How do you review a CR question?

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How do you review a CR question?

by rtchua » Tue Jul 16, 2013 1:06 pm
Hi, I'm wondering what is the best way to review a CR question. Thanks.

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by [email protected] » Tue Jul 16, 2013 4:53 pm
Hi rtchua,

You ask a remarkably broad question, so I'll offer some broad suggestions and work towards specifics...

Things to consider when reviewing CR questions:

1) Did you get the question right or wrong? Just because you got it right doesn't mean that you understood it. Maybe you took a good guess (or even a blind guess). You can't depend on "taking good guesses" as a strategy; on a bad day, you'll get all of those questions wrong.
2) What type of CR question was it?
3) What type of notes did you take?
4) How long did it take to solve it? And WHY did it take that long?
5) What type of logic is the CR prompt built on? Some prompts simply link facts, others use causality or representativeness (among other things). Understanding the logic behind a prompt should help you to recognize that same logic in other questions.
6) Did you recognize the wrong answers? WHY were they wrong? Can you train yourself to spot THOSE patterns later on (because they will show up again).
7) Finally, did the approach that you came up with (or were taught) effective in getting you the correct answer. If you've practiced a tactic and it does not seem to help you, then there's nothing wrong with admitting it and changing tactics.

GMAT assassins aren't born, they're made,
Rich
Contact Rich at [email protected]
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by rtchua » Wed Jul 17, 2013 7:29 pm
Hi Rich.C,

Thanks for responding. My question relates to when I get a question wrong, specifically a CR question that asks " In the argument given, the two boldfaced portions play which of the following roles?" An example of this would be in the OG 13th edition GMAT, page 524 # 78.

#78 In countries where automobile insurance includes compensation for whiplash injuries sustained in automobile accidents, reports of having suffered such injuries are twice as frequent as they are in countries where whiplash is no covered. Presently, no objective test for whiplash exists, so it is true that spurious reports of whiplash injuries cannot be readily identified. Nevertheless, these facts do not warrant the conclusion drawn by some commentators that in the countries with the higher rates of reported whiplash injuries, half of the reported cases are spurious. Clearly, in countries where automobile insurance does not include compensation for whiplash, people often have little incentive to report whiplash injuries that they actually have suffered.

In the argument given, the two boldfaced portions play which of the following roles?

A) The first is a claim that the argument disputes; the second is a conclusion that has been based on that claim
B) The first is a claim that has been used to support a conclusion that the argument accepts
C) The first is evidence that has been used to support a conclusion for which the argument provides further evidence; the second is the main conclusion of the argument.
D) The first is a finding whose implications are at issue in the argument; the second is a claim presented in order to argue against deriving certain implications from that finding.
E) The first is a finding whose accuracy is evaluated in the argument; the second is evidence presented to establish that the finding is accurate.

My answer was between A or B. In this question, I came to a conclusion that the first bold face would be a premise on what the conclusion opposes and the second bold face would be the conclusion. However, the answer was D and I was so confused that it was not even part of my answer choices that I considered. I was wondering how I would review on a question like this and if I need to change tactics, how would I change it?

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by jimenezca » Thu Jul 25, 2013 12:31 pm
rtchua wrote:Hi Rich.C,

Thanks for responding. My question relates to when I get a question wrong, specifically a CR question that asks " In the argument given, the two boldfaced portions play which of the following roles?" An example of this would be in the OG 13th edition GMAT, page 524 # 78.

#78 In countries where automobile insurance includes compensation for whiplash injuries sustained in automobile accidents, reports of having suffered such injuries are twice as frequent as they are in countries where whiplash is no covered. Presently, no objective test for whiplash exists, so it is true that spurious reports of whiplash injuries cannot be readily identified. Nevertheless, these facts do not warrant the conclusion drawn by some commentators that in the countries with the higher rates of reported whiplash injuries, half of the reported cases are spurious. Clearly, in countries where automobile insurance does not include compensation for whiplash, people often have little incentive to report whiplash injuries that they actually have suffered.

In the argument given, the two boldfaced portions play which of the following roles?

A) The first is a claim that the argument disputes; the second is a conclusion that has been based on that claim
B) The first is a claim that has been used to support a conclusion that the argument accepts
C) The first is evidence that has been used to support a conclusion for which the argument provides further evidence; the second is the main conclusion of the argument.
D) The first is a finding whose implications are at issue in the argument; the second is a claim presented in order to argue against deriving certain implications from that finding.
E) The first is a finding whose accuracy is evaluated in the argument; the second is evidence presented to establish that the finding is accurate.

My answer was between A or B. In this question, I came to a conclusion that the first bold face would be a premise on what the conclusion opposes and the second bold face would be the conclusion. However, the answer was D and I was so confused that it was not even part of my answer choices that I considered. I was wondering how I would review on a question like this and if I need to change tactics, how would I change it?
rtchua,

This is a really great question considering how difficult it is to even know where to begin and even less how to work through the passage. I would say there are no formal rules, but a few basic guidelines.

The question depends on understanding the scope of the passage as a whole. GMAT critical reasoning tends to integrate different factors at work in a given passage and so it is always necessary to read for the general point and pay attention to the information relevant to the question. This means that it will not be enough to simply compare the two sentences without reference to the content of the passage as a whole.

The strategy here is to first read the question to get an idea of what is being asked and what to pay attention to as we read. This allows us to determine the kind of question we are dealing and how to proceed. And it is clear that we are dealing with an Argument Evaluation type question, specifically one inquiring after the (rhetorical) method being implemented through the line of argumentation.

