Main Point Question Thought Process

RealLaw612

Hello, I have been going through the MP section of the course, and am wondering if the way I am addressing the stimulus is going to get me into trouble.

I read the stimulus until I reach the main point and then stop and choose the answer choice that best expresses the MP. I have found that in the few I have done so far, I have come up with the correct answer. Is this the wrong way to go about things?

TheresaAnn

You just want to make sure you aren't mistaking a sub conclusion for the main conclusion. I would say its best to read or at least skim the rest of the passage to make sure they don't throw you a curveball. Also if your conclusion contains referential phrasing you could have trouble realizing exactly what the conclusion is saying. Once you get good at these questions like JY says they should be freebies, meaning you will want to be thorough, confident, and quick about choosing an answer. So if you find this works for you, go for it. For me I think it would have formed bad habits.

EddieM

I have definitely seen passages in which the main point is not at all clear until the final paragraph. Not sure of the frequency of this, so I guess it's possible that this is a gamble that's worthwhile for you. It's definitely not for me though!

Edit: For instance, a passage might have a couple paragraphs discussing two sides of an argument before it gets into the point it's trying to make--"neither side is actually right," for instance.

And even if you're tuned in to this, and waiting for the obvious insertion of the author's POV, stopping there could easily lead you to miss a key element of the point--for instance, maybe the final sentence of the passage says, "And given that this point is obviously superior, aliens should be welcomed to earth." The passage doesn't have to provide support for that last-minute assertion, and it can still form a key part of the author's main point: the thing that his/her evidence was meant to back up. A correct answer might say, "Aliens should be welcomed to earth because of X," with X being what you were expecting the right answer to be. That might be hard to spot.

Markmark

Ya finding the first conclusion and then picking it is a bad idea for the reasons given above. No joke there are 170+ main conclusion questions and they can be very hard to catch. For the harder ones you have to be able to show which phrases support which, and where the "thesis" of the stim is.

EveryCookCanGovern

All the reasons given above are good reasons to not do this. Another reason is, although rare (such as the infamous water bug passage), some passages are not argumentative but descriptive. In these cases you'll want to pick the MP that 'checks the most boxes' of themes discussed in the passage, rather than the thesis. This requires reading the whole passage before selecting your answer choice.