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So I took a PT 53 today. Got a great score (for a retake), except I went and got Sec.1, Q.2 wrong, which sort of pissed me off. It's a point of disagreement question (MSLAT term I believe), and I've always had an issue with them. I've tried doing what MLSAT says (make sure you find how each point matches up and look at exactly what they disagree on), but I can't seem to get it to work. But since they tend to be rare I just decided to ignore them, until I went and go something that I've gotten right before wrong.

What is everyone's methods of doing point of disagreement questions? Is there a sure-fire tactic that you use? Any different thought process that I should be using?

Thank you for your help!

magickware wrote:So I took a PT 53 today. Got a great score (for a retake), except I went and got Sec.1, Q.2 wrong, which sort of pissed me off. It's a point of disagreement question (MSLAT term I believe), and I've always had an issue with them. I've tried doing what MLSAT says (make sure you find how each point matches up and look at exactly what they disagree on), but I can't seem to get it to work. But since they tend to be rare I just decided to ignore them, until I went and go something that I've gotten right before wrong.

What is everyone's methods of doing point of disagreement questions? Is there a sure-fire tactic that you use? Any different thought process that I should be using?

Thank you for your help!

Drill Cambridge

jk148706 wrote: Drill Cambridge

Yes, I know all about the Cambridge packets. That's how I got my LG to be a consistent -0/-1, LR to be a consistent -2/-4, and recently RC down to a consistent -0/-2.

I just have a strange conceptual problem with point of disagreement questions. I just focus on the wrong things is my best guess, and I was hoping to be able to hear how people approach that particular question type.

But thank you for parroting what you must have heard from everyone else throughout your stay at TLS. It was quite helpful.

I have no idea what MLSAT says, but here's what I do.

The first person generally presents a full arguments: premises + conclusion. You want to identify the person's conclusion. The second person may say something that clearly expresses disagreement ("Your reasoning is absurd!"), thereby concluding the opposite as the first person, or may conclude something different entirely, or may have no clear conclusion at all. You want to identify what the second person is doing.

For example, here, Elaine's conclusion is the second sentence, marked with a "therefore," and Frederick's argument is nothing but conclusion.

Next, you want to identify the most obvious point of disagreement. There may be more than one point of disagreement, but you want at least the most obvious one.

Here, probably the most obvious point of disagreement is whether museums should collect only the works of recognized masters (F's conclusion) or the best artworks from each period and genre (E's conclusion).

Once you've got that, go into the answer choices. You want to identify which person would definitely agree with the statement, which person would definitely disagree, or if you just can't tell from the info provided. I tend to mark this as or or ?. You want one to agree and one to disagree in order for the answer to be right; that's a and a .

Here, in A, we don't really know what either one thinks. E says that the best artworks may not be recognized by experts as masterpieces, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they are masterpieces; they're just the best artworks. F never touches on the issue of masterpieces. That'd be ? and ?.

In B, E definitely says this (this was her conclusion), and F definitely says that museums should do something else. This would be and . (This was the disagreement that we identified at the outset. If you're lucky, that will happen. If you're not lucky, that won't happen, but it's worth checking for anyway.)

In C, both agree with this. This would be and .

In D, this issue is never addressed at all. We don't know what either thinks about this. This would be ? and ?.

In E, same problem as in A. "Masterpiece" isn't quite handled in this way in either argument. That'd be a ? and ?.

What you want is a and a , so B is the answer.

After you've got that approach, drill and review like crazy. It'll click.

Since I never really drilled this type, I noticed I was getting difficult disagreement questions wrong when I started to PT while still doing well overall on LR. I tend to not miss them now, and I think it's partly because I realized that they're more akin to inference questions than they are identify the conclusion questions. I tackled these q's, I think, conceptualizing them as ID conclusion questions with just two stims. But then I realized that the disagreement is almost never obvious if you don't look for any inferences - as the above poster stated, the second person's reasoning is usually vague. So while looking for overlap helps me, what I do now is sit back and really take in what the second person is saying. On the more difficult q's, I've noticed that he doesn't explicitly deny the 1st guy's primary conclusion, as is often the case with the 1-10, 'easier' disagreement q's. Instead, he tends to have a gripe with an assumption made in the 1st guy's argument, or he attacks 1st guy's evidence and undermines its relevance to drawing the 1st guy's conclusion. In general, realizing that the disagreement is non-obvious and that such q's won't come easy like ID conclusion questions is what's helped me. Now, I do think looking for surface overlap can eliminate a couple answers at least, and that it is much easier to eliminate answers on these than to find the right one right away.

I should note that I basically use Tom's approach along with keeping in mind the non-obvious abstract nature of these questions that I referenced above.

Totally off topic, but it would been really funny if the subject of your thread was "I have a point of disagreement with point of disagreement questions."

Thank you for the suggestions!

I treat these as MBT/MBF questions. For one speaker, the correct answer must be true. For the other speaker, the correct answer must be false. It's usually easier to find the correct answer when you treat them as double implication questions like this.

Be careful with this, however, because sometimes the prompt will lead to answer choices that are neutral, but with each person having a different opinion on the question presented in the answer choice. You can still treat them as double implication questions, but these will require the extra step of translating the answer choice into the specific view presented in the stimulus by that speaker.

Would it be worth it to spend a bit of time finding what a one of the person's opinion is on all the questions?

That way I can just outright eliminate 1-2, and makes the process of finding the opposite easier.