Really hard time with WSE

fl7dqf

I can get the easier WSE questions right, and the occasional 4/5 star difficulty questions right, but I have yet to get 5/5 on a hard difficulty WSE drill. I am getting frustrated. Does anyone have any advice on how to approach these questions? I feel like the method to the madness here is vague and therefore much harder to nail down.

natemanwell1

I've never heard someone use this terminology but I assume you mean "weaken/strengthen/evaluate," even though this would be three different question types. The strategies for weaken and strengthen are the same in RC as in LR. To weaken an argument, you want to [expand the gap as much as possible, preferably from both sides or the stronger side], then [remove necessary condition, provide alternative explanation, provide obstacle, show expected correlation does not hold, remove sufficient condition]. The strengthen strategy is the mirror image [close the gap as much as possible, preferably from both sides or the weaker side], then [provide sufficient condition, remove alternative explanation, remove obstacle, state expected correlation holds, provide necessary condition]. I'm not sure what "evaluate" would mean in this context, I just finished tests 1 through 75 and I have not seen a single RC question that asks one to "evaluate" a passage, perhaps you mean a question like "which one of the following would be most helpful to know in evaluating the author's argument"? For that you would determine whether you want to strengthen or weaken the author's argument and go in order from the weaken/strengthen strategies and choose the best case from the attendant options. So if the question was something like "Which one of the following would be most helpful to know in evaluating the author's argument that ants are healthy because they eat leaves and leaves are vegetables" you would ideally want an answer choice that says "vegetables are healthy for ants," because that's either gonna be a sufficient condition that is met or a necessary condition that is not met.