ETEC Practice Items

''In which year did the American Civil War end?'' Identify the keyword in this question.

''American Civil War'

How can one distinguish arguments from explanations?

By using four basic tests

Who directed the video program, Beyond Hate with Bill Moyers? (Internet/ library search)

Catherine Tatge and Dominique Lasseur

What is the general term given to a wide range of cognitive skills and intellectual dispositions needed to effectively identify, analyze, and evaluate arguments and truth claims?

Critical thinking

Identify the skills that students learn that can greatly improve their classroom performance. (Select all that apply.)

Critically evaluating the arguments and beliefs of others Developing and defending one's own well-supported arguments and beliefs Understanding the arguments and beliefs of others

_____ is the view that what is true for person A is what person A's society believes is true.

Cultural relativism

Which of these commands is an example of an ought imperative?

Drink your milk, Billy! It will keep you healthy.

Identify the source materials that people look for when looking for information. (Check all that apply.)

Encyclopedias Bibliographies Dictionaries

Which of the following articles is written by Samuli Helama? (Internet/library search)

Ernest Hemingway's description of the mountaintop in "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and climate change research

Which of the following informational sources must be acknowledged when included in research?

Facts not widely known or that are controversial

Decide whether the following statement is true or false. (Search the Internet, if necessary.) A teacher with tenure can never be fired.

False

Decide whether the following statement is true or false. (Search the Internet, if necessary.) The Declaration of Independence was signed on July 4, 1776.

False

Decide whether the following statement is true or false. (Search the Internet, if necessary.) The United States has never fought a war with China.

False

Decide whether the following statement is true or false. (Search the Internet, if necessary.) Ferdinand Magelian was the first person to circumnavigate the globe. True False

False

What are the skills that employers are increasingly looking for in their employees?

Generalized critical thinking skills

"I live in Long Beach. Long Beach is in California. California is in the United States. So, I live in the United States." Identify the conclusion in this argument.

I live in the United States.

_____ are intended to provide examples of a claim, rather than prove or support the claim.

Illustrations

"Midnight's Children" should be part of every university syllabus. It won the Booker of Bookers prize and The Best of the Booker prize. Identify a true statement about this passage.

It does not contain any indicator words.

Which of the following is a reason people find cultural moral relativism attractive?

It implies that an individual must be tolerant of other cultures' moral beliefs and values.

"My throat hurts every time I try to swallow." Identify a true statement about this sentence.

It is a statement because it is either true or false.

"If Lewis is older than Darren and Darren is older than Larry, then Lewis is older than Larry." Which of the following statements is true of this example of a conditional statement?

It is asserted that if the first two statements are true, then the third statement must also be true.

How does critical thinking affect people's perceptions of the unexamined assumptions and biases of society?

It makes people question whether the assumptions are true.

Who wrote the following books?Robot-Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence? (Internet/ library search)

Joseph E. Aoun

In which journal was the following article published? Socially oriented student entrepreneurship: A study of student change agency in the academic capitalism context by Matthew M. Mars and Gary Rhoades (Internet/library search)

Journal of Higher Education

Which of the following is considered to be plagiarism? (Check all that apply.)

Material from an outside source is incorporated and a weak effort is made to acknowledge the source. Material from an outside source is paraphrased with no acknowledgment of the source.

Which of these sentences are statements?

Owls are nocturnal birds.

Identify the true statement about group bias.

People are naturally inclined toward group bias.

What are the drawbacks of cultural moral relativism? (Select all that apply.)

Relativism does not support the value of tolerance. Relativism can lead to conflicting moral duties.

Which of these classic experiments demonstrated people's desire to conform and its crippling effect on their critical reasoning and decision making? (Select all that apply.)

Solomon Asch's line comparison experiment Stanley Milgram's electric shock experiment

In the context of evaluating informational sources, which of the following is true of the process of verifying facts?

Some facts cannot be verified although they are matters of fact.

Laura believes that lying is always wrong, but Fred believes that lying is not always wrong. Which view says that there is no such thing as absolute truth, and whatever Laura believes is true, is true for her, and whatever Fred believes is true, is true for him?

