Ослабление или усиление | Тесты, Справочник

Strengthen or Weaken Questions

Determining an argument's necessary assumption, as we've just seen, is required to answer an Assumption question. But it also is required to answer another common type of question: Strengthen or Weaken the Argument.

You should recognize the second sentence as the conclusion and the first sentence as the evidence for it. But is the argument complete? Obviously not. The piece that's missing - the unstated link between the evidence and conclusion - is the assumption, and you could probably prephrase this one pretty easily.

Sample Stems

The stems associated with these two question types are usually self-explanatory. Here's a list of what you can expect to see on Test Day.

Weaken:
written assighment • Which one of the following, if true, would most weaken the argument above?
• Which one of the following, if true, would most seriously damage the argument above?
• Which one of the following, if true, casts the most doubt on the argument above?
• Which one of the following, if true, is the most serious criticism of the argument above?

Strengthen:
• Which one of the following, if true, would most strengthen the argument?
• Which one of the following, if true, would provide the most support for the conclusion
in the argument above?
• The argument above would be more persuasive if which one of the following were found to be true?

It's also common that the question stem explicitly refers to part of the argument. You might, for example, see the following:

Which of the following, if true, casts the most doubt on the author's conclusion that the Brookdale Public Library does not meet the requirements of the new building code?

This example illustrates another advantage of Basic Principle: Reading the question stem first. Here we would be told outright what the author's conclusion is, making the reading of the stimulus much easier to manage.

Inference Questions

The second most common question type in Critical Reasoning is the Inference question. The process of inferring is a matter of considering one or more statements as evidence and then drawing a conclusion from them.

Sometimes the inference is very close to the author's overall main point. Other times, it deals with a less central point. In Critical Reasoning, the difference between an inference and an assumption is that the conclusion's validity doesn't logically depend on an inference, as it does on a necessary assumption. A valid inference is merely something that must be true if the statements in the passage are true; it's an extension of the argument rather than a necessary part of it.

Let's examine a somewhat expanded version of the volleyball team argument:

Allyson plays volleyball for Central High School, despite the team's rule against participation by non-students. Therefore, Allyson must be over 6 feet tall.

Inference: Allyson is not a student at Central High School.

Clearly, if Allyson plays volleyball despite the team's rule against participation by non-students, she must not be a student. Otherwise, she wouldn't be playing despite the rule; she'd be playing in accordance with the rule. But note that this inference is not an essential assumption of the argument because the conclusion about Allyson's height doesn't depend on it.

So be careful: Unlike an assumption, an inference need not have anything to do with the author's conclusion. It may simply be a piece of information derived from one or more pieces of evidence.

Fortunately, the Denial Test works for inferences as well as for assumptions: A valid inference always makes more sense than its opposite. If you deny or negate an answer choice, and the denial has little or no effect on the argument, then chances are that choice cannot be inferred from the passage.

Sample Stems

Inference questions probably have the most varied wording of all the Critical Reasoning question stems. Some question stems denote inference fairly obviously. Others are more subtle, and still others may even look like other question types entirely. Here's a quick rundown of the various forms that Inference questions are likely to take on your test:

· Which one of the following is inferable from the argument above?
· Which one of the following is implied by the argument above?
· The author suggests that...
· If all the statements above are true, which one of the following must also be true on the basis of them?
· The author of the passage would most likely agree with which one of the following?
· The passage provides the most support for which of the following?
· Which one of the following is probably the conclusion toward which the author is moving?

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