F. Get an idea of the right answer

If you can identify an argument and assess its strengths, you may come up with a right answer after reading the stem.

When you finish reading the stimulus and the stem and you have analyzed everything using the techniques above, you can usually come up with a pre-phrase of the right answer before even getting to the answer choices. Coming up with the right pre-phrase of the answer is only half of the battle, however. From the five answer choices, you have to pick the answer that most closely resembles your pre-phrased answer. The potential answers are difficult to read and contain traps. If you have a general idea of the answer going into the answer choices, you are in a good position to correctly identify the answer.

Test takers should not be discouraged if they cannot come up with a pre-phrase. Some questions are difficult and an immediate answer will not jump out at you.

Don't fall for traps from test writers

If you have gone as far as to be able to identify and assess an argument, don't fall into a trap when picking an answer.

Test writing is an extremely time-consuming task. One of the most difficult parts of test writing is generating the "junk" wrong answer choices. Test writers have an easy way out. On nearly every question you will see wrong answers that are either the trick opposites or scope traps. These wrong answers do not do much to test ability; they are simply there to fool inexperienced and unskilled test takers. Test writers like to use them because they take a few seconds to write and fool most students, thereby making the question "harder."

On the positive side, a skilled test taker may quickly identify these two trap questions types. Most of the wrong answers in any given Verbal test will be one of the two types of junk answers. If you can identify the junk answer choices, you may thereby eliminate wrong answers and increase your chances of getting the right answer. Below we have several examples.

Trick Opposites

This is an underhanded trick from test writers

---

This is a partial free sample of our prep guide. To view the remainder of this page, purchase the 800score Prep Course.

---

w Additional tests, classroom prep and tutoring through Veritas GMAT Prep. 

GMAT Course Table of Contents | Email 800score | 800score GMAT Home