Need advice for "Which one of the following most completes the passage?" questions

ahnendc-1

Though these questions don't appear on every PT I tend to go 50/50 on whether or not I get these right. Sometimes the right answer speaks to me, other times I have no clue; either way it's pure intuition and I'm curious if anyone has some advice for how to approach these questions more systematically?

Are there any types of cookie cutter wrong / right ACs?

I'll throw out something that I ~think~ I picked up from looking at one of these questions - an attractive, though albeit wrong, AC is one that is internally coherent (makes sense) but goes off in a tangential direction.

CRISPR24

Treat it as MSS questions, the correct AC always summarize the best based on or be supported from the premises.

ahnendc-1

@ciacduan thanks for your input!

My musings about this tell me that it’s slightly different from an MSS question type, however. The key difference is that with MSS in LR you can put together any two random pieces of information and it would be most strongly supported.

I think that these are more analogous to fill in the blank questions (admittedly itself a variant on MSS). The goal is to pick an AC that logically appends the passage not to pick an AC that could be supported by the passage; I think there is a distinction there. Sometimes the correct answer is a summary of the Main Conclusion of the passage but other times the correct answer goes in another direction to make another claim or to elaborate on a particular point that the author wasn’t finished making. That seems to be my challenge - figuring out which direction I need to go down and I don’t often find help in the answer choices (unsurprisingly). Any suggestions?

nanabillan

@ahnendc-1
These Qs tend to give me some trouble but I started forcing myself to really slow down and zero in on what I am being told. Before looking at the AC's, come up with your own AC by inferring something solid from the stimulus. The most important thing is that it is within scope and where you can then go back into the stimulus and say yes, that is supported.

I would definitely stay clear of outside information introduced any of the ACs.

I do agree that they can be challenging Q-types. Hopefully more people can chime in here and shed some light.