SA is the question type I fluctuate the most on: 7/7 on the Fast Track drill set and on normal 12 question sets I get anywhere from 6-12/12. There are just so many little nuances in how you approach each different SA question that can affect your reasoning, I'm wondering if anyone has any tips on how to better approach these questions as a whole so I feel less like I'm guessing what the correct answer is.
Also, the stim's for this question type seem to jumble my brain the most: does anyone have any tips for how to better parse them?
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I was struggling with SA questions and I think doing the 7Sage game "Argument ER" helped me make sense of the links I was trying to connect within the premises and conclusion.
@KylieAngell Just wanted to say I've been giving this game a go for the past couple days and it's been going much much better. Thanks for the tip!
I don't really have tips per say as much as saying yeah man you are not alone on finding this question type difficult. I am on this portion of the study plan and this is the first question type where I have had to really slow down my studying to analyze what is going right and wrong. I think so much of it is determining the conclusion and then how the premises build up to that conclusion and what is missing to guarantee the conclusion. The other thing is deciding what facts are useless vs genuine premises.
@Bkk374 Yeah the thing about this question type is that I feel so confident about certain ACs and then other times I can't even parse the stim let alone feel confident about any AC. There's also so many strategies involved in finding the missing link to guarantee the conclusion I find it difficult to intuitively know when to use which. I feel like there's a certain patten of more complex stim when it comes to SA questions that I can't seem to recognize.
Hi!
You should take one of Katie Mae's sufficient assumption classes, or watch a recorded one! I genuinely owe all my sufficient assumption success to her.
@mjfromcanada Definitely helps a bit! Thanks so much
To improve accuracy on SA you definitely need to be able to identify the argument parts! Once you see how the premises and conclusion are disconnected, it will become an easier question type.
For your prediction, try to think “what could prove this conclusion 100% true?”
The answer to that question is your prediction going into the answer choices. Even if the answer choices don’t match your prediction 100%, just remember that the correct answer choice is one that would prove the conclusion be true, (probably by bridging the gap between the premises and conclusion).
Like, if the stimulus says ‘space is ugly therefore we can’t explore space’, a SA would probably say something like ‘no place that is ugly can ever be explored’.
See how the SA proves my conclusion true by addressing the fact that there’s no relation between space being ugly and space being unexplorable?
I hope this makes sense lol I’m just sharing what I learned from reading the LH.
@Rubyjesuslover Hey, I use the same strategy (also read the LH, lol) but I find it works like a charm on level 1-3 SA questions but it doesn't seem to work that well on abstract level 4-5 questions w harder stims or that require you to make an inference beforehand, recognize context vs premise, lots of conditionals, etc. Does your experience tell you the same or do you actually feel like you consistently can get level 4-5s right w the LH method?
@Nev27
In my experience, most of the time when I get a level 4-5 wrong it’s actually because I did not follow the LH method (maybe due to rushing, losing focus etc). Her method has been pretty solid for me so far :)