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Okay guys, I need your help figuring out my next step.
I have finished CC, Manhattan LR and Trainer and I do believe that I have a very strong sense of LR arguments and question stems. My strategy was to do LR from PTs 17-36 untimed and really take my time to analyze the questions. So far I did 17-19 and my average is -6.5 per section. I need to bring it down to at most -2 and I do not know how to achieve it.
The way I did the questions that I did was to
1) Identify the question type
2) Open my notebook and read about that question type, what to look for, how to approach, what the trick answer choices are etc (notes are taken from CC, Trainer and Manhattan). I know it already, yet I am determined to drill every single detail to look out for as much as possible hence rereading my notes for EVERY single question
3) Identify conclusion and premises
4) If there is a flaw and question type requires me to identify it then do it
5) Eliminate wrong answer choices while justifying to myself why they are wrong
6) Pick the answer
Now two things happen 1) either i am down to two answer choices (most of the time one of them is correct) and i pick the wrong one because somehow in my head i overthink it and all of the sudden it becomes somehow attractive or 2) i do not read careful enough and misread the right answer in a way that it becomes a wrong answer, so even though i take my time to understand the argument, i rush with understanding the answer choices.
My question is, should I stick with my strategy and keep going with the rest of the PTs in hope that after enough bumps along the way I will be able to learn better what my weaknesses are and spot the wrong answer choices easier?
Should I employ a different strategy?
P.S there is not one specific kind of questions I miss the most. I am pretty decent at all of them according to 7sage trends, with SA and Flaw being my best and Strengthen, AP and MBT being the worst.
Comments
Your method is fine, as long as you emphasize what each question type is asking you to do and you get really really really use to spotting the support and conclusion of an argument.
MBT questions should be mathematical to you. These either rely solely on conditional logic, or they are very formulaic in their structure. The AC should follow completely. Be wary of logic indicators (if, unless, only...etc) and remember how contra positives work. I would review conditional logic for this type.
For argument part you are on the descriptive level. For each answer choice you need to ask yourself "does the argument actually do this?". It's similar to RC in that you need to see the answer choice actually being used in the way it's described. It's also very helpful to break the abstract language down into dumb English and to insert the topic of the argument into the answer choice.
Strengthening questions are pretty self explanatory. The important thing to remember is that you don't have to make an argument valid in order to strengthen it. You just have to patch up any small hole. This could be super little, to extremely strong. Just always remember what the conclusion is and how it can be attacked then try to block those attacks.
Idk if this helps...I know it's not super specific. It's just a brief suggestion to your already implemented strategy.