⏰ TTP Tip of the Day: Do Not Attempt to “Pre-Think” Answers ⏰

Question

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    Tip of the Day:       Do Not Attempt to “Pre-Think” Answers    
  Don’t try to guess what the correct answer will be before reading the answer choices. Doing so makes you more prone to cognitive biases that trap answer choices are carefully crafted to appeal to.  
Another gimmicky GMAT Critical Reasoning strategy that is all too common in GMAT circles is to attempt to “pre-think” the answer to a question. In other words, a test-taker will read the passage, read the question stem, and then try to “guess” what the correct answer will be without reading the answer choices. To put it simply, this is a rookie maneuverer.

When test-takers pre-think, they fall into a number of extremely well-researched cognitive biases. These biases can make it significantly harder to arrive at the right answer to a CR question, and at the same time, make it significantly easier to fall into a trap. GMAT question writers have MASSIVE amounts of data on the mistakes that test-takers are likely to make when they pre-think answer choices, and this data very surely is used to create trap answers that many “pre-thinkers” fall into. In fact, here at Target Test Prep, we too have large amounts of data on how students incorrectly “pre-think” the answers to the questions. And yes, to better prepare our students for challenges of the GMAT, we use this data to engineer trap answer choices in our Critical Reasoning practice questions.

Remember, CR questions want you to analyze the logic of a given argument or plan, not find a justification for your preconceived notion of what the answer should be. More to the point, why waste your valuable time trying to guess what the answer will be when the actual 5 answer choices are right there in front of you on the screen?

Such a strategy is not going to give you an “edge” in eliminating wrong answer choices — quite the opposite, in fact. So, after you read the passage thoroughly, read the question stem and make sure that you understand what it’s asking you. Then, skip the time-wasting task of pre-thinking an answer and simply read through the answer choices completely.

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avigutman · Accepted Answer

I have the opposite perspective, so I feel obligated to post it here. Readers can consider the two opposing view points and decide for themselves which works better for them (if you're not sure, try them both out for a while and see which works better for you). Firstly, I suggest always starting not from the passage at the top of the screen, but rather from the question stem in the centre of the screen. This way, by the time we start reading the passage, we already have a pretty good idea of what our job is. Are we supposed to strengthen the passage that we're about to read? Are we supposed to consider what additional information would be most useful in evaluating the argument? Are we about to read about a politician's plan to achieve some goal, and our job is to poke holes in that plan or identify something that the politician failed to consider? Or, perhaps, the passage that we're about to read is an incomplete argument, and our job is to identify which of the five answer choices would be the most logical conclusion to the passage above? If I go into the passage without having first read the question stem, then I'm going in blind and am just reading with no particular focus in mind. Secondly, I absolutely take as much time as I want to consider the argument's structure and logic, and even more time than that to consider what would strengthen/weaken/ help to evaluate / logically complete / cast doubt / whatever the question stem asked me to do. If I can only come up with one good answer choice, I don't tie myself exclusively to the one that I came up with - I keep an open mind as I go into the answer choices. In fact, sometimes (particularly on hard questions), I can't pre-think even one single good option. That's okay - I try my best and if I can't think of anything, it will probably hit me in the face when I see it in the answer choices. The act of racking my brain to come up with a good answer makes the correct answer jump off the screen for me when I do finally read the answer choices. Conversely, if I go to the answer choices too soon, before I've done any deep thinking about what exactly a good answer would do here, I'm much more likely to pick a trap answer, or worse - spend way more than 2 minutes going back and forth, debating among the different answer choices. That's a misleading statement. They have MASSIVE amounts of data on the mistakes that test-takers have made . They don't have any data at all about the mistakes that test-takers are likely to make when they pre-think answer choices. The trap answers are designed to confuse us, to make us lose our focus, to make us think the argument was slightly different from what it actually was, or to make us think the question was different from what it actually was (e.g. a strengthening answer choice to a weaken question). These traps lose much of their power when we prepare for them ahead of time. Therefore, I suggest spending as much time as possible before looking at the answer choices, and as little time as possible inside the answer choices. In fact, once you've read an answer choice that does exactly what you were hoping for it to do, your optimal strategy at that point is probably to pick that answer and move on. Nothing good can come of continuing to read the remaining answer choices. For a short video covering my strategy, see below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ja_aseZp9E0 Subscribe for more: https://www.youtube.com/QuantReasoning? ... irmation=1

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

Most of the reasons that I've seen given for prethinking seem to come down to "Prethinking will keep you from losing your focus or failing to keep things straight."

But here's the thing. You can learn to maintain your focus and keep things straight without prethinking, which takes up time and energy, can be distracting, and can steer you toward an incorrect choice.

So, to me what makes the most sense is taking the direct path of fully understanding the passage and identifying with precision its key points and then going to the answer choices and carefully finding the one that answers the question asked.

