Lecture Notes for Verbal Reasoning

1. Lecture Notes forVerbal Reasoning Lesson 6 Handling the Questions According to Kaplan

2. Handling Questions • Remember the four categories of questions. • Comprehension. • Global, details, deduction. • Inferences, assumptions, and definitions-in-context. • Evaluation. • Function of statement or structure of passage. • Structure and function. • Application. • Ideas in passage applied to new information. • Hypotheticals, analogies, general statements, and author identity. • Incorporation. • New information applied to arguments in the passage. • Effect (supposition) and solutions. • Order of frequency. • Deduction, evaluation, application, incorporation, detail, and global.

3. Handling Questions • Watch for paraphrased assumption questions. • What idea is implicit (not explicitly stated) in the author’s argument? • Skills necessary for analyzingVR questions. • Paraphrase to discover standard question type. • Research passage using your keyword map. • Does this waste time? • Predict an answer. • Eliminate “pathological” wrong answer choices.

4. Handling Questions • Wrong answer pathologies—get to know these along with ExamKracker “distractor” answer choices. • Wrong answer choices are comprised of several types: • Opposite. • States the opposite of what the question calls for or what’s offered in the passage. • Outside the scope. • Deals with material beyond the passage or the author’s concern. • Keep in mind a topic is broader than the scope which is broader than a thesis or controlling idea. • Distortion. • Relates to a point in the passage, but confuses some aspects of it. • Distortions are usually extreme or exaggerated or unqualified statements. • Faulty use of detail. • Focuses on detail from the wrong part of the passage. • Takes relevant detail out of context. • Most common FUD is a direct quote from the wrong part of the passage.

5. Handling Questions • Wrong answer pathologies (cont’d.). • Eliminate wrong answer choices to help your chances of finding the correct answer. • Do this when you can’t predict the answer outright.

6. Handling Questions • Answer choice elimination strategies. • If you must guess, answer the other questions for the passage first. • ExamKrackers suggests to not skip around to answer questions. • If two answers are close, one is probably right, but which one? • IF two answers are opposite of each other, one is probably right, but which one? • For “least/except/not” questions, if the content of one answer seems different from the other three, it’s probably right. • Extreme statements are most likely wrong.

7. Handling Questions • Think like a test maker. • Question type is often dictated by the passage. • Only a certain number of questions for any passage. • Practice identifying the kinds of information that will appear in those questions. • The author’s purpose, expressed and implied opinions, and supporting evidence. • Work to eventually “see” the questions you expect as you read the passage.