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Critical Reasoning: Attacking a Problem

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Critical Reasoning: Attacking a Problem

by clinton » Tue May 17, 2011 7:36 pm
Hello Everyone,

In effort to beat the GMAT, I realized that my tatic for attacking CR questions, Sucks!!! I was wondering if anyone could help me revamp/create a better test taking strategy. my current strategy is as follows:

1. Read the question stem and type
2. depending on question type, I list the evidence, conclusion and assumption.
3. Read the stimulus
4. Read the answers

Where I lose is when I go straight to reading the answers after reading the stimulus.

Any suggestions?
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by vineeshp » Tue May 17, 2011 8:12 pm
I would recommend changing it to:

1) Read the stimulus.
2) List down all premises/counter premises/conclusions/subconclusions. (After practicing a few, you will start doing this in your mind.
3) Read stem.
4) Try to prephase the answer. What the answer could be.
5) Start reading each answer, eliminating it one by one.

Method is not mine. It is from The Powerscore CR bible, (but maybe tweaked a bit). They are against reading stem first. And now I am too. :-)
Vineesh,
Just telling you what I know and think. I am not the expert. :)
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by atulmangal » Wed May 18, 2011 8:43 pm
Completely agree with @vineeshp, as per my experience, reading question stem first creates disasters and nothing else...and also do refer The Powerscore CR bible, its the best resource of CR, no other book is even 10% closer to this book.

BTW, i like your username... :D
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by Geva@EconomistGMAT » Thu May 19, 2011 1:33 am
vineeshp wrote:I would recommend changing it to:

1) Read the stimulus.
2) List down all premises/counter premises/conclusions/subconclusions. (After practicing a few, you will start doing this in your mind.
3) Read stem.
4) Try to prephase the answer. What the answer could be.
5) Start reading each answer, eliminating it one by one.

Method is not mine. It is from The Powerscore CR bible, (but maybe tweaked a bit). They are against reading stem first. And now I am too. :-)
Whether you read the question first or the argument first, the above red step is the KEY to success on CR. I cannot stress this enough - before you go to the answer choices, you MUST tell yourself, in your own words, what the answer should be in general terms. If you don't have an idea of what you're looking for before going for the answer choices, either all of them will look wrong, or all of them will look right. I suspect you might be a white rabbit.
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by clinton » Thu May 19, 2011 4:35 pm
Thanks!! I just read the blog on white rabbits and I would say that I am white rabbit. Sometimes I'm unable to decide an answer in my head so I go directly to the answer choices and try to develop an answer that way. Where can I find the CR Bible?
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