Whitney Garner wrote:

tcon wrote:In terms of improving on CR, how do students usually increase their scores?

Hi tcon!

A great method for increasing CR understanding and time is to think about truly comprehensive reviews. Think about doing the following when you work on a CR problem (for review).

(1) Work the problem as normal (during practice, let your self take extra time if necessary while you are still learning, but you can do this same review with problems you timed at 2.5 minutes or problems you encounter during your practice tests).

(2) Prior to checking your answer, try to recap all of the logic or intuition you used. Re-tell yourself the argument and try to break it down as simply as possible. Then ask yourself why you picked the answer you did as the correct answer (try to be as specific as possible regarding logic, terms or argument structure). Then walk through each answer you did NOT choose and explain (again in detail) the reasons you eliminated each of these.

(3) When you review, only check the ANSWER LETTER first (not the explanations):

- If you were CORRECT: check all of your explanations (for the argument, correct and incorrect answers) against the explanation given in the answers (or against explanations given in the forums if there is no answer key).

- If you were INCORRECT: try to TEACH YOURSELF the new explanations. Try to figure out why the answer you picked was actually wrong, and why the correct answer is actually correct. Once you feel confident that you have developed a new reasoning, check all explanations against the answer.


This might seem like a fairly long process to use on EVERY CR problem, but if you're working to learn to quickly dissect an argument as well as the answer choices, you must go through this complete process. You don't have to do this for every problem but I would try to start using it as frequently as process and then tapering off as your accuracy improves!


Whit