Now it’s time to learn how to orchestrate all of these basic principles into a consistent protocol for approaching Critical Reasoning questions. Kaplan has developed a Method for Critical Reasoning that you can use to attack each and every CR question.
As you read in the introduction of basic Critical Reasoning principles, reading the question stem first is the best way to focus your reading of the stimulus. Determine the question type, and you’ll know exactly what you’re looking for. The majority of the rest of this chapter is devoted to a thorough analysis of each type of CR question, including practice questions for each type. There may also be other important information in the question stem—possibly the conclusion of the argument or a particular aspect of the stimulus that you will need to focus on.
With the question stem in mind, read the stimulus. Read actively, paraphrasing to make sure you understand the construction of the stimulus and hunting for any potential problems. Even though over 70 percent of CR stimuli contain arguments, other types of stimuli will not contain arguments. Depending on the type of question that you identified in Step 1 of the Method, you will look to gather different information from the stimulus.
Form an idea of what the right answer choice should say or do. How you form your prediction will vary depending on the specific question type. For some question types, it can be difficult to form a specific prediction of what the correct answer choice will say, but based on your analysis in Steps 1 and 2, you will always know at least what function the correct answer will accomplish. On the next page is a chart that summarizes how to predict answers for different question types; you will learn about and practice all of these in depth later in this chapter.
Attack each answer choice critically. Keep your prediction in mind and see whether the answer choices match it. If you don’t find a “clear winner,” read through the answers that you haven’t eliminated yet. You know what you like about each; now focus on what might be wrong.
Now let’s apply the Kaplan Method to the Critical Reasoning question you saw at the beginning of the chapter:
A study of 20 overweight men revealed that each man experienced significant weight loss after adding SlimDown, an artificial food supplement, to his daily diet. For three months, each man consumed one SlimDown portion every morning after exercising, then followed his normal diet for the rest of the day. Clearly, anyone who consumes one portion of SlimDown every day for at least three months will lose weight and will look and feel his best.
Which one of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?
The question stem indicates directly that this is an Assumption question. Don’t worry if you don’t yet know much about Assumption questions; we will cover them in depth later in this chapter. For now, just focus on applying each step of the Method. You know from the mention of an “assumption” in this question stem that the argument in the stimulus will be missing a link in the chain of reasoning—some piece of support that the author takes for granted without which the conclusion wouldn’t be valid. You will now turn to the stimulus, ready to find that link.
Sentence 1 introduces a study of 20 men who used a certain food supplement product. All 20 lost weight. Sentence 2 describes how they used it: once a day, for three months, after morning exercise. So far so good; it feels as if the argument is building up to something. The keyword clearly usually indicates that some sort of conclusion follows, and that’s the case here: in sentence 3, the author predicts that anyone who has one portion of the product daily for three months will lose weight, too.
You might paraphrase the argument like this:
Each of 20 overweight men lost weight after taking SlimDown every morning after exercise (but otherwise eating normally). So anyone who consumes SlimDown will lose weight.
Reading strategically, do you see any scope shifts or other potential problems? Sure—what happened to the exercise? It’s in the evidence as part of the study regimen but is totally dropped from the conclusion. That’s a pretty significant change in scope, and you can use that scope shift as the basis for your prediction in Step 3.
You could also look at the argument even more abstractly:
A bunch of guys did A and B and had X result. So if someone does A, they’ll get X result too.
This argument structure seems pretty weak: Who says A (SlimDown) caused X (weight loss)? Why couldn’t B (exercise) have been the cause? The argument asserts that there could only be one cause for a certain effect even though other causes might, in reality, be possible. This kind of sloppy thinking about causality is a common GMAT pattern that you can use to help form your paraphrase.
You can use this insight to make a prediction in Step 3, too. No matter how abstract or concrete your prediction is, you arrive at the same basic issue—that the author isn’t accounting for the exercise. There’s rarely one “perfect way” to figure out the right answer; as long as you read critically, you’ll be moving in the right direction.
You’ve realized that the argument forgot to consider the exercise. So you might predict something like The author assumes exercise doesn’t matter. That’s it. There’s no need to paraphrase with something fancy or complicated. A simple paraphrase, as long as it reflects the scope of the stimulus, is enough to help you find the right answer.
Judge the answer choices based on how well they fulfill the requirements of your prediction. Sure enough, only (C) even mentions the exercise regimen. Reading it closely, you see it fits the prediction perfectly, clearing up the question of whether the exercise caused the weight loss.
Since the difficulty of Critical Reasoning is often in the answer choices (rather than the stimulus), you can’t let them make you indecisive. Predicting the answer lets you know exactly what you’re looking for, so you’ll know it when you see it. You can choose (C) with confidence and move on.