Can someone point me to where Evaluate questions are covered in our LR books? Whenever I get to a question stem like, "The answer to which one of the following questions most helps in evaluating the argument?" I get a bit stumped and feel less comfortable with what incorrect versus correct answers typically look like. The questions always seem simple enough, but I'm realizing I don't have a process in place for my approach and have gotten many of these incorrect.
I read an official explanation to one of the questions I missed that ended with the takeaway: "In Evaluate questions, look for a question where answering it Yes/No has opposite effects on the argument..." so am guessing these questions types are somewhere in our course but I have maybe overlooked them?
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Re: Evaluate Questions
Hey-hey.
They're actually not ever covered in the LR book, as far as I can find / remember.
Evaluate questions are very rare, so they don’t seem to merit their own chapter. Over the course of tests 50 - 75, there was probably only Evaluate question every four or five tests.
That said, they’ve been more common recently. It’s been about 1 per test in the last couple years. So we will definitely be including a specific mention of them in our next edition of LR books.
They’re the same reading / thinking / evaluating task as Strengthen/Weaken, but the answer choices are posed as questions.
Sometimes the correct answer is a Yes/No question, and answering it in one of those two ways would Weaken. Other times the correct answer is more open ended, and answering it a certain way would Weaken.
The correct answer should feel like a question that, if answered one way weakens and if answered the opposite way strengthens.
My approach is mainly to use a Weaken mindset:
How could I accept this evidence, but argue against the Conclusion?
As I read the questions in each answer choice, I'm just thinking, "Is there a way to answer this question that would Weaken the argument?"
Some of the correct answers on recent Evaluate questions have been pretty obnoxiously vague, meaning it would be hard to like them if you weren't already considering a (similar sounding) potential objection to the argument.
The one that comes to mind is one about "not being late for the meeting if they hadn't been doing construction out front".
Hope this helps.
They're actually not ever covered in the LR book, as far as I can find / remember.
Evaluate questions are very rare, so they don’t seem to merit their own chapter. Over the course of tests 50 - 75, there was probably only Evaluate question every four or five tests.
That said, they’ve been more common recently. It’s been about 1 per test in the last couple years. So we will definitely be including a specific mention of them in our next edition of LR books.
They’re the same reading / thinking / evaluating task as Strengthen/Weaken, but the answer choices are posed as questions.
Sometimes the correct answer is a Yes/No question, and answering it in one of those two ways would Weaken. Other times the correct answer is more open ended, and answering it a certain way would Weaken.
The correct answer should feel like a question that, if answered one way weakens and if answered the opposite way strengthens.
My approach is mainly to use a Weaken mindset:
How could I accept this evidence, but argue against the Conclusion?
As I read the questions in each answer choice, I'm just thinking, "Is there a way to answer this question that would Weaken the argument?"
Some of the correct answers on recent Evaluate questions have been pretty obnoxiously vague, meaning it would be hard to like them if you weren't already considering a (similar sounding) potential objection to the argument.
The one that comes to mind is one about "not being late for the meeting if they hadn't been doing construction out front".
Hope this helps.
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