Strengthen Or Weaken Questions

By Abhishek Tomar on Sep 15, 2009 with Comments 0

GMAT Critical Reasoning asks you questions either to strengthen or weaken the argument or the conclusion in the light of the given statement. How you will deal with these type of questions?

You know that the answers GMAT examiner can only be found in the answer choice and contain information that the passage do not contain. Here are the some of the GUIDELINES that you should keep in mind when you encounter one of these questions. Suppose you have to strengthen the argument, this is what your approach should be:

Remember the best answer will be that contains NEW information, answer choices that contain the same information or is been taken from the passage IS WRONG

The NEW information will support the conclusion of the passage. So before you move, you should know the conclusion of the passage and then use the answer choice to find out whether the choice is making the conclusion stronger.

By NEW information you should be careful whether the information available is relevant o not. If the NEW information is providing you with statistics you should ask whether the statistics provide relevant data. If the NEW information uses the analogy than you have to see whether the analogy is used properly.

Sample Questions Asked for Strengthening

1. Which of the following, if true, most strengthen the authors arguments?
2. Which of the following, if true, most strongly supports the author’s hypothesis?

Sample Questions Asked for Weakening the arguments

1. Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the conclusion drawn in the passage?
2. Which of the following indicates a flaw in the reasoning above?
3. Which of the following, if true, would cast the most serious doubt on the argument above?