That path is simple, efficient, and when used skillfully, basically foolproof.

bb · Answer

I also feel compelled to chime in

I am a bit of a dinosaur in terms of my prep methods - I studied with the Kaplan books back in the day. I am not sure if they have pioneered the idea of pre-thinking (they definitely did not call it that. Seems like an odd name) but they have definitely put as a strong point of their CR strategy and I felt it worked well for me. Yes, it is harder to do pre-thinking than to read the answer choices and then pick one (even a donkey could pick one out of 5) BUT you save time with pre-thinking on easy and medium CR questions and your accuracy goes up since you don't get tempted by tricky answer choices. It is not perfect - It does not work on hard Cos since they don't use the common logic patterns but with answering CR's in my own words, I could get through a CR in less than 1.5 mins on average, and that's with methodical reading of the passage and reading the question stem first, then passage, and then stem again. Often I could do it even faster. I have seen a number of people struggle with it and say it is too hard or it does not work for them but I feel that's because they had some unaddressed issues and it was uncovering those. I have seen MGMAT also leverage this strategy so I don't know if it is a rookie mistake. I would say that if it is harder, then why not use it in practice and then transition off it? Seems making your practice harder would not really hurt?

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

That transitioning off it approach is interesting, but to me, acing the GMAT is about finding the shortest, easiest ways to arrive at correct answers. So, ideally, practice for CR or any other type of GMAT questions would involve repeatedly going through the motions of finding the shortest, easiest path to the correct answer.

For more on my approach to CR, see this video. You'll see that a person using the approach will avoid traps and arrive at correct answers consistently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVKp3TvCWxI

avigutman · Answer

Thanks for posting the video,  MartyTargetTestPrep .
Pre-thinking (at least the way I use that term) isn't about predicting the correct answer ahead of time (although that does tend to happen, as a by-product, on easy-medium questions). 
Pre-thinking is about going through the reasoning, or, as you put it,   focusing on logical implications   and   making common-sense connections   at the argument phase,    before    going to the answer choices. I'm not sure whether that is what you were calling a gimmick, but if so, I would argue that using reasoning on a reasoning test is by definition not a gimmick.

The advantage of doing so before reading the answer choices is two-fold:
1. Doing so while reading each answer choice requires five iterations rather than just one.
2. Trap answers are designed to poison our mind and flip our logic upside down, so doing the thinking after reading an answer choice is much harder - it's like trying to avoid food poisoning after we've already eaten the expired item.

Regarding the claim that folks might pre-think a trap answer: I am very confident that in such cases they would have picked that trap answer regardless of whether or not they did any pre-thinking.

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

I've never seen this issue. From what I've seen, if someone gets the argument and what the question is asking and is skilled in seeing what the logical implications of choices are, he or she won't be fooled one bit by the trap choices.

Also, I think it's worth noting that, by your logic, if people prethink the wrong thing, they may be poisoned by their own prethought idea, which will shield them from being swayed, not just by incorrect choices, but also by the correct answer.

While I agree that considering what the correct answer to a question could be could help you to see certain aspects of the scenario more clearly, I personally can't imagine spending even one second thinking about what the correct answer to a CR question might be. By just paying attention to the logical implications of the choices, you can readily eliminate the ones that have the wrong implications. So, it's as if you're saying that people will not be able to learn to see the logical implications of choices, so they better do something to protect their easily fooled selves from the big bad trap choices.

For me, the key move is to learn to identify the logical implications of choices and statements in passages. If you can do that, you're set. You won't have to spend time prethinking, you won't be fooled by trap choices, and you'll consistently get CR questions correct in well under two minutes each, and I think people can learn to do that.

avigutman · Answer

Agreed. But, that's a lot of ifs, and it's not necessarily the optimal strategy.

Again, pre-thinking doesn't mean trying to predict the right answer. It means focusing on logical implications and making common-sense connections at the argument phase; thinking deeply about the ways in which the argument is flawed, before going to the answer choices.
If doing so leads a test-taker to pick the wrong answer, it is my claim that this test-taker would have picked the wrong answer regardless.

Not at all. I'm certain they can learn to see the logical implications of choices. But, if acing the GMAT is about finding the shortest, easiest ways to arrive at correct answers (this is something we agree on), then I maintain that  considering the ways in which the argument is flawed    before   reading the answer choices is the better approach. I suspect that you,  MartyTargetTestPrep , do precisely that, either consciously or subconsciously, while you're reading an argument. But I'm open to being wrong about that.

MartyTargetTestPrep · Answer

Actually, I don't think I really do consider the ways in which the argument is flawed. I just take it for what it is and head to the answer choices and let the correct answer do its job.

