According to the passage/except questions

ltownsjr

I have the hardest time with these questions. It's like I can't find the relevant paragraph because the statement/statements is so subtle under time constraints that they are easy to miss. By nature I tend to overthink everything which doesn't help. Does anyone have any advice on these questions?

GSU Hopeful

I can understand the difficulty. To be successful at these questions, you really need to be able to identify certain parts of information and of course understand them. The "according to" part of the question stem indicates that the answer will have direct support in the passage that will require no major assumptions, inferences or embellishment. With regards to except questions that relate to "according to" question stems, the four incorrect answer choices will have direct ties with the passage and will require no assumptions. The correct answer choice in this case will stray from the text and will not be supported at all. Don't pressure yourself into trying to catch every single detail. You'll end up missing the forest because you were looking at every single tree. In this case, just look for the answer that you can find no support whatsoever. If you work on maintaining a clear picture of each paragraph and the role it plays, you'll be able to verify the support of an answer choice faster if you know how it should fit in with the passage as a whole. Hope this helps. It'll get better with practice!

ltownsjr

Ok, thanks for your advice