The question explicitly asks after the role that these phrases play in making the general point being illustrated, and so we know that the task is to evaluate the method implemented and correctly identify it in an answer choice.

AS we said, we DO NOT want to simply compare the two phrases to one another without reference to the context in which they are embedded. So when we read the passage, we want to paraphrase the general point, either written or in your head if you can manage that.

When we do this we should get something like the following:

In countries where whiplash is compensated, reports of injury from whiplash are double that of countries in which it is not covered. Presents a set of information.

Even though no tests exist for testing whiplash and spurious reports cannot be easily detected, we cannot presume that people who report it in countries where it is compensated are submitting fraudulent claims. Warns against drawing an illegitimate or overly-generalized conclusion from the first claim.

CLEARLY,in countries where it is not compensated there may simply be no incentive to report it. Provides a justification for the warning against drawing an illegitimate conclusion based on the information

By paraphrasing, we convert a complicated passage into a simplified one that more clearly illustrates the relations between the tree key parts of the passage: the two sentences that concern us and the linking-phrase that illustrates the relationship between the two key sentences.

So after we have paraphrased or understood the passage in its parts and with regard to what is being asked din the question, we can go ahead and analyze the answer choices:

In the argument given, the two boldfaced portions play which of the following roles?

A) Incorrect. "The first is a claim that the argument disputes; the second is a conclusion that has been based on that claim" The first claim is not disputed by the argument because it simply presents a set of facts. It is, rather, the generalized claim that many of the claims filed for whiplash are spurious or inauthentic that the passage disputes.

B)Incorrect. "The first is a claim that has been used to support a conclusion that the argument accepts." The opening claim simply states a finding or set of facts and does not support anything.

C) Incorrect. "The first is evidence that has been used to support a conclusion for which the argument provides further evidence; the second is the main conclusion of the argument." The first sentence simply states a set of facts that do not support or refute anything.

D) Correct. "The first is a finding whose implications are at issue in the argument; the second is a claim presented in order to argue against deriving certain implications from that finding." The findings reported in the first claim are indeed discussed in the linking phrase; the second claim does in fact argue against the implications discussed because it suggests that whiplash may simply be under-reported because there are no incentives to report it and thereby agrees with the linking-phrase. In all, answer choice D correctly reflects the rhetorical strategy or method used in the passage by using the first claim to introduce a set of information, the second linking-phrase to discuss some possible implications of these findings (i.e. people may unfairly assume given the facts presented that claims for whiplash are higher in countries where they are compensated because they are fraudulent and motivated by profit), and the third to support the discussion of those implications.

E) Incorrect. "The first is a finding whose accuracy is evaluated in the argument; the second is evidence presented to establish that the finding is accurate." The accuracy of the findings are not being evaluated, but the implications that may possibly be drawn from those findings: in other words, it is not the findings themselves that are at stake.

So if you notice how we answered the question, we basically paraphrased and simplified the passage into something more concrete by making general statments about what each phrase is doing in the passage. Because method type argument evaluation questions require that you understand the rhetorical strategy being used, it requires that you very clearly understand and comprehend the general point as well as what specific details concern the question. Therefore, these questions tend to be some of the more difficult on the GMAT if we do not learn how to praphrase.

IN this case the first claim states that "In countries where automobile insurance includes compensation for whiplash injuries sustained in automobile accidents, reports of having suffered such injuries are twice as frequent as they are in countries where whiplash is no covered." If we read it alone we have to ask "What is being put forward? What is being posited, stated, argued?" Here it is clear that it is merely information being posited and this would immediately allow us to eliminate A,B and C because they all suggest that the information in the first claim is used to either support or dispute something, a statement we can see is false: the argument does not dispute the information (A), it does not use the information to support a claim (B), nor does it work to support any sort of conclusion. SO once we paraphrase the first claim, we see that it is merely positing information and making no sort of argument, and this was the clue we used to eliminate the first three.Finally, we eliminated E for a similar reason, namely, it claims that the accuracy of the information in the argument is itself evaluated where the passage clearly accepts it and warns against unwarranted claims based on that information. So, in short, we did not have to use both claims to locate the correct answer: we simply analyzed one of the two claims and found that only answer choice D corresponds to the appropriate use of the first claim as it appears in the passage. The point to take away is that you need to learn to read strategically, as in this case where you focus on one part and use one bit of information to eliminate all of the incorrect answer choices, although this will not work in every situation.

So the points to take away are:
- Read the passage in the context of the general point while paying attention to key information related to what the question is asking.
-Paraphrase or translate the passage into a shorter and more comprehensible version while quickly jotting down or keeping in mind the function of each part of the passage.
- Once you have paraphrased, read each answer choice and eliminate information that does not fit with your own paraphrasing. Remember, you do not always need to look at both claims, but simply understand one part accurately and use that bit of information as a kind of "compass". In this case, we used the first claim to eliminate A,B,C,and E and only confirmed D after reading the second part of the answer choice, which also fit.

What I am trying to convey is that reading comprehension(making the passage more manageable through a passage map or paraphrased outline) and strategic elimination is very important because success on method type argument evaluation questions depends on delimiting or making manageable the information pertinent to the passage.

I hope this helps,

Albert

For more help on this and other types of critical reading problems please visit www.gmatquestions.org
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