Critical Reasoning

9 out of 10 times, I am screwing up the boldface reasoning questions. Can someone please me with the fundamentals of cracking such question types.

A small questions of boldface types will be of great help.

Confuse, we are in the same boat.

The problem with boldface is that the minute we see boldfaced parts, we try to place them in context without fully understanding it's position.

My suggestion is that you treat the passage like a normal non-bold CR. Read the full argument and write down the premises, conclusion, sub-conclusion etc without paying any attention to the bold part.

Then read the question stem.

Move through answers one by one. In a particular answer choice, it would say First part is evidence and second part is conclusion etc. Once you have already classified each statement, one answer choice will perfectly fit.

If you want, register on e-gmat. They have a set of 20 boldface questions free for practice. If you are struggling with any question, post it here so that some of the members can work together and solve the problem. What say?

CONCLUSION - do not even attempt to solve boldface without first identifying this. I knw it applies to CR in general, but for boldface its THE step.

also the beauty abt boldface questions is if u are sure a choice abt one of the statements is wrong, u can straight away eliminate tht choice and any other choices which contain tht option.
most of the times they talk abt conclusions, so its very imp to knw it beforehand.

I've also been struggling with it, but recently I observed an interesting thing about these type of questions and it has helped me a bit.

Pay a deep attention towards two things-
1. Try to find out who is speaking or to whom the Bold faced text is referring to.

Most of the time you will see the argument is kind of a conversation/debate between the two parties.
It is really important to identify who is saying those bold texts.

For eg. the author is mentioning a situation about the tribal people in the forest of Amazon. So, you have to make sure that the bold faced text is Author's view or is it the Tribal people's view.

2. The question will most of the time related to one the entities mentioned in the argument.

Let me explain with the same eg. what I took in 1.
"the author is mentioning a situation about the tribal people in the forest of Amazon"

If you notice in Bold faced CRs, the questions will revolve around a specific entity.
For eg. sometimes it will ask about author's view, sometimes it will ask about tribal people's view, etc etc...

I tried my best to present my point, hope you understand.
I would also request everyone to share any other strategies as well.

Thanks in advance.

Hi Viv

Thanks for the xplanation.

adding in ur post..

what i use to do in that type of problem is the elimination method..

Means.. like in 2 parts.. if you are sure that 1st or 2nd one is either fact or conclusion or any thing then just go for that option and eliminate all others.

and then attack the remaining one.. by this you will have less option available. and then you can compare the reamining one with the options. ( if still u are not sure )

please let me know if i am wrong.