Self-study
Hi Everyone! I'm trying to get better at spotting the gap and prephrasing the ACs. Does anyone have any tips or tricks for getting better at spotting the gap? I can find the gap for SA and NA questions on 1-2 star questions, but have trouble for all other kinds of questions and difficulty.
Any help/advice would be appreciated!
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6 comments
Thank you everyone for your great advice! I shall take in all!
I like to focus on the stimulus' conclusion and premises and the relationship between the two. The first thing I do after reading the question stem is to hunt for the conclusion. My inner dialogue does something like this:
"What is the author trying to tell me here?"
[For example, let's say the author conclusion is "all dogs are nice"]
"Why is the author saying this?"
[For example, the author says "all dogs have fur, therefore all dogs are nice]
"So we know that he uses all dogs have fur to support all dogs are nice, so what's the gap? What doesn't exactly line up here?"
"It must be that the author is assuming that if you have fur you are nice, let's look for an answer choice that says something similar"
Just being intentional with your steps and drilling a lot will help you tackle higher level questions.
Just keep doing as many practice questions as you can and reviewing the correct answer, even if you got it correct. I had this same exact issue and I thought that I would never be able to understand what the question was trying to get at before I got to the answer, but after doing tons of drilling and reviewing all the questions after I answer them (even if I got it right), I now can have a really solid idea of what they’re trying to get me to notice before I go to the answer choices… for me, there wasnt really anything that I did to help, sometimes you may just need a lot of repetition and then the patterns start to become more apparent
Check out Bailey's classes on SA/NA!
Can you show an example of a question you did not understand?
The harder the questions the more abstract or hidden the gap. But remember, most have gaps. MSS and MBT won't since those are less of an argument.
The gaps are between the premise and the conclusion. Meaning, the support for the conclusion is not 100% bullet proof for the conclusion.
"I love tacos, so I unfortunately eat tacos every day. I should stop eating tacos every day."
The conclusion isn't being supported fully. There's a recommendation here. Something I "should" do. But why should I do something? We just know I eat tacos every day because I love them. And we know that's unfortunate. Just because it's unfortunate doesn't mean I can simply recommend that I should stop eating them every day. The gap / assumption / principle that would fill it could be: "If an activity is unfortunate, one should stop doing it." or "People should stop engaging in activities they believe are unfortunate."