{"id":12023,"date":"2012-06-11T09:00:05","date_gmt":"2012-06-11T16:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/?p=12023"},"modified":"2012-06-08T17:37:27","modified_gmt":"2012-06-09T00:37:27","slug":"introduction-to-gmat-critical-reasoning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/introduction-to-gmat-critical-reasoning\/","title":{"rendered":"Introduction to GMAT Critical Reasoning"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"One question on the GMAT Verbal Section is Critical Reasoning.\u00a0 On this question, the prompt presents some sort of argument, and then asks you, in one way or another, to analyze the argument \u2014 for example, by strengthening it, weakening it, finding its underlying assumption, etc.\u00a0\u00a0 The argument prompt is typically less than 100 words, much shorter than a Reading Comprehension passage, and most often, there\u2019s only a single question on the CR argument.\u00a0 CR comprises roughly 1\/3 of the Verbal Section, about 13 CR questions of the total of 41 Verbal Questions.<\/p>\n

<\/h2>\n

Why does the GMAT ask CR?\u00a0 Why does it matter?<\/h2>\n

You are preparing for the GMAT, which ostensibly means you are planning on attending business school, which in turn suggests that you are anticipating a management career in some aspect of the business world.\u00a0 The entire business world runs on buying and selling: even if you are not a salesperson yourself, the success of your business, in a sense theraison d\u2019etre<\/em>\u00a0of the business, is the money it makes from sales.<\/p>\n

Well, in its essence, every sale is an argument.\u00a0 If I want to sell you sometime, I have to present a case in some form to convince you to buy it.\u00a0\u00a0 If I make a wonderfully cogent argument, I may well generate the sale.\u00a0 If my argument is faulty, and I repeat this pattern, that can only mean bad things for the long-term financial well-being of my business.\u00a0 Arguments are important in business, and the skill of evaluating arguments is one that every manager should cultivate.\u00a0 That\u2019s precisely why business schools want you to bone up on it, which is why the GMAT asks about it in CR questions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The 8 Types of CR Questions<\/h2>\n

Nearly all of the CR questions fall into one of the following eight categories.<\/p>\n

1.) Weaken the Argument<\/p>\n

2.) Strengthen the Argument<\/p>\n

3.) Find the Assumption<\/p>\n

4.) Draw a Conclusion\/What Can Be Inferred?<\/p>\n

5.) What is the Structure of the Argument?<\/p>\n

6.) What is the Flaw in the Argument?<\/p>\n

7.)\u00a0Paradox Questions<\/a><\/p>\n

8.) Evaluate the Conclusion<\/p>\n

As I explain in\u00a0this post<\/a>, finding the assumption can help not only with question type #3, but also with either strengthening or weakening the argument.<\/p>\n

This post was written by Mike McGarry, GMAT expert at\u00a0Magoosh<\/a>, and originally posted\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One question on the GMAT Verbal Section is Critical Reasoning.\u00a0 On this question, the prompt presents some sort of argument, and then asks you, in one way or another, to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,783,243,721,735],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gmat","category-magoosh-blog","category-blog","category-critical-reasoning-gmat","category-verbal-gmat-blog","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12023","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12023"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12023\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12028,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12023\/revisions\/12028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12023"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12023"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12023"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}