Parallel Reasoning Help Forum

[Lying Lawyer]

These questions will be the death of me. I just can't seem to pick up the argument to find the right answer. I can't even get half of the level 4 type questions. It is the only category I am struggling with. I can even do parallel flaw well. I treat them like flaw questions and can find the mistaken negation, either/or argument structure, etc. Any advice for it or should I not stress if it's only one category of questions that's killing me?

[Dave Hall]

I don't know what "level 4" means, but here's what I do:

I start by describing the argument, trying to take all of the content out of my description.

My description will sound something like this: "That goal cannot be the real reason the person took that action, because there's a better way to reach that goal." (this was my description of PT 37 Sec4 Q 14, if you're keeping score at home).

Then, I skim over answer choices, ignoring those that don't seem to match my description, and spending any analysis time looking at any answer that does match that description.

I'm kind of looking for the forest more than looking at particular trees.

This bird's-eye-view strategy takes time to perfect, but it makes you fast when you get good at it.

To test this approach, you could try and see if that description doesn't make short work of the example question referenced above.

I hope this helps!

[Lying Lawyer]

By level 4, I mean that Cambridge in their packets label the questions on a scale of 1-4 based on difficulty. I am working on level 4 difficulty questions.

[Dave Hall]

By level 4, I mean that Cambridge in their packets label the questions on a scale of 1-4 based on difficulty. I am working on level 4 difficulty questions.

If you want to give me examples of questions that are troubling you, I can try to help you with them.