Social Sciences and History / Unit 16 SSH 1503 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
Sample Question Three: Buddhism's Spread to China
The idea
The stem says Buddhism's spread to China resulted in, and the options are a challenge to the Confucian view of women; support for greater political involvement; a weakening of the Chinese monastic movement; greater unity under strong emperors; closer ties with Japan. The key is A. Entry 0416 assembles the anchor's four parts: Buddhism offered women enlightenment on an equal basis with men; Confucianism fostered a patriarchal family with women subservient; Buddhism entered China along the Silk Roads and was adopted by the Sui and Tang; and in the mid-ninth century Confucian and Daoist leaders called it alien and Emperor Wuzong destroyed some forty thousand temples. The distractors: C reverses the record, since monasteries grew until the crackdown; D is wrong because the Tang persecution shows division; B and E are not stated by the anchor at all.
In practice
Reason from the parts: equal spiritual standing for women entered a society whose ruling philosophy held them subservient. That is a challenge.
Where people slip
The synthesis is the exam's sentence, not the anchor's; the witness has no passage. The course teaches the four parts, names the gap, and does not invent the sentence. Repeated here so the learner hears it twice.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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