Interpreting LR Answer Choices

[katem2002]

I have a question about interpreting LR answer options. I noticed that my biggest weakness is probably issues with interpretation in answer choices, particularly as this pertains to question types where the answers are found in the answer choices and not the stimulus (like in MSS and MBT questions), if that makes sense. Weaken, Paradox, and Justify questions are the hardest ones for me.

I noticed that my most repeated error is choosing answer choices that fall under the "so what" category and skipping over right answers due to not knowing how the impact the stimulus or what they mean. I've been trying to ask myself how these answer choices affect the stimulus/what they do, but that has not been working so far.

Any advice on how to get around this, maybe in terms of what questions to ask, how to break down answers, how to think, etc? Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!!

[Robert Carroll]

katem2002,

One thing I noticed by its absence was any talk about prephrasing. You always have to prephrase your answer before you look at the answer choices given. We advise doing this anyway for LR, but it seems like an especially good prescription in your case. If you prephrase and have an idea of what you're looking for, you should be able to evaluate answer choices better. First, if you find your prephrase, that's at least a very strong Contender, and quite likely the correct answer. Second, making the prephrase in the first place forces you to think about what new information YOU could come up with that would answer the question. So you'll already be thinking of the impact of new information on the stimulus. When the answers do this in their five different ways, you should have more idea of what kind of information is going to have what kind of impact on the stimulus.

I also think that you want to review all answers for at least some questions of these types, so you can notice common patterns. There are certain ways to weaken arguments - attacking causation, undermining the validity of a survey, and many more. Answer choices usually aren't sui generis - instead, they usually embody common ideas. If you review right and wrong answers, you'll get a better idea of these kinds of conceptual categories into which answers can fall. Thus, you'll move from wonder what on earth kind of impact an answer could have to an understanding of what impact each does have. PowerScore explanations can definitely help with review!

Robert Carroll