RC: Infer question

Comments

• esteerose Alum Member

  November 2016 382 karma

  Something that helps me is circling words that I think would be really hard if they ask about them, because they tend to ask about those parts. One RC passage from the PT50's had 3 questions about one extremely confusing sentence in the passage.
• Tina Cho Free Trial Member

  November 2016 442 karma

  @esteerose
  
  Thanks,
  
  So do you go back those "hard" sentences to answer infer questions? Sometimes there are a couple of infer questions...do you go back to the same place?
• esteerose Alum Member

  November 2016 382 karma

  I'm not successful much at those, but when I am it is because I have circled the difficult parts. I think it helps me remember where the parts are in relation to my pencil marks, so I can find or remember parts of the passage when going back.
• Q.E.D Alum Member

  November 2016 556 karma

  If you take note of the distribution of content in the passage (e.g. background first, then comparative stances, then author's appraisal...), you can figure out where to look by guessing what information would be sufficient to entail each answer choice. There will be a couple obvious wrong answers, so you should only have to check 2 or 3. It's kind of a missing assumption question, but the task is more like identifying the missing assumption and then verifying that "oh, that's kind of an attitude thing and, yes, there it is in this part where the author disses those critics."
• Tina Cho Free Trial Member

  November 2016 442 karma

  Thank you both,
  
  @Q.E.D
  But sometimes the question stem only says "what can infer from the passage" and in this case there is no indication where to look back...
  in this case do we get clue from answer choices?
• Q.E.D Alum Member

  November 2016 edited November 2016 556 karma

  @"Tina Cho" precisely
• Tina Cho Free Trial Member

  November 2016 442 karma

  @Q.E.D
  
  Does this strategy apply to other big picture questions? Questions that do not give any clues where to look back...
• Q.E.D Alum Member

  November 2016 556 karma

  Hey @"Tina Cho"
  
  I'm gonna pull a classic QED and ramble on for days.
  
  I like your expression "big picture questions." Elsewhere, you asked about disagreement problems, which I would put in that class as well. I don't exactly know a process for those. I'm an LSAT newb myself, but I think it's a reading comp thing. You read it, and then you either get it or you don't.
  
  You can break down other probs like NA and MBT into a process bc the prob has to do with the formal structure of the argument, the logic. Likewise, good MP answer choices in RC seem to encapsulate the overall pattern of the passage. But sometimes the more serious challenge is semantic rather than structural. Main point questions in LR, maybe those disagreement questions too, seem more about meaning and less about validity or evidence. Even logically oriented probs that rely on "premise" and "conclusion" are heavily semantic since those are semantic and not logical concepts. The formal concept of entailment, as between premises and conclusion, owes nothing to a speaker's practical organization of propositions in some persuasive structure like an argument, which is just the semantic context that makes the difference between a premise and a conclusion.
  
  mm-But I digress. MY main point is you gotta get that reading comp locked up. My advice is read, read, read and master the Queen's English. That's the rising tide that will lift all boats (save LG) - or you can desperately cling to a baroque toolbelt of different tactics for every problem. I often see that approach in the questions people ask. A lot of students agonize over signal words like "therefore," "thus," "hence" etc. because they can't judge from context and they want simple "if A, then do B" instructions. Obviously, I would caution you to control that impulse.
  
  These folks at 7sage got you covered, though. I'm sure they can tell you a process if you need a process. Just throwing my addlebrained perspective out there.