Tutorial: GAMSAT Metaphor Questions
A metaphor is a literary technique used to describe the subject by asserting that it is in some way similar to an otherwise unrelated object or idea
Different Types of Metaphor Questions
The following are a few of the most straightforward ways in which a metaphor-themed question might be posed on the GAMSAT:
- The passage describes something – which of the following would be the best metaphor for it?
- Which of the following, (A,B,C,D) taken from the passage, is an example of a metaphor?
- Why is X a poor metaphor for Y?
- Questions about literary techniques, for example:
1. “The boy was as fast as a shrew” (line 9), is an example of which of the following literary techniques?
- A Framing
- B Simile (this is actually the correct answer, see below)
- C Metaphor
- D Symbolism
Any other metaphor questions you might come across will likely just be less direct permutations of those above.
Unit 49 – Multilingualism in the EU
Difficulty: Hard
Time: 4 minutes 30 seconds
The passage below has been adapted from an article published on http://www.euractiv.com on 4th July 2012.
Jean Quatremer, a renowned French political journalist from the daily Libération, complained about the official press statements accompanying the Commission’s economic recommendations to member states, published on 30 May.
The statements, eagerly awaited by the press because of the euro debt crisis, were initially made available to journalists in English only, with translations in other languages following hours later in the day.
This, Quatremer said, gave the Anglo-Saxon press an “incredible competitive advantage” over others.“Can you govern a eurozone, which numbers 330 million citizens, in a language which is only spoken by less than five million Irish? … Well, that is what the European Commission claims to do,” Quatremer wrote in a strongly-worded blog post.
Commission spokesman Olivier Bailly said he understood the frustration but urged Quatremer to “accept it” since English had become the most widely spoken language in the EU Executive.
The documents, Bailly argued, were translated within a few hours into the other EU working languages (French and German) and within two days for the remaining 20 official languages.
Quatremer is not isolated in his quest for more linguisitc balance within the EU institutions. Jean-Pierre de Launoit, President of the ‘Alliance Française’, a public association promoting the French language and culture worldwide, said he has long sought to promote linguistic diversity within the European institutions. “Our struggle lies in the defence of multilingualism and the use of French whenever possible” in the EU institutions, he said.
Dennis Abbott, Commission spokesman for education, culture and multilingualism, argued that the translation delays on May 30th were due to some last-minute changes to the documents, made during the meeting of the College of Commissioners that took place the same day. In total, 66 documents required translation, representing 10,500 pages or 450 pages per language for the Commission’s translation services. All were translated within the set deadline, Abbott told EurActiv in emailed comments.
Anticipating the Commission’s response, Quatremer wrote that he did not wish for all documents to be translated immediately into French, but at least the report concerning France.
The Commission estimates that translating its more than two million documents yearly costs the European taxpayer 60 cents per person, which is often referred to as “the cost of democracy”.
Tutorial: Learning the right words for Section 1
There is a subset of questions on GAMSAT Section 1 which specifically test vocabulary.
These questions are structured in relation to the passages in such a way that it is very difficult to infer an unambiguous meaning of the key words without having a prior understanding of them.
Examples of how these questions might look:
- According to X, Y has a tendency to be:
- In comparison with X, Y is:
- This diagram represents X as:
- The word/phrase ‘X’ suggests/connotes:
- The word X (line p) is closest in meaning to:
- Which of the following descriptions best fits X:
- X is portrayed as:
- X treats Y with:
Unit 48 – Geometric Analogies
Difficulty: Medium/hard
Time: 3 minutes
The passage below has been adapted from How To Solve It by George Polya.
Analogy is a sort of similarity. Similar objects agree with each other in some respect, analogous objects agree in certain relations of their respective parts.
A rectangular parallelogram is analogous to a rectangular parallelepiped. In fact, the relations between the sides of the parallelogram are similar to those between the faces of the parallelepiped:
Each side of the parallelogram is parallel to just one other side, and is perpendicular to the remaining sides. Each face of the parallelepiped is parallel to just one other face, and is perpendicular to the remaining faces. Let us agree to call a side a “bounding element” of the parallelogram and a face a “bounding element” of the parallelepiped. Then, we may contract the two foregoing statements into one that applies equally to both figures:
Each bounding element is parallel to just one other bounding element and is perpendicular to the remaining bounding elements.
Thus, we have expressed certain relations which are common to the two systems of objects we compared, sides of the rectangle and faces of the rectangular parallelepiped. The analogy of these systems consists in this community of relations.
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