Self-paced
Lately, during practice, I have noticed that I keep getting flaw questions wrong but I cannot identify exactly why. Every time I look at the ACs, I can think of a reason why a few of them could be the answer and struggle in choosing the best AC. Anyone struggling with this too and have any tips?
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2 comments
Hello,
I know this is a slightly older post, but I am writing this anyway hoping it can still help!
What the other commenter said is exactly what you need to do to eliminate trap answers: ask yourself, 1) Is this AC accurately describing what the author did? and 2) Is this actually a logical error?
On top of that, I highly recommend figuring out what the logical error is before moving into the answer choices. If you read a stimulus and cannot notice the flaw right away, use the common flaws as a mental checklist: Necessary vs. Sufficient, Correlation vs. Causation, Absolute vs. Relative, Part-to-Whole, etc. 7Sage has this great resource for learning what these common flaws are. Ask yourself: 'Does this stimulus confuse necessary conditions with sufficient ones?', 'Does this make a causal claim merely from a correlation?'
Once you have a prediction, then you move on to the ACs and see if there's one that exactly matches what you found. Although not all flawed stimuli rely on a 'classic' flaw, a lot of them do, so identifying which of those common candidates is present will definitely help you.
I hope this helps, and good luck!
general rule of thumb for me when I'm reviewing flaw ACs is to do a 2 step check for each answer, 1. Does the argument actually do this thing, and 2. if yes is that actually a flaw (ie does it make the argument weaker or illogical)