Pre-phrasing on LR

Patz4life

Do you use your pre-phase to choose a correct answer or use it to get rid of wrong answers? Or a combination of both? Trying to find a new strategy for choosing LR question

Louislepauvre

Both. It also depends on the question type. For example, SA has a very specific answer that it can be, so once I've solved the puzzle I go on hunt mode and just look for that answer. Obviously you can't do that for strengthen/weaken or PSA, where the answer could be a range of things. With those, I make my prediction loose and say something in my head like, "I'm looking for something kinda like this." So when I go to the answers, I'm both looking for something like that (loosely, particularly for hard strengthen/weaken) and also eliminating answers that are out of my scope.

BlindReviewer

I was going through a weird pre-phrase kind testing phase a couple weeks ago, and practicing pre-phrasing by covering the answers and just looking at the stimulus is a really good way to expand your knowledge because you're taking away the crutches of wrong answer choices to help guide you. But pre-phrasing for every single question, I found, doesn't work because test-writers have found ways to exploit that, and they're very good at hiding the right answer by obscuring it or giving something that's a little more creative. What @Louislepauvre says above is pretty much what most people end up doing, though getting to that point requires kind of practicing pre-phrasing/expanding your argument evaluation knowledge, and then moving into a more flexible version of pre-phrasing, where you're not so much pre-phrasing but just so good at understanding the argument that the right answer or potential right answer jumps out at you.

SLP_futureJD

I'm going to say that I was "pre-phrasing" after watching webinars on here about it, and I then I got a tutor and we threw that strategy completely out the window. His logic was to use the answer choices as a guide and help the test work to my advantage. I found that pre-phrasing often led me to a red-herring answer or messed me up. This may be an unpopular opinion on here, but that is my 2 cents. Best of luck! Hope you find the strategy that works for you!