Must be True Questions

[hihither]

Hey guys,

How do you guys study for the Must Be True questions? I re-read the chapter so many times but I am still getting them wrong. I don't know how else I should study for them.

I tried to prephrase the answer choice, I tried to use the fact test as well but it doesn't really help me when I am doing PT... Do I need to diagram everything? I don't diagram when I approach these questions because its so time-consuming and I might get the diagram wrong... HELP!

[val12]

Hi!

I certainly had my troubles with must be true as well, but I have been improving over the last few weeks. First of all think positive and try to sustain an optimistic mental state. You'll improve just keep on practicing. Keep creating prephrases and keep practicing your conditional reasoning.Try to pay attention to the degree of certainty of each claim in the stimulus, in terms of absolute language (must, always, required), and watch out for superlatives ( the best, the greatest, ect). I think answer choices that present claims with a lesser degree of certainty are easier to prove using the stimulus.

When employing conditional reasoning make sure you always do the contrapositve to each conditional statement. Try to master the sufficient and necessary indicator words (I made note cards and its helped tremendously). Moreover, always be on the lookout for conditional chains!

[hihither]

That's true! Great advice thanks!

[Jeremy Press]

Hi hihither,

There's some great advice in the post above, but let me reiterate some of it. Keep in mind the basic task: to find an answer that is 100% (or slightly less than 100%, in a Most Strongly Supported question) certain on the basis of the information in the stimulus. In other words, we want an answer we know we can prove using solely what was given in the stimulus.

Don't worry overly much about diagramming, unless there are conditional statements in the stimulus. If there are conditional statements, sketch them, and their contrapositives, and link any of them together that can be linked. Without conditional statements, look in the stimulus for two things. First, look at the strength of the language being used in each sentence. Focus on the strong statements, because they're likely to be the source of the correct answer. Second, look for repeated terms. The correct answer is often drawn from combinations between two (or more) statements that share a common (repeated) term.

Finally, be sensitive to the language that's being used in the answer choices. The stronger the language of the answer choice, the less likely you'll be able to prove it using the stimulus (unless the stimulus makes lots of really strong claims). Also, pay attention to how broad the subject of the answer choices is. Sometimes the stimulus is talking about very narrow issues, and wrong answers talk about issues that are broader than the stimulus. Example: maybe the stimulus is talking about tennis, and an answer or two broadens that out to talk about sports (or even racket sports). The answer needs to be tailored to "fit" the precise subject matter of the stimulus.

When you miss a question, do an immediate spot-check to figure out why you missed it, and think about how you could avoid that mistake on a similar question in the future. Without identifying what's causing your mistakes, and identifying a strategy to fix them, you're bound to make the same ones again on future questions.

I hope this helps!

Jeremy