That said, I'm getting the impression that we're talking about two different things. The prethinking I'm talking about generally does involve coming up with possible answers to the question, whereas the prethinking you're talking about seems to be more focused on analyzing the argument to see how it's flawed, which seems reasonable to me, even if I personally wouldn't bother.

avigutman · Answer

To be clear, when I consider the flaws in an argument (and I already know what the question is asking for, since I read it ahead of time), possible correct answers tend to pop into my head automatically (each flaw carries with it an automatic possible correct answer, at least in abstract form). This is why I said earlier that the right answer   can   be anticipated as a by-product of my pre-thinking - but that's   never my goal  . Rather, my goal is simply to do a    full    analysis of the argument (what you refer to as focusing on logical implications and making common-sense connections) - including identifying any flaws or things the author failed to consider - before looking at the answer choices.

To be honest I'm quite surprised to learn that you,  MartyTargetTestPrep , don't analyze the argument to see how it's flawed. I would have expected such a strategy to decrease accuracy and increase time. It certainly would for me.

vv65 · Answer

The process that works for me, and the one I teach, is similar to what  avigutman  has explained.

Start by reading the question. Then read the argument and try to identify flaws and assumptions.
Before looking at the answer choices,  stop to think . State what you are looking for. This is not the same as predicting the answer. It's more about thinking what the answer "needs to do".

By doing lots of CR questions in this way, test takers may reach a stage in which the process becomes almost automatic.

Of course, some test-takers can do CR questions without following these steps of identifying flaws and stopping to think. Just as many can spot subject-verb or pronoun errors without having to consciously look for the verbs and pronouns in every sentence.

AndrewN · Answer

I have been "listening in" on this dialogue from the get-go, and, not to confound the issue, but I have long held a view more in line with the TTP stance on "pre-thinking." In the beginning, I thought the so-called strategy was a smoke-and-mirrors effect, an after-the-fact justification of the correct answer. To me, it made much more sense to engage with what was actually on the screen. How could I know whether a weaken question, for instance, would attack the argument on the whole, the extreme length to which the argument was taken, the soundness of the logic on which the argument was based (e.g., the force of the evidence), or, as sometimes happens, would furnish some out-of-left-field (alternative) consideration that would seriously cast doubts on the conclusion reached? I often teach my students to  work smarter, not harder  (a maxim that sounds a lot better with the American English "d" sound in  smarter ). In  one of my most popular posts , I spoke boldly on the topic:

I feel I must now confess that after working with many students who have found the  pre-thinking  strategy essential to their approach, and having expanded my view on just what the strategy may mean to others, as Avi has well articulated above, I can appreciate its utility to some people. Who am I to argue with someone who might miss 0-3 questions across the entire Verbal section on a consistent basis, and perhaps none on the CR subset? The key to any successful CR strategy is  engagement . Some people achieve this by pre-thinking, others, apparently like me and Marty, by direct means, let come what may. Pigeonholing the definition of  pre-thinking  may be too extreme, and arguing about its usefulness may be akin to debating whether stretching before exercise is beneficial. The point in the latter, of course, is to prepare the body for  engagement .

In the end, I may not pre-think, and I suspect that some peddle the strategy as an essential one within some definition of what the process entails, but I will be the first to admit that I do not have all the answers, and I am open to hearing about what works for others.

- Andrew

AndrewN · Answer

An addendum to my earlier post that I forgot to bring up (after I had initially thought to touch on the point)—my embedded quote above attests to the fact that I often peek at the question, then the passage to give shape to what I am about to read. Avi wrote the same thing (about his own method) in his initial post:

I remember reading a post in this TTP series a few months back in which it was recommended not to bother reading the question stem first, since people subsequently reread the question anyway. Once again, I find it a matter of preference, and, if I am being perfectly honest, I can go either way when I practice questions myself (every single day), with no discernible difference in results. If I glance down and see the word  weaken  or  strengthen , that preview might be enough; if I see a blank at the end of the passage, or  boldfaced  words, I just start reading from the top. I see adaptation as a plus, and, as I outlined in my earlier post, I believe that engagement can come in many forms.

I have a profound respect for those who have helped put the TTP curriculum together, and I doubt anyone in the industry would argue against its core teachings. It is easy for people, experts and non-experts alike, to squabble about the small stuff, but the big picture seems largely the same to me.

Now, as a token of my appreciation for having been able to enjoy reading such engaging posts as this dialogue unfolded, I just have to figure out which single post per "side" I wish to award a kudos.

- Andrew

VerbalBot · Answer

Automated notice from GMAT Club VerbalBot: 

A member just gave Kudos to this thread, showing it’s still useful. I’ve bumped it to the top so more people can benefit. Feel free to add your own questions or solutions.

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⏰ TTP Tip of the Day: Do Not Attempt to “Pre-Think” Answers ⏰

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⏰ TTP Tip of the Day: Do Not Attempt to “Pre-Think” Answers ⏰

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My Rewards