How to tackle Boldface questions in GMAT Critical Reasoning?

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shivrajshekhawat: Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts; Posts: 5; Joined: Thu Jul 15, 2010 1:22 am

How to tackle Boldface questions in GMAT Critical Reasoning?

by shivrajshekhawat » Wed Oct 06, 2010 8:13 am

Hi,

I am Shiv and I am preparing for GMAT by following Beat the GMAT 60 days study guide.
I am facing problem in answering Boldfaced questions in GMAT critical reasoning section.
Is there any sure-shot method to ace this question type?
My accuracy on this question type is very low so please let me know the method to answer this particular question type correctly.

I'll be very thankful to you for your suggestions.

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Source: Beat The GMAT — Critical Reasoning | Wed Oct 06, 2010 8:13 am

pradeepkaushal9518: Legendary Member; Posts: 1309; Joined: Wed Mar 17, 2010 11:41 pm; Thanked: 33 times; Followed by:5 members

by pradeepkaushal9518 » Thu Oct 07, 2010 7:49 pm

practice all the bold face qquestions in og and other sources . see the official answer and find the way they are answering. do you have powerscore cr bible read the theory

A SMALL TOWN GUY

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Jen@VeritasPrep: GMAT Instructor; Posts: 49; Joined: Mon May 10, 2010 12:40 pm; Location: New York City; Thanked: 40 times; Followed by:30 members

by Jen@VeritasPrep » Fri Oct 08, 2010 7:17 am

Boldface questions (also known as role of a statement questions) are definitely tricky! My number one approach tip might sound a little counter-intuitive: When you first read the stimulus, you should actually read it as though nothing were bold. Take a few seconds to identify the conclusion and evidence as you would in any other question, THEN compare those with the bold statements. Are the evidence and/or conclusion you identified bold? Great, you know you want an answer choice that says as much. If they're NOT bold, think about how the bold statements relate to the core structure of the argument. Are they denying or refuting the conclusion? Are they providing additional evidence or identifying out another point of view? Everything in an argument will relate in some way to that argument's conclusion, so by identifying that conclusion first you'll give yourself a much stronger foundation, and you'll be much more likely to avoid any tempting wrong answer choices.

Hope that helps!

Jen Rugani
GMAT Instructor, Veritas Prep
www.veritasprep.com

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abhi.genx7: Senior | Next Rank: 100 Posts; Posts: 85; Joined: Sat Jan 30, 2010 3:49 am; Location: Hyderbad, India; GMAT Score:660

by abhi.genx7 » Tue Oct 12, 2010 2:30 am

Useful insight

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shivrajshekhawat: Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts; Posts: 5; Joined: Thu Jul 15, 2010 1:22 am

by shivrajshekhawat » Wed Oct 13, 2010 6:19 pm

jen@knewton wrote:Boldface questions (also known as role of a statement questions) are definitely tricky! My number one approach tip might sound a little counter-intuitive: When you first read the stimulus, you should actually read it as though nothing were bold. Take a few seconds to identify the conclusion and evidence as you would in any other question, THEN compare those with the bold statements. Are the evidence and/or conclusion you identified bold? Great, you know you want an answer choice that says as much. If they're NOT bold, think about how the bold statements relate to the core structure of the argument. Are they denying or refuting the conclusion? Are they providing additional evidence or identifying out another point of view? Everything in an argument will relate in some way to that argument's conclusion, so by identifying that conclusion first you'll give yourself a much stronger foundation, and you'll be much more likely to avoid any tempting wrong answer choices.

Hope that helps!

Thanks a lot

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

by David@VeritasPrep » Thu Oct 14, 2010 4:33 am

I want to echo what Jen@Veritas said above. I have had students ask me if they even need to read the statements that are not in bold -- the answer is yes! You need to understand that structure of the argument, that is how you can understand the role. If you were trying to figure out the role of the goalie on a soccer (football) team it would be pretty hard to figure out what he is doing without some reference to the other players!

I want to add another thing about Bold-faced as well and that is that it is often helpful to take the two statements one at a time. So that instead of going through each answer choice and looking at both statements in each, you would choose one of the two bold-faced portions and go through all of the answer choices looking at that portion. What you would be doing is looking to eliminate those that don't correctly identify that portion (in much the same way that you can eliminate choices in sentence correction that all have the same (incorrect) verb.

When you have eliminated (typically) 2 or 3 choices based on one of the bold-faced portions, then you can use the other portion to finish up. This method is especially helpful if you understand the role of one of the portions much better than you do the other. Using this method you would only have to evaluate the portion that you are less comfortable with for 2 or 3 choices, usually.

Bold-faced can be some of the trickiest questions so, as pradeep says, study all the good bold-faced questions you can!

Last edited by David@VeritasPrep on Fri Jun 21, 2013 10:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

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shivrajshekhawat: Newbie | Next Rank: 10 Posts; Posts: 5; Joined: Thu Jul 15, 2010 1:22 am

by shivrajshekhawat » Thu Oct 14, 2010 7:18 am

Thank you Pradeep, Jen and David for your elaborate and helpful answers

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shilpaqueen: Junior | Next Rank: 30 Posts; Posts: 19; Joined: Thu Jul 29, 2010 2:12 am

by shilpaqueen » Wed Nov 24, 2010 12:38 am

shivrajshekhawat wrote:Hi,

I am Shiv and I am preparing for GMAT by following Beat the GMAT 60 days study guide.
I am facing problem in answering Boldfaced questions in GMAT critical reasoning section.
Is there any sure-shot method to ace this question type?
My accuracy on this question type is very low so please let me know the method to answer this particular question type correctly.

I'll be very thankful to you for your suggestions.

I have similar issues with Bold face questions...this thread was helpful..

Any more ideas on dealing with bold face questions would be great