{"id":7825,"date":"2011-07-25T09:05:50","date_gmt":"2011-07-25T17:05:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/?p=7825"},"modified":"2011-07-08T09:10:52","modified_gmt":"2011-07-08T17:10:52","slug":"why-to-avoid-the-word-methodology-in-rc-answers-and-other-tips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/why-to-avoid-the-word-methodology-in-rc-answers-and-other-tips\/","title":{"rendered":"Why to Avoid the Word “Methodology” in RC Answers – and Other Tips"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article was written by Sean Murphy. For more expert GMAT prep<\/a> advice, check out the Knewton GMAT blog<\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n

Sometimes, even as a GMAT teacher, it can be easy to be cynical about Reading Comprehension. \u201cWhy bother spending much time teaching Reading Comprehension?\u201d I ask myself in those moments of despair. After all, it\u2019s just reading and answering questions about a passage. It doesn\u2019t have the diverse question types of Critical Reasoning or the grammar rules and \u201ctells\u201d of Sentence Correction. Compared to CR and SC, it sometimes seems that there\u2019s little a GMAT teacher can do to improve his students\u2019 performance on RC.<\/p>\n

Of course, this isn\u2019t actually true. The vast majority of my students do improve on Reading Comprehension, thanks in large part to strategies like making passage M.A.P.S. -- that is, sketching out the the M<\/strong>ain idea, A<\/strong>ttitude of the author, P<\/strong>urpose of the passage, and S<\/strong>tructure of the passage (try it if you haven\u2019t!).<\/p>\n

But what about other strategies for dealing with RC questions? There\u2019s one technique, often overlooked, that can really help students do better on Reading Comprehension questions. In my last post<\/a>, I noted how on Critical Reasoning Inference questions, answer choices that contain weaker language are more likely to be right. The same is true for the vast majority of RC questions.<\/p>\n

Whether it is a main point, primary purpose, structure, or detail question, a correct answer must always be supported by the passage. Therefore (unless the passage itself contains very forceful opinions or language) an answer choice that contains strong language should be treated with extreme caution. Only the rare weakening or strengthening question is an exception.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not only the extreme modifiers (such as \u201calways\u201d or \u201cnever\u201d) that can make a tempting \u00a0answer wrong. Sometimes the GMAT likes to insert in a difficult word to throw us off. In my years as a GMAT teacher, I noticed that one particular word, \u201cmethodology\u201d kept popping up in wrong answer after wrong answer in Reading Comp questions. I decided to conduct my own study, and found that, in Volumes 11 and 12 of the Official Guide to the GMAT, \u201cmethodology\u201d appeared in 20 answer choices, and only ONCE was correct!<\/p>\n

As it turns out, \u201cmethodology\u201d, which simply means the methods used in a particular field of study, is one of those words that tempts students because it sounds smart. So the GMAT puts it in a whole lot of wrong answer choices. Let\u2019s say that we have a GMAT passage about the extinction of the dinosaurs. The passage describes how at one time scientists thought a meteorite was responsible for the mass extinction, but, on the basis of a mineral recently found in many dinosaur fossils, scientists now think that a massive volcanic eruption was the cause. We come to this question:<\/p>\n

The passage is primarily concerned with
\nA) \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0showing how recently discovered evidence has led many scientists to advocate a new theory.
\nB) \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 describing how poor methodology led many scientists to advocate an erroneous theory.
\n...
\nLet's look at the difference between these two answer choices. A is correct, but many students would be drawn to B. After all, maybe it was poor methodology that led scientists to a mistaken belief. \u00a0B MIGHT be true. But it could also be the case that there was nothing wrong with the scientists\u2019 methodology, that they reached the best possible conclusion given the evidence they had. Also, A is superior because it doesn\u2019t go so far as to claim that the new theory is correct, just that it is believed by many scientists.<\/p>\n

As with Inference questions in Critical Reasoning, be skeptical of strong language in Reading Comprehension questions. And be on the lookout for words, like \u201cmethodology,\u201d which sound smart and sophisticated but are more often than not in incorrect answer choices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was written by Sean Murphy. For more expert GMAT prep advice, check out the Knewton GMAT blog. Sometimes, even as a GMAT teacher, it can be easy to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":104,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[243,720,735],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-reading-comprehension-gmat","category-verbal-gmat-blog","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7825","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\/104"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7825"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7828,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7825\/revisions\/7828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gmatclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}