Strategies; water yours? Forum

[Geetar Man]

Do you actually have a "strategy" for every question in the Logical Reasoning section?

Or do you just have one strategy (find the premesis, conclusion etc.) and go from there?

Please note, this question does not pertain to the games section.

I, myself, have no real strategy besides locating the conclusion and just answering the question accordingly. Which is probably why after 3 months of light studying I'm still missing 3-8 on each LR section.

I just wanted to see how other people are attacking the questions. I feel as if I might be approaching the questions in the wrong manner.

Thanks!!!

[Jasper21]

I try to cover the answers for the main question types and predict the answer. Doing that forces me to have an answer rather than look for one. Because durin the test, anxiety and nervousness kicks in and everything starts looking attractive. It took me about two weeks of soo this for 8 hours a day to fully master this and it really paid off. I average about -2 on LR and I attribute it to this idea.

I also read the stimulus really slowly. Because since I'm predicting, I will already have my answer and I won't have to waste time. Reading slow allows me to catch any nuance in the stimulus.

[Geetar Man]

I try to cover the answers for the main question types and predict the answer. Doing that forces me to have an answer rather than look for one. Because durin the test, anxiety and nervousness kicks in and everything starts looking attractive. It took me about two weeks of soo this for 8 hours a day to fully master this and it really paid off. I average about -2 on LR and I attribute it to this idea.

I also read the stimulus really slowly. Because since I'm predicting, I will already have my answer and I won't have to waste time. Reading slow allows me to catch any nuance in the stimulus.

Hey, thats good to hear! I guess I still haven't actually fully tried to take on the question with a predicted answer; I need to start doing that.

Any other types of strategies people use for the questions?!

[Geetar Man]

Bump! I want to hear what others have to say regarding this topic.

[NightmanCometh]

I think I really got the hang of LR after months and months of study and analysis (I think I killed the December LR but of course can't be sure until score release). I developed an approach based on question type thats a bit too detailed to write here, but here is my fundamental approach:

Basically (and this is not my original idea, also in Manhattan), LR questions can be broken down into two families-
1. Assumption (necessary, sufficient, justify the reasoning, flaw, weaken, strengthen)
2. Inference (must be true, most strongly supported, and various argument structure questions like method of reasoning)

My fundamental approach is this- for each page of an LR section, I do all the assumption family questions first, then all the inference family, or vice versa. The reason is because I think the two families call for a different type of reading and reasoning.

Assumption family questions require you to be an active reader- that is, you want to question the argument at every turn, try to pinpoint weaknesses or gaps as you are reading, and look at the argument as a whole (not just its parts); you want to ask why as you are reading. Most importantly I look for assumptions; I think a lot of people unnecessarily complicate their strategy with distinctions between assumption, flaw, weaken, and strengthen, but for me it makes sense to think of all of these in terms of assumptions. A flaw is nothing more than an assumption in disguise: a sampling flaw is an assumption that the sample is representative of the population; a sufficient-necessary X confusion flaw is nothing more than an assumption that X is necessary to achieve Y. Strengthen and Weaken questions are also based on assumptions of different types- for strengthen you want to address the assumption (many times by refuting it), for weaken you want to exploit the assumption (many times by just bringing attention to it).

On the other hand, inference questions should, in my opinion, be read passively. You want to be spoon fed the information from the stimulus and focus on every single word, rather than the cohesive structure or the strength of the argument. You don't care if the stimulus is poorly organized, or even has a reasoning flaw- you just want to memorize the information given to you and focus on key qualifiers (like some, all, most), and conditional relationships. Many times inference questions will give you two separate but related ideas in the same stimulus, and an active reader might combine elements of both ideas to improve the cohesive understanding of the argument- this is deadly and the answer choices exploit this a lot. So when I do inference questions, I don't think about why the stimulus is saying what its saying, and only on what it is saying. I also took a lot of time practicing conditionals so many times I could diagram complex relationships without even thinking and it just becomes an exercise of conditional manipulation.

My more detailed strategies by question type are too long to discuss here, but that is my basic approach when I go into the LR. Hope it helps!

[penguinbrah]

I think I really got the hang of LR after months and months of study and analysis (I think I killed the December LR but of course can't be sure until score release). I developed an approach based on question type thats a bit too detailed to write here, but here is my fundamental approach:

Basically (and this is not my original idea, also in Manhattan), LR questions can be broken down into two families-
1. Assumption (necessary, sufficient, justify the reasoning, flaw, weaken, strengthen)
2. Inference (must be true, most strongly supported, and various argument structure questions like method of reasoning)

My fundamental approach is this- for each page of an LR section, I do all the assumption family questions first, then all the inference family, or vice versa. The reason is because I think the two families call for a different type of reading and reasoning.

