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Miscellaneous CR Tips

Transcript

This final video to the CR section, we're gonna go through a few points that I didn't cover, and some points that are very important that I, of course, have covered. So, let's just start with the frequency of question types. This is I have not covered, but it's important because if you're struggling with a certain question, then if that question is just not that common, you shouldn't worry about it as much as some of the other question types, even if you're relatively strong in those more common question types.

So, what are the common question types? Well, the first three, weaken, strengthen, and assumption, account for about 75% of the critical reasoning questions stems. In terms of the rest of them, these are not as common, and some of them are not that common at the high level. For instance, paradox questions.

Not that all of them are easy, but typically, you will see them skewed more towards the medium and medium easy range. And then there's the bold face, which are some of the most difficult questions in the CR section, and they, of course, they tend to be bunched up at that difficult or very difficult level. But otherwise, this is a pretty good breakdown.

So, you could revisit videos if you feel you are, for instance, struggling in the assumption, well, it's a good idea to go back to the, to that video because this is a common question type. As your final thoughts go, it's important to follow the technique that we've been talking about throughout these videos. It's easy to watch the video, nod along, but then when you go to approach an actual CR question, to fall back into the usual habit of reading it as quickly as you can, diving headlong into the answer choices, and trying to find some answer that makes sense.

Again, once your technique breaks down, you're likely to make a mistake. The key is to follow the technique, even at first if you're a little bit slower, that is absolutely fine. You will improve with time. And I mentioned this a second ago, the idea of revisiting videos. Do this with the difficult question types.

So, if you've struggled anywhere, don't feel that you have to now go somewhere else and do many practice questions, but actually go back to that specific lesson video. Once you've done that, you should actually try a question type from that specific lesson. Now, we have a quiz feature, but that just pulls questions from across critical reasoning.

A good thing to do is to click on the customize your practice link, which is located above the verbal green bar in your dashboard, and this will allow you to choose GMAT Sierra questions broken by that, down by the one in eight types that we've gone through today. So, if you want a weaken question you can select only weaken questions. Now, the reason I recommend doing so is if you've watched the lesson video ,and you want to apply what you've learned, then it's a good idea to practice on just those question types.

Speaking of practice, it's important to do the official guide questions, as well. These are written by the GMAT, the people who create the test, and so, you wanna get a sense of exactly how those questions work, and how you can apply the technique you've learned here to those official questions. Last and not least, of course, it's the idea of patience. I keep coming back to this, because this is not an easy thing with CR, just applying a technique and letting everything fall into place.

This takes practice and you may even notice that you're not doing as well as you did before. However, with easier questions, technique isn't as important, but the more difficult questions become, you have to have that technique or you're likely to make mistakes. So, even if floundered doubt a little bit in the beginning, by following the technique, with patience you will improve and you'll be able to break through the easy and medium range, and start dealing with the more difficult questions.

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