Subjectivism

_____ is the view that truth is a matter of individual opinion.

Subjectivism

Identify an issue that would be considered irrelevant during an alleged murderer's trial.

The alleged murderer's attire during the trial

Which test says that unclear passages should always be interpreted generously and, in particular, a passage should never be interpreted as a bad argument when the evidence reasonably permits it to be interpreted as not an argument at all?

The principle of charity test

Identify the key intellectual traits of uncritical thinkers. (Select all that apply.)

They fear and resist ideas that challenge their basic beliefs. They are relatively indifferent to truth and lack curiosity. They base beliefs on mere personal preference or self-interest.

In the context of evaluating informational sources, identify a true statement about facts.

They must be separated from nonfacts such as opinions.

Identify a characteristic of critical thinkers that is absent in uncritical thinkers.

They pursue insights or truths despite obstacles or difficulties.

"Can you do anything correctly?" In this example, what is the purpose of the person asking the question?

To make an assertion

Identify the informational materials that need to be acknowledged when included in research. (Check all that apply.)

Unusual verbal illustrations Statistics and results of surveys

What is the first question that researchers should try and ask themselves before beginning to collect information?

What are they are looking for?

When does something count as an argument?

When it is a group of two or more statements and one of the statements is claimed or intended to be supported by the others

Identify the most likely situation in which quoting should be used in place of paraphrasing.

When words of the original quote would lose their impact if translated into a paraphrase

Identify the simple question that only requires retrieval of data.

Who was the 30th President of the U.S.?

Identify the question that requires more than a simple retrieval of data.

Who was the greatest painter of the Renaissance era?

Identify the barriers to critical thinking. (Check all that apply.) Open-mindedness Wishful and short-term thinking Overpowering emotions Selective perception

Wishful and short-term thinking Overpowering emotions Selective perception

Derek is a teacher and Juliet is a doctor. From this example, it can be concluded that _____.

a sentence may be used to express more than one statement

Bad decisions can be avoided by relying on _____.

accurate and timely information

Quoting is most likely warranted in place of paraphrasing if a writer wants to _____.

analyze the original writer's language

A(n) _____ is a group of statements, one or more of which (called the premises) are intended to prove or support another statement (called the conclusion).

argument

An author's education, credentials, and experience can be used to evaluate the author's _____.

background

A powerful motivator of conformism is people's desire to _____.

belong to the in-group

A list of books that provides for each book the name of the author, the title, the place and date of publication, the name of the publisher, and, in some cases, the price of the book is known as a(n) _____.

bibliography

Sketches of political figures, authors, scholars, dignitaries, executives, celebrities, socialites, and others whose contributions to their fields, to society, or to the culture have been noteworthy are provided by _____.

biographical sources

In the context of the barriers to critical thinking, scapegoating refers to _____.

blaming the innocent

Logical inconsistency involves saying or believing things that _____.

cannot all be true

"The grass is green, and the sky is blue." In this sentence, "the grass is green" and "the sky is blue" are two distinct statements because each is _____.

capable of standing alone as a declarative sentence

"Julia started a day care center because she loves children." This statement is an explanation rather than argument because the author's intent is to _____.

clarify why Julia started a day care center

"If you don't go to sleep on time, then you won't be able to wake up on time." This is an example of a(n) _____ statement.

conditional

In the context of informational sources for research, a limitation of online encyclopedias, especially Wikipedia, is that _____.

content does not pass through a review process before it appears on a page

Subject headings are also sometimes referred to as _____.

descriptors

An arguer's ability to think logically refers to his ability to _____.

draw well-founded conclusions from accurate and well-supported beliefs

Publishers of academic books and scholarly journals ensure that they publish work of high quality by _____.

employing a rigorous system of peer review

An _____ tries to show why something is the case, not to prove that it is the case.

explanation

Facts can be verified through _____. (Check all that apply.)

eyewitness testimony documentation

The U.S. has 50 states. This is an example of a(n) _____.

fact

"Who said 'An eye for an eye will leave everyone blind'?" The answer to this question can be found in a(n)

fact book

Almanacs, yearbooks, fact books, directories, handbooks, manuals, and atlases are volumes that can be consulted when _____.

