Wrong Answer Choices
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Paragraph Argument
Summary
The content focuses on identifying and understanding wrong answer choices in GRE reading comprehension and paragraph argument questions, emphasizing the importance of discerning relevance and scope.
- Discusses the strategy of identifying gaps in logic from premise to conclusion and applying this to various question types.
- Highlights the predictability of wrong answer choices in GRE questions, categorizing them into typical 'buckets' such as irrelevant or out of scope.
- Uses a specific example to illustrate how to analyze answer choices, emphasizing the need to focus on relevance to the argument's conclusion.
- Explains common pitfalls in selecting wrong answers, including choices that are irrelevant, do the opposite of what's needed, or seem to be relevant but are not.
- Provides guidance on narrowing down answer choices by understanding the argument's scope and the specific requirements of the question.
Chapters
00:05
Understanding Wrong Answer Choices
00:35
Categorizing Wrong Answers
00:52
Analyzing a Sample Question
02:44
Common Pitfalls in Answer Selection
05:36
Narrowing Down to the Correct Answer
It sounds to me like (E) strengthens the conclusion. Why is it labeled as “seems to do something”?
At first glance, (E) does seem like it strengthens the conclusion. But if we take a closer look, we find that it’s actually unrelated to the argument.
(E) states that “the Grand Hotel expects to have a full garage every day for the month of September.”
Remember, we’re concerned with the Williamstown public parking garage. If the Grand Hotel’s garage is going to be crowded in September, does that mean that the public parking garage will or will not be crowded? Not necessarily. We can’t draw any lines between the two -- they're unrelated to each other. That’s why it “seems to do something” (strengthen), but actually doesn’t do anything.