Q2

[JorieB701]

Timing, not surprisingly, is my biggest issue with RC. Questions like this in particular feel incredibly draining on the clock for a few reasons that I’d appreciate some help addressing.

1. I’m not sure what you guys categorize this particular question stem as but if I’m correct, this is basically a must be true question? It hints at a location of where the answer choice is likely to be found but falls short of providing any specific line reference or particular viewpoint that might make locating the relevant section easier; and because of this, often one of the more difficult aspects of getting to the right answer can be locating the relevant text? And if I’m not mistaken, “the author affirming” something just means that it was stated, which is different than a request for the author’s actual opinion?

2. And if the question is asking what the author “affirmed” it is akin to question stems that begin with “according to the passage,” in that the correct answer is likely to be something that was stated pretty directly? As opposed to a question stem that is asking for something to be inferred, correct?

3. I would imagine that the general strategy for questions like this is to first, before looking at any answer choices, to go back and find the relevant text referenced in the stem. So, because this is asking about the “results of the Downstate campaign” I know that the answer is likely going to come from somewhere in the fourth paragraph. But this paragraph is pretty long so I can’t imagine having enough time to read it in its entirety. Does this mean that I should normally first go in and eliminate any information that simply was not discussed in this paragraph and narrow it down in this way?

4. Going through the questions timed, I did notice that the answer choices are all similar in wording and I immediately became flustered because historically I struggle with these (either actually or through some self-fulfilling delusion). Is it recommended to stop reading at this point and to use the topic of the answer choices to narrow down the relevant text?

5. I’m pretty sure the line reference for B is 46-49 but is a synthesis of these, and lines 12-17, needed to prove it? And in “proving” answer choices like this is it necessary to line up the answer choice to the passage in such a way where you are saying, yes, I have failure to achieve all participant’s goals for “government action” in the fact that their agreement didn’t include “new legislation” and I have “goals for changes in union hiring practices” in not receiving a “commitment to a specific numerical increase in jobs for African Americans?”

6. Would a more efficient test taker have simply thought, well, there’s no way it achieved all of the participants goals, I knew that from even a cursory reading of the last paragraph, and a quick scan of the answer choices leaves B as the stand-out, it feels right, and it seems like it can be proven with the beginning of the fourth paragraph starting at line 46, it’s pretty weak in its wording, circle and move on?

[ohthatpatrick]

Great questions and suspected answers.


1. I’m not sure what you guys categorize this particular question stem

The Manhattan Prep categories are Identification, Inference, Synthesis. Under that rubric, I would say that "author AFFIRMS" is an Identification task.

Questions don't necessarily fall into those categories in a tidy way, though.
Generally, it follows these rules:

- ACCORDING TO PSG / AUTHOR STATES / PASSAGE STATES / AUTHOR AFFIRMS
Identification

- INFERRED / IMPLIES / SUGGESTS / MOST LIKELY AGREE
Inference



3. Upfront strategy?


Yeah, if the keywords seem specific and localized enough, then I would absolutely hunt them down and re-read (unless my retention of the passage was strong enough that I was able to read the question stem and think, without looking, "Well it ended up decently for the protesters and the ministers retained their moderate position")

It takes less time to read that 4th paragraph the second time. And if we don't have sharp awareness of what is / isn't said about the 'results' then what are we even doing attempting these answer choices?

So I would say, "if you need to read that whole paragraph, suck it up and do it". If the whole passage took 3 mins or less to read, then re-reading the 4th paragraph takes about 30-45 secs.

If you know exactly what was / wasn't said, then you have 30 secs or so to figure out which answer choice matches. Both of those are doable and keep you within respectable timeframes.

Some RC questions just inherently take longer to do because there's more research involved.


4. Going through the questions timed, I did notice that the answer choices are all similar

I think a lot of us hate the similarly worded ones. They just feel extra-nitpicky because you're measuring small differences.

If I hadn't originally read the question stem, seen "results of the campaign", and then thought "Oh, 4th paragraph", then I probably would have glanced at the answer choices to get a more precise sense of where in the passage I should be looking.

After reading the first 3 sentences of the last paragraph, I'm definitely ready to take a pass through the answers, understanding it definitely didn't achieve EVERYTHING, but it did do SOMETHING.

After reading answer choices, I get a more specific sense that we're concerned about
- did it achieve the union hiring policy goal? (nope, no new commitment to increase in jobs for AA's)

- did it achieve the government action goal? (nope, no new legislation)

5. I’m pretty sure the line reference for B is 46-49 but is a synthesis of these, and lines 12-17, needed to prove it? And in “proving” answer choices like this is it necessary to line up the answer choice to the passage in such a way where you are saying, yes, I have failure to achieve all participant’s goals for “government action” in the fact that their agreement didn’t include “new legislation” and I have “goals for changes in union hiring practices” in not receiving a “commitment to a specific numerical increase in jobs for African Americans?”

Depends on how tempted you are by other answers or how muddled you are about what you've read in paragraph 4. If you want total clarification that "specific numerical increase in jobs" was the "union hiring policy", then you might need to revisit the 1st paragraph. But (B)'s reference to "changes in hiring policies" lines up well enough for me with "a specific numerical increase in jobs" for me to feel okay here (mainly, because the word "all" is disqualifying the other answers)


6. Would a more efficient test taker have simply thought, well, there’s no way it achieved all of the participants goals, I knew that from even a cursory reading of the last paragraph, and a quick scan of the answer choices leaves B as the stand-out, it feels right, and it seems like it can be proven with the beginning of the fourth paragraph starting at line 46, it’s pretty weak in its wording, circle and move on?

YUP! A thousand times yes. Extreme language is the way that we can sometimes pick up speed on quickly red flagging RC answer choices. We want that kind of language to funnel us more quickly to a moderately worded answer choice that we can then try to confirm in the passage. If we don't find satisfactory confirmation, then we'll revisit some of the strongly worded ones, but it helps to "hear" wrong-sounding answers vs. right-sounding answers so that you spend more of your time trying to confirm the likely answer and less time evaluating the unlikely answers.