Question Format And Structure

About 10 Critical Reasoning questions appear on the Verbal section of the GMAT. Critical Reasoning (CR) tests reasoning skills involved in making arguments, evaluating arguments, and formulating or evaluating a plan of action. These questions are based on materials from a variety of sources, though you will not need to be familiar with any subject matter beforehand.

Specifically, you are measured on your ability to reason in the following areas:

• Understanding the argument’s construction: Recognizing the basic structure of an argument, properly drawn conclusions, underlying assumptions, explanatory hypotheses, or parallels between structurally similar arguments
• Evaluating the argument: Analyzing an argument, recognizing elements that would strengthen or weaken it, identifying reasoning errors or aspects of the argument’s development
• Formulating and evaluating a plan of action: Recognizing the relative appropriateness, effectiveness, and efficiency of different plans of action, as well as factors that would strengthen or weaken a proposed plan of action

The directions for Critical Reasoning questions are short and to the point. They look like this:

Directions: Select the best of the answer choices given.

On the GMAT, in business school, and in your career, you’ll need the ability to recognize and understand complex reasoning. It’s not enough to sense whether an argument is strong or weak; you’ll need to analyze precisely why it is so. This presumes a fundamental skill that’s called on by nearly every Critical Reasoning question—the ability to isolate and identify the various components of any given argument. And that brings us to the basic principles of Critical Reasoning.