Critical Reasoning

Hi guys

I'll be taking my test on the 19th of Feb.

Have major problems on the Critical Reasoning bit though.

Background: Trained as an engineer so maths is quite ok. Although English is not my mother tongue, my whole education from school to university has been in English. My primary mode of communication is English as well.

Quant: My quant is quite ok - can hit the 49-51 figure regularly.

Verbal:

SC & RC are quite ok (can hit the 90% mark).

CR: This is the tough part. I've done problems from OG, OG Verbal and Kaplan (correct answer rate <80%) but when it comes to taking the mock exam, the CR beats me. Instead of solving it in 1m45s, I've been taking 2m-2m30s which would have still been ok if I was getting the answers right but my answers seem to be wrong most of the time (correct answer rate < 40%). Upon analysis, it seems like the pressures (/nervousness) gets to me in CR and I just can't seem to get it right.

Any suggestions to improve the CR score considering I have just 2 weeks left for the exam?

You may want to get the LSAT CR book - it's known as the CR bible. For CR, the absolute most important thing you need to do is figure out quickly what the argument is, the conclusion is and what the premises are. In the end, all CR questions deconstruct to those fundamental building blocks. If you are having trouble with CR, I'd recommend restudying the basics for those items until you can quickly look at any CR and immediately breakdown the structure without fault.

Read the KAPLAN strategies for critical reasoning... if KAPLAN is good at something, it's at explaining the critical reasoning part (at least from my experience w/ LSAT since didn't study much for the GMAT yet).

As mayonnai5e mentionned, you might want to study from an LSAT book. I studied a little for the LSAT a few years ago (when law school was still an option) and from my first attempt in GMAT, I aced all the critical reasoning quesitons due to my practice of LSAT CR, even though I am really bad at verbal.

If you are fine with SC and RC, then you are already in a very good position, CR is a lot easier and more systematic. Just read the strategy and apply it to a few questions, and you'll see how your accuracy rate will go up.

Mainly the strategy consists in reading the question FIRST before reading the stem, and once you know what it is asking for, you can read more critically and know what to look for.

Guess the answer before you look at the options, and then look at the options.

In the stem, you will ALWAYS have an evidence and a conclusion (in whichever order). Identify each.

If the question asks you to:

- "strengthen the argument", then you have to strengthen the evidence or find an assumption that will strengthen the link between evidence and conclusion
- "weaken the argument", then you have to either weaken the evidence or the assumption (note, weaken is NOT disprove, you're just weakening the argument)

But read KAPLAN's strategy anyway, it's explained better.

thanks to both of you for your replies. lets see how it goes. didn't really think CR would trouble me that much.

hopefully i can improve substantially over the next few days.

cheers.

PowerScore CR Bible is something which can definately help you.
You can get soft copy of it from esnip.com

thanks guru