforceable rights. In particular, this strict reasoning would be opposed to the creation of any new rights based on the amendment. Rather, according to this view, the amendment merely protects those rights that citizens already have, whether they are explicitly listed in the Constitution or simply implicit in people’s lives and in American tradition.

More liberal interpreters of the US Constitution have a much more expansive view of the Ninth Amendment. In their view, the Ninth Amendment guarantees to American citizens a vast universe of potential rights, some of which we have enjoyed for two centuries, and others that the Founding Fathers could not possibly have conceived. These scholars point out that some rights, such as voting rights of women or minorities, were not necessarily viewed as rights by the majority of citizens in late eighteenth century America, but are taken as fundamental and unquestionable in modern America. While those rights cited are protected specifically by other amendments and laws, the argument asserts that other unlisted right also could evolve from unthinkable to perfectly acceptable, and the Ninth Amendment would protect these as-yet-undefined rights.

Reading Comp. Practice Questions

1) The author cites the scholars referring to “voting rights of women or minorities” in order to

(A) cite unquestionably justified Ninth Amendment rights
(B) demonstrate how changing priorities can alter perspectives on fundamental human rights
(C) argue for the modern extension of Natural Rights Theory
(D) refute the traditionalist interpretation of the Ninth Amendment
(E) champion the rights of all citizens in the democratic process

2) Constitutional scholars of both the traditionalist and liberal views would agree that “Ninth Amendment rights”

(A) accommodate shifts in cultural values with respect to issues affecting human rights
(B) cannot serve as the basis of legal decisions
(C) are directly reflected in our understanding of who can and can’t vote
(D) are not stated explicitly in the Bill of Rights
(E) extend the idea of Natural Rights Theory

3) According to the passage, what would the Ninth Amendment imply about a right to “a trial by jury”, guaranteed in the Seventh Amendment of the US Constitution?

(A) The Ninth Amendment would provide direct support for this right.
(B) The Ninth Amendment would not support this right directly, but would support all the logistics that would allow citizens to exercise this right.
(C) The Ninth Amendment would apply to trials that fall outside the jurisdiction of Federal Courts.
(D) The Ninth Amendment would apply to all trials that do not involve Constitutional Law
(E) The Ninth Amendment is irrelevant to any right mentioned explicitly in the Bill of Rights.

4) In the view of James Madison and the other Founding Fathers, the Ninth Amendment limits the power of the central Federal government by

(A) preventing constitutionally listed rights from being viewed as exhaustive
(B) giving the citizens rights in every area not explicitly addressed by the law
(C) codifying a vast universe of federally enforceable rights
(D) guaranteeing, in the text of US Constitution, all rights held by Natural Rights Theory
(E) ensuring all citizens are able to vote and, thus, choose the democratic leaders

5) The primary purpose of the passage is to

(A) clarify the most proper interpretation of an amendment
(B) argue for a broader perspective on human rights and their legal protection
(C) contrast historical perspectives of an amendment to its modern legal reading
(D) explain the motivation for an amendment and the ambiguity this amendment presents
(E) demonstrate how the Founding Fathers’ intentions have been distorted by subsequent legal proceedings.

Passage

The rich analyses of Fernand Braudel and his fellow Annales historians have made significant contributions to historical theory and research. In a departure from traditional historical approaches, the Annales historians assume (as do Marxists) that history cannot be limited to a simple recounting of conscious human actions, but must be understood in the context of forces that underlie human behavior. Braudel was the first Annales historian to gain widespread support for the idea that history should synthesize data from social sciences, especially economics, to provide a broader historical view of human societies over time (although Febvre and Bloch, founders of the Annales school, originated this approach).

Braudel conceived of history as the dynamic interaction of three temporalities. The first of these, the evenementielle, involved short-lived dramatic "events," such as battles, revolutions, and the actions of great men, which had preoccupied traditional historians like Carlyle. Conjonctures was Braudel's term for the larger, cyclical processes that might last up to half a century. The longue duree, a historical wave of great length, was for Braudel the most fascinating of the three temporalities. Here he focused on those aspects of everyday life that might remain relatively unchanged for centuries. What people ate, what they wore, their means and routes of travel—for Braudel these things create "structures" that define the limits of potential social change for hundreds of years at a time.

Braudel's concept of the longue duree extended the perspective of historical space as well as time. Until the Annales school, historians had taken the juridicial political unit—the the nation-state, duchy, or whatever—as their starting point. Yet, when such enormous time spans are considered, geographical features may have more significance for human populations than national borders. In his doctoral thesis, a seminal work on the Mediterranean during the reign of Philip II, Braudel treated the geohistory of the entire region as a "structure" that exerted myriad influences on human lifeways since the first settlements on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.