Assumption family questions require you to be an active reader- that is, you want to question the argument at every turn, try to pinpoint weaknesses or gaps as you are reading, and look at the argument as a whole (not just its parts); you want to ask why as you are reading. Most importantly I look for assumptions; I think a lot of people unnecessarily complicate their strategy with distinctions between assumption, flaw, weaken, and strengthen, but for me it makes sense to think of all of these in terms of assumptions. A flaw is nothing more than an assumption in disguise: a sampling flaw is an assumption that the sample is representative of the population; a sufficient-necessary X confusion flaw is nothing more than an assumption that X is necessary to achieve Y. Strengthen and Weaken questions are also based on assumptions of different types- for strengthen you want to address the assumption (many times by refuting it), for weaken you want to exploit the assumption (many times by just bringing attention to it).

On the other hand, inference questions should, in my opinion, be read passively. You want to be spoon fed the information from the stimulus and focus on every single word, rather than the cohesive structure or the strength of the argument. You don't care if the stimulus is poorly organized, or even has a reasoning flaw- you just want to memorize the information given to you and focus on key qualifiers (like some, all, most), and conditional relationships. Many times inference questions will give you two separate but related ideas in the same stimulus, and an active reader might combine elements of both ideas to improve the cohesive understanding of the argument- this is deadly and the answer choices exploit this a lot. So when I do inference questions, I don't think about why the stimulus is saying what its saying, and only on what it is saying. I also took a lot of time practicing conditionals so many times I could diagram complex relationships without even thinking and it just becomes an exercise of conditional manipulation.

My more detailed strategies by question type are too long to discuss here, but that is my basic approach when I go into the LR. Hope it helps!

this is a good post

[Geetar Man]

I think I really got the hang of LR after months and months of study and analysis (I think I killed the December LR but of course can't be sure until score release). I developed an approach based on question type thats a bit too detailed to write here, but here is my fundamental approach:

Basically (and this is not my original idea, also in Manhattan), LR questions can be broken down into two families-
1. Assumption (necessary, sufficient, justify the reasoning, flaw, weaken, strengthen)
2. Inference (must be true, most strongly supported, and various argument structure questions like method of reasoning)

My fundamental approach is this- for each page of an LR section, I do all the assumption family questions first, then all the inference family, or vice versa. The reason is because I think the two families call for a different type of reading and reasoning.

Assumption family questions require you to be an active reader- that is, you want to question the argument at every turn, try to pinpoint weaknesses or gaps as you are reading, and look at the argument as a whole (not just its parts); you want to ask why as you are reading. Most importantly I look for assumptions; I think a lot of people unnecessarily complicate their strategy with distinctions between assumption, flaw, weaken, and strengthen, but for me it makes sense to think of all of these in terms of assumptions. A flaw is nothing more than an assumption in disguise: a sampling flaw is an assumption that the sample is representative of the population; a sufficient-necessary X confusion flaw is nothing more than an assumption that X is necessary to achieve Y. Strengthen and Weaken questions are also based on assumptions of different types- for strengthen you want to address the assumption (many times by refuting it), for weaken you want to exploit the assumption (many times by just bringing attention to it).

On the other hand, inference questions should, in my opinion, be read passively. You want to be spoon fed the information from the stimulus and focus on every single word, rather than the cohesive structure or the strength of the argument. You don't care if the stimulus is poorly organized, or even has a reasoning flaw- you just want to memorize the information given to you and focus on key qualifiers (like some, all, most), and conditional relationships. Many times inference questions will give you two separate but related ideas in the same stimulus, and an active reader might combine elements of both ideas to improve the cohesive understanding of the argument- this is deadly and the answer choices exploit this a lot. So when I do inference questions, I don't think about why the stimulus is saying what its saying, and only on what it is saying. I also took a lot of time practicing conditionals so many times I could diagram complex relationships without even thinking and it just becomes an exercise of conditional manipulation.

My more detailed strategies by question type are too long to discuss here, but that is my basic approach when I go into the LR. Hope it helps!

Definitely helps out! I will use these strategies and see what happens for me. I dont know about doing all of the assumption questions separately from the inference questions (I feel it could talk longer to find the question types and do them together) but I definitely will take your advice on my attitude and the way I go into a question and what I'm reading for. Thanks so much!!!!

[NightmanCometh]

Definitely helps out! I will use these strategies and see what happens for me. I dont know about doing all of the assumption questions separately from the inference questions (I feel it could talk longer to find the question types and do them together) but I definitely will take your advice on my attitude and the way I go into a question and what I'm reading for. Thanks so much!!!!

No prob- after really analyzing the LR and developing strategies (not just drilling them but really analyzing each sentence) I actually started to enjoy them and they became my favorite and most consistent section (even more than LG, which even though I've done every single LG multiple times depends heavily on mental speed/performance/nerves)
Hope the same happens for you!

And I think it's quite easy to separate the two families-
Inference- Must be true, Most strongly supported, Agree/Disagree
Assumption- Necessary Assumption, Sufficient Assumption, Flaw, Strengthen, Weaken, Justify

Just know those key question types and that's already like 80% of the section. The remaining Q's- parallel, method of reasoning, paradox, etc you can pretty much tailor your own approach or do them ad hoc.