factual answers to uncomplicated questions are required

The tendency to see one's own family, nation, tribe, sect, and the like as being inherently better than others is known as _____.

group bias

Typically, stereotypes are arrived at through a process known as _____.

hasty generalization

In college the focus is on the active, intelligent evaluation of ideas and information. This is referred to as _____.

higher-order thinking

When a writer has no special or personal interest in the topic, nothing to gain or lose by the audience's favorable or negative reaction to the topic, the author is said to be _____.

impartial

In the context of barriers to critical thinking, rationalization refers to _____.

inventing excuses to avoid facing the real motives

"Will you be coming home for dinner?" This sentence is not a statement because _____.

it does not assert or deny anything

America joined World War II because the Japanese bombed the American fleet in Pearl Harbor. This statement is obviously an explanation because _____.

it is a matter of common knowledge

Paraphrasing original words from an informational source is harder than quoting them because _____.

it requires greater understanding of the original so that the author's meaning is not misrepresented

"We lost the match because we did not practice." This sentence is an explanation rather than an argument because _____.

it tries to explain why a past event occurred

Relativism _____.

makes it impossible for us to correctly criticize other cultures' customs and values makes it impossible for us to correctly criticize our own societies' customs and values can lead to conflicting moral duties * All of the answers above are correct.

Freida believes that drinking alcohol is always wrong, whereas Henry believes that drinking alcohol is not always wrong. Therefore, according to _____, drinking alcohol is always wrong for Freida and is not always wrong for Henry.

moral subjectivism

Block quotations should be used if the quotation amounts to _____.

more than four or five lines of type

Provincialism is a barrier to critical thinking. This refers to _____ thinking.

narrow and unsophisticated

Match the URL suffixes with their expansions.

networks and service providers _____(4) nonprofit organizations _____(1) commercial sites _____(2) Information sites _____(5) government agencies 1. .cc 2. .info 3. .net 4. .org 5. .gov

Sometimes it is not possible to tell whether a passage is meant to be an argument or an explanation because _____.

none of the four tests for distinguishing arguments from explanations is foolproof

A passage is an explanation rather than an argument if the author's intent is to _____.

offer an account of why some event has occurred

If the statement that a passage is seeking to prove or explain is something that has already occurred, the passage is probably an explanation rather than an argument. This is the basis of the _____.

past-event test

When recording a quotation, a writer should _____.

place quotation marks around the material

It was discovered that a senator's run for office was funded by mob money. This senator had always stressed the need for strict action against mobs in order to lower crime rates. Such a failure of character is an example of a _____ inconsistency.

practical

The original sources that a writer cites are called _____ sources.

primary

A sentence that has the grammatical form of a question but is meant to be understood as a statement is called a(n) _____.

rhetorical question

The tendency to defend beliefs that benefit only oneself and harmonize with one's own needs is also known as _____

self-interested thinking

Lola believes, without any good reason, that all Indians are devoted Hindus. This is an example of a _____.

stereotypical conception

The content of items such as books, journal articles, and so on is described using a type of "official" or "controlled" vocabulary to make searching for information more manageable and productive. These "official" or "controlled" vocabulary are known as ___.

subject headings

The better-than-average effect refers to _____.

superiority bias

The facts or opinions posted on a website can be generally thought to be reliable if _____.

the linked sites provided by the author are objective

The general rule for distinguishing arguments from illustrations in borderline cases is called _____.

the principle of charity

The facts or opinions available on a website can be considered to be reliable if _____.

the site's sponsor is reputable

According to the common-knowledge test, a passage is probably an explanation rather than an argument if _____.

the statement that the passage seeks to prove or explain is a matter of general awareness

If a web page is maintained by an individual who may be working independently for the school, organization, or agency that provides the web address, it is indicated by a _____.

tilde (~)

When you see a driver coming toward you with the turn signal on, you have good reason to believe that the driver intends to turn. In this case, you make a _____.

warranted assumption

If people believe something not because they have good evidence for it but simply because they wish it were true, they are guilty of _____.

wishful thinking