Help with most strongly supported questions

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• Sami Live Member Sage ⭐ 7Sage Tutor

  August 2018 edited August 2018 10774 karma

  @okiedokie said:
  Hello! I was wondering if anyone had a step by step method for approaching MSS questions. For example, MP questions seem to have a structure to which you can follow to identify the conclusion and thus, get the correct answer...Any suggestions?

  Unfortunately with MSS questions its just not that simple since our task is a bit more complicated. Ninety-nine percent of the time they don't even have a conclusion but just a series of statements.

  Here is what I suggest you do: Just read the stimulus actively. This means make sure you are aware of how much you understand what you are reading and connect back to previous information. For example, lets say the first statement of stimulus is -If the food was safe to eat the kids would not get sick, and the second/third statement reads, some kids in Tarmac high school got sick, you want to make sure that you see the inference that this would mean that the food was not safe to eat.

  After you are done reading the stimulus, I would suggest to go into the answer choice. A correct answer choice in MSS is likely to take these three forms:
  1) They state an inference from the combination of two or more sentences
  2) Just a restatement of one of the sentences
  3) A general summary of the stimulus

  Because of the nature of the MSS answer choices, its best not to predict answer choices before going in to the stimulus. If you felt you understood the stimulus, be confident and use your understanding to evaluate each answer choice. The awareness that an answer choice can take these shapes above I listed will help you see when you come across an answer choice that has taken that form and is supported by the stimulus.

  I hope this was helpful.

  Let me know if you have any additional questions.
• 1 Like

  NicholasDay Alum Member

  August 2018 edited August 2018 86 karma

  MSS questions do not test your ability to bridge a gap between a conclusion and a premise. Instead, they ask you to take everything in the prompt as 'true' and ask you to make an inference on it.

  These answers are hard to predict, and they can often include a lot of variety. My strategy for going through these questions is to eliminate answers that I KNOW that I cannot prove (or what cannot be supported at all) and that normally narrows it down to 1 or 2 for me.

  An important thing to remember for these questions is that even though there are called 'most strongly supported' only one answer choice will actually be supported. The other four will not be.

  Another thing that is helpful to remember is that the answers to these questions do NOT have to validate the argument to 100% - that would make them MBT / MBF questions. (In fact, this is the only difference between the two). The exemplify this:

  "The Kuna, a people native to several Panamanian islands, generally have a low incidence of high blood pressure. But Kuna who have moved to the Panamanian mainland do not have a low incidence of high blood pressure. Kuna who live on the islands, unlike those who live on the mainland, typically drink several cups of cocoa a day. This cocoa is minimally processed and thus high in flavonoids.

  Of the following, which one is most strongly supported by the info above?

  The correct answer for this problem ends up being E)
  "Drinking several cups of flavonoid-rich cocoa per day tends to prevent high blood pressure."

  Although that the information above does support this, it does not make the argument 100% valid. There could be a million other things that the Kuna off the mainland do instead that lowers their incidence of high blood pressure. However, since we are just asked to find what is most strongly supported, we can be confident about our answer.

  I won't write out choices A-D, but they end up not being supported by the prompt at all.

  Hope this helps!