How to classify stem and stimulus in an question?

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bubbliiiiiiii: Legendary Member; Posts: 979; Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2009 1:38 amFollowed by: 12 members; Location: Hyderabad, India; Thanked: 49 times; GMAT Score:700

by bubbliiiiiiii » Fri Sep 17, 2010 2:09 am

Hi,

From the past few days, I have been reading the "Expert replies" to understand how to work on a CR question.

The two words which I very frequently come across is "Stem" and "Stimulus" of a question. Can someone please explain what these terms mean and how to identify them?

Thanks in advance!

Regards,

Pranay

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Critical Reasoning | Fri Sep 17, 2010 2:09 am

David@VeritasPrep: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 2193; Joined: Mon Feb 22, 2010 6:30 pmFollowed by: 512 members; Location: Vermont and Boston, MA; Thanked: 1186 times; GMAT Score:770

by David@VeritasPrep » Fri Sep 17, 2010 12:44 pm

The "stimulus" is the actual paragraph that tells the story. It is called this because the question flows from this - it stimulates the question.

The "stem" or more properly, "the question stem" is the sentence that asks you about the stimulus. "Which of the following most strengthens the argument above?" is an example of a question stem.

It is the question stem that helps people to categorize various questions. The example above is certainly a strengthen question. Other types are Weaken, Inference, Paradox, Bold-faced, Method of reasoning and so on.

Hope that helps in your quest to learn about CR questions!

Good luck!

Veritas Prep | GMAT Instructor

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bubbliiiiiiii: Legendary Member; Posts: 979; Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2009 1:38 amFollowed by: 12 members; Location: Hyderabad, India; Thanked: 49 times; GMAT Score:700

by bubbliiiiiiii » Wed Oct 06, 2010 3:11 am

Thanks David!

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