anticipating flaws.

jayc1993

Hey,

I am having trouble paraphrasing/anticipating the flaw in flaw/descriptive weakening questions that do not possess the typical or cookie cutter flaws.

I read the stimulus, isolate conclusion and premises, and yet i cannot pin point what is exactly wrong with the stimulus.
Again, this is more so for the questions that do not fall under the typical flaws we see time and time again.

I should note, however, that once i get into the answer choices, i seem to do a good in applying the 2 step flaw test which leaves me to getting the answer choice correct or at the minimum , i am left with two possible AC's.

Now with respect to paraphrasing or anticipating the flaw, Is this something that some of you experience as well, or is it just me?

also, do a lot of you simply rely on the 2 step test for flaws or are you paraphrasing/ anticipating the answer choice most of the time?

thank you.

inactive

Bumping so more people see this!

Cant Get Right

Well the good thing about the questions you're talking about- the atypical ones- is that they're uncommon. (If you're running in to a lot of these, you may need to reevaluate what the issue is.)

For me, if I don't see anything wrong with an argument in a flaw question, I skip it immediately without even looking at the answer choices. This is obviously a challenging question and a time sink, so I do not want to deal with it on my first pass. Often times when I return to it, I'm able to identify the flaw on the second read, so problem solved.

I'm not sure what the 2 step test is, but if it allows you to identify the right answer in these situations, stick with it.

Always try to anticipate though. Flaw questions are great opportunities to go into hunt mode and save a lot of time. If you recognize the flaw, your process of elimination is going to basically boil down to eliminating every answer that isn't the flaw. So instead of doing all that, just find the right answer, circle it with confidence, and move on.