I always shoot myself in the foot by over-thinking on RC. Although I managed a 51/51 on critical reasoning and 44/51 on SC, a 23/51 on RC destroyed my verbal score on the real GMAT - ended up getting a 35 on verbal despite scoring high on the other sections.

That being said, question 2 is a good example of silly mistakes I make and I was hoping for some clarification.

It is stated on numerous platforms that inference questions will never restate the answer but rather paraphrase it. Thus I never expected E to be correct because it basically restates the point almost word for word. This is the only reason I went for A. I assumed that since historians ignored the actual language used in business dealings (language that promoted trust rather than self interest) and thus the impact such language had on business dealings, said historians are not crediting the impact business had on moral values and beliefs.

RC is truly frustrating me because it is the only obstacle preventing me from achieving a 700+ and these stupid mistakes stemming from overthinking constantly brings my score down.

Anyways, point of this post is to understand how the correct inference answer is almost an exact restatement from the passage. Thanks in advance.

GMATNinja,

Could you please help with Question 1 .
I am struck between Options A and C.

Hi GMATNinja

I marked option Bas the correct answer for question3 and got it wrong

My reasoning was, in the the first paragraph, the author says "Today it is typically assumed, for instance, that the development of business relations weakened the spirit of cooperation that characterized village communities and encouraged a spirit of individualism and self-betterment that ran counter to community interest.". This is a modern assumption (can also be taken as a modern theory) and this comes after the author says "Smith’s view that self-interest dominated the business that emerged in early modern (sixteenth- and seventeenth century) England has had tremendous effects on how such relations have been perceived. " So, we can see that Smith definitely had an impact of modern theories.

From here, we move on to the secong paragraph in which the author starts with "However, such a view fails to account for the language that people in early modern England..." and goes on to explain "why does the view fail". So, he is definitely evaluating the modern views which goes with option B.

The only way that I see this evaluation could be bettered is if "such a view fails to account for the language that people in early modern England" is placed at the end of the 2nd paragraph. Otherwise, option B shouldhave been the correct choice.

Option D would have been correct if "such a view fails to account for the language that people in early modern England" would not have been mentioned. The author passes his own judgement and this should be seen as evaluating.

Please explain where am I going wrong.

1. As observed in the first line, the author tends to bring into account the assertion of Adam Smith, let us do POE here
A- The first statement is not offering support to the statement; it is just a piece of information provided.
B- Out of scope. There is no mention of qualities of human relationship. For specific purpose questions, stay very close to the related text otherwise you will fall into the trap created by GMAT.
C- Correct answer
D- Again this cannot be derived from the information provided in the highlighted portion of the text.
E- For specific purpose questions, stay very close and focused on the text. E is not supported by the first line.
2. This answer can be very easily derived from the first line of the second paragraph.
Revisit the text whenever you encounter explicit questions which can be validated from the text. This helps you not to get into the trap of recycled language. Also, this helps in building accuracy.
Revisit the following lines
However, such a view fails to account for the language that people in early modern England used to articulate their understanding of business relations, language that stressed credit, trust, obligations, and contracts, rather than self-interest.
Let us do POE
A-The lines do not suggest anything related to power.
B- Nothing can be derived from the human relationships.
C- We can’t infer anything associated with the importance of village communities.
D- Not dealing with consequences of individual communities.
E –It is the right answer. This is the beauty of POE. Keep eliminating the incorrect choices, whatever remains serves as the right answer.


3. For the primary purpose question, always try to do the effective reading as revisiting the entire paragraph again to solve implicit questions such as tone, main idea, structure and primary purpose becomes really difficult.





A. Out of scope- there is no theory of human nature discussed.
B. Out of scope- Adam Smith’s assertion is mentioned but no discussion of the impact
C. Out of Scope –no timelines discussed in the passage
D. Correct answer
E. Reversal of what information is provided in the second paragraph
keep practicing. Consistency is the key.
All the best!!
PythaGURUS Faculty Team
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