And so the reader is given such arcane information as the list of products that came to Spanish shores from North Africa, the seasonal routes followed by Mediterranean sheep and their shepherds, and the cities where the best ship timber could be bought.

Braudel has been faulted for the imprecision of his approach. With his Rabelaisian delight in concrete detail, Braudel vastly extended the realm of relevant phenomena; but this very achievement made it difficult to delimit the boundaries of observation, a task necessary to beginning any social investigation. Further, Braudel and other Annales historians minimize the differences among the social sciences. Nevertheless, the many similarly designed studies aimed at both professional and popular audiences indicate that Braudel asked significant questions which traditional historians had overlooked.
Question 1

The primary purpose of the passage is to:

A. show how Braudel's work changed the conception of Mediterranean life held by previous historians.
B. evaluate Braudel's criticisms of traditional and Marxist historiography
C. contrast the perspective of the longue duree with the actions of major historical figures
D. illustrate the relevance of Braudel's concepts to other social sciences
E. outline some of Braudel's influential conceptions and distinguish them from conventional approaches
Question 2

The author refers to the work of Febvre and Bloch in order to:

A. illustrate the limitations of the Annales tradition of historical investigation
B. suggest the relevance of economics to historical investigation
C. debate the need for combining various sociological approaches
D. show that previous Annales historians anticipated Braudel's focus on economics
E. demonstrate that historical studies provide broad structures necessary for economic analysis
Question 3

According to the passage, all of the following are aspects of Braudel's approach to history EXCEPT that he:

A. attempted to unify various social sciences
B. studied social and economic activities that occurred across national boundaries
C. pointed out the link between increased economic activity and the rise of nationalism
D. examined seemingly unexciting aspects of everyday life
E. visualized history as involving several different time frames
Question 4

The passage suggests that, compared to traditional historians, Annales historians are:

A. more interested in other social sciences than in history
B. more critical of the achievements of famous historical figures
C. more skeptical of the validity of most economic research
D. more interested in the underlying context of human behavior provided by social structure
E. more inclined to be dogmatic in their approach to history
Question 5

The author is critical of Braudel's perspective for which of the following reasons?

A. It seeks structures that underlie all forms of social activity.
B. It assumes a greater similarity among the social sciences than actually exists.
C. It fails to consider the relationship between short-term events and long-term social activity.
D. It clearly defines boundaries for social analysis.
E. It attributes too much significance to conscious human actions.

Passage

The recent news that local hospitals have had to reroute seriously ill patients because the community's critical-care beds are full is worrisome. Earlier this week, four of the six local hospitals ran out of space for the critically ill and had to turn people away.
Federal law requires hospitals to treat anyone who walks in. As a result of having to treat large numbers of uninsured patients, the emergency rooms often become an economic drain on their hospitals. Doctors now want to set up their own free-standing ambulatory surgical facilities and diagnostic centers. Critics contend this would leave hospitals with less revenue and the same number of indigents to treat.
A bill was recently introduced to phase out the need for a "certificate of public need" for non-hospital-based facilities, provided those facilities met stringent regulations and requirements. This would have made it easier to set up alternative facilities to help indigent patients. The finance committee balked at the hefty price and killed the bill, another casualty of a failed legislative session.
Unfortunately, the problem of access to medical care for those of limited means is not going to go away anytime soon and, despite the well-intended regulations, too-full hospitals compromise everyone's welfare. Healthy competition with small neighborhood surgical and diagnostic centers may be what is necessary to help dampen rising medical costs. But under no circumstances should the hospitals be forced to care for everybody without health insurance while competitors operate free of the burden of caring for those unable to pay.

1) Which of the following is a conclusion supported by the passage?

If doctors want to run their own facilities, they should be required to take in at least some of the indigents.
The government should provide health insurance for those unable to buy their own.
Voters should tell the finance committee members that they will not be reelected if they do not pass some new legislation.
Emergency rooms that turn patients away due to overcrowding are derelict in their duty .
The fundamental problem facing hospitals now is that health care costs have risen dramatically in recent years.

2) Which of the following best describes the tone of the passage?

neutral
positive
persuasive
angry
reverential

3) Which of the following is cited as a factor which has contributed to the overburdening of hospitals?

Failure to pass legislation which would have mitigated the problem
Limited access to medical care for the poor
Federal law

I only
II only
III only
I and II
I, II, and III

4) The author cites the failed legislation in order to show that

the legislature will never resolve this issue.
the finance committee does not care about the uninsured citizens.
there will always be uninsured hospital patients.
the legislature recently attempted to resolve this issue.
the doctors successfully lobbied the finance committee.