Main Point/Conclusion

chandlermcoleman

For this type of question, I can easily determine what section of the question is what: premise/context/conclusion/agreement. But I am still having a difficult time grasping and getting the correct answer right, after having selected the correct part of the text, as the conclusion. Is there anything I can do to better myself in regards to making sure I get these questions correct?

Alex

@chandlermcoleman

How confident are you when you parse the stim and find the conclusion? I’ve found that when we are iffy or lack confidence we’re much more likely to fall for trap answer choices. Are you ultimately choosing the correct answer but having difficulty doing so, or are you choosing trap answer choices?

In essence, on MP questions we want to locate the conclusion and then find the answer choices that most closely matches it. Often, the right answer will be written in a way to obscure that it’s correct. They may use referential phrasing or make the conclusion more broad than what was concluded in the stim. Just know that they’re rarely a perfect reiteration of the actual conclusion.

For example, let’s say our conclusion is that “Computers will help the school district with keeping track of absences.”

Our answer might be something like, “technology can help some institutions with organization.”

Part of getting good at MP questions (and LR more generally) will be your ability to distill arguments and find the answer choice that best matches what you’re looking for.

ExcludedMiddle

Something they will do with MC questions sometimes is throw contextual info or a premise into an answer choice, alongside the conclusion. The correct answer is always the one with just the conclusion. Just something to watch out for!