How to handle FLAW questions?

Question

Is there a tip or trick to deal with flaw questions in CR? I know the basic flaws like wrong sample, cause and effect, shift of scope. number and %, etc. However, my accuracy is not improving. What do I do? I feel there is a conceptual issue.

bb · Answer

I would say with CR's you can't compare easy/medium and hard CR's in terms of accuracy and in terms of your performance. There is a whole different level of approach required to some hard CR's such as diagramming/etc.

So I would make sure you take difficulty into consideration as well as you may have been doing easy Flaw questions and now working on hard ones.

P.S. Personally I found flaw questions some of the more entertaining as I got to play with the puzzle and see if I can get trapped. I always took the approach of answering CR questions in my own words before seeing the answer choices. Have you tried that method?

AjiteshArun · Answer

Hi IJIJ,

No tip or trick here, but are you good at argument structuring (boldface questions)? That's the foundation for pretty much everything in CR.

Rish94S · Answer

First thing is to be sure is you are not supposed to anwser like weaken which most students do

SarfrazAP · Answer

Flaw questions are essentially testing you on the assumption. Think about it, essentially all arguments have the same flaw - that they are assuming something. That assumption could easily be incorrect, for all you know. All those things you've mentioned - cause and effect, wrong sample, etc. - are simply ways of identifying the assumption in arguments.

So are you able to pre think assumptions in arguments? Try this the next time you attempt a Flaw question: identify the conclusion and the evidence (or premise, as some call it) and then try to think what could be the assumption in that argument. Your flaw will not be very far from there.

Hope this helps.

EducationAisle · Answer

Flaw questions actually are not too different from  Weaken the Conclusion  questions. How are you in Weaken the Conclusion question type?

If you can dm me your email id, I can send you relevant stuff on Flaw question type.

ScottTargetTestPrep · Answer

HI IJIJ,

Since you seem to be having some issues with CR, here is a great article you can check out:

GMAT Critical Reasoning: 8 Essential Tips

How to handle FLAW questions?

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