Flaw questions

TheAnxious0L

Currently drilling flaw questions (my biggest hurdle) , and I'm getting every single one wrong.

I have drilled question 1-100 on the cambridge packets, easy-medium questions, and did well, and I think I have a pretty good grasp of the 19 common flaws + how to tackle them...but for some reason on the 4/5 start ones I keep choking. Any suggestions on how to do better? (are earlier flaw question types different?)

BinghamtonDave

I see three hurdles with difficult flaw questions:
-the gap between the premise and conclusion might be so odd and the argument might be so bad that it is difficult to put into words when we are trying to anticipate the correct answer
-the gap between the premise and conclusion might be so subtle that it is difficult to see what the flaw actually is
-the answer choices might be so abstract in their description of the flaw that they aren't much help to us if we go mining for an answer choice to point out what we missed: which sometimes happens, but isn't recommended.

That is in a nutshell how I see the problem of tough flaw questions. So what can we do? Here are some suggestions:
-During a timed section, do not drop too much time into a tough flaw questions, the worst thing we can do with a super-tough question is to get bogged down and allow it to carry over into other questions, potentially forcing us to miss questions (because we were pressed for time) that we otherwise would have got.

-When we have enough time to come back, it would be my recommendation to start by focusing on the conclusion. How wide ranging is it? Is it absolute in its tone? What does the conclusion say?
-We should then isolate the support: how weak is the (purported) support? Does the support actually talk about something relevant to our conclusion?
-Try to find whatever gap we can after doing these two steps: where is the gap in the support from the premise to the conclusion?
-Ask ourselves if this question reminds us of anything from our studies: has this flaw occurred before? Is it at bottom cookie cutter? Is it a basic flaw just hiding underneath a layer of obfuscation?
-Go into the answer choices on these super difficult questions and work wrong to right this is our way at this juncture of basically upping our chances of getting the question correct: we should know from our studies what the flaw we have in front of us is not. We know the flaw in front of us is not the equivocation of a "key term" so we eliminate this answer choice. We could get lucky and eliminate 2-3 answer choices at this step.
-With the remaining answer choices: go through step by step and try applying the answer choice to the reasoning structure: remember, a correct answer choice on flaw/descriptive weakening questions are right for 2 equally powerful reasons: 1.they are descriptively accurate and 2. they describe why the reasoning is weak. As little as a few words can render an answer choice not descriptively accurate.
-Choose an answer choice that you hopefully have narrowed down to the correct one.

-During BR: Review the structure of this argument a dozen times and type up an explanation in the comments section of 7Sage: if you don't already, you would be surprised how the reasoning structure of a question can stick with you after you have taken it apart for and hour.

In summation, there are no panaceas when it comes to the super tough questions, the best we can do is minimize the damage and approach the question systematically with the goal of arriving at the best answer we can: we might not be able to see why the answer we chose was correct until review! Even then, we might have to discuss this with the community here on 7Sage.

I hope this helps, nothing fancy or enlightening here, just an endorsement of a strategy to minimize the damage of a tough question and use what we know to hopefully get to the bottom of the flaw.

David