Mantra 1 of Reading
Choose your order
Mantra 2 of Reading
Write Notes
Mantra 3 of Reading
Bail as needed
Mantra 4 of Reading
Trust yourself
What are Red Flag Words
They are words that ampify, are too strong, emotional, controversal, or just wrong
Words that AMPLIFY
all any continuously few largely most often only widely
Words that are generally too STRONG
best first foremost guarantees inevitable must require should
Words that are too EMOTIONAL
angry bitter dilemma dramatic painful
words that are too CONTROVERSIAL
controversy ethical moral
Words that are just WRONG
tradition
How do you approach "most nearly means" questions?
your first line of attack should be to simplify what ever word that is quoted within the question withing each of the given answer opinions. Ideally, the correct answer will smoothly replace what was within the quotation marks in the question
How do you approach the "best evidence" question?
suppose that the partner question is asking you to determine what a given passage stated was the relationship between women and men. The key words to notice within such question would be "women and men". Equipped with that knowledge, we could actively go
How do you approach "The Graph Question"?
The first thing to acknowledge is that you should ignore any graph or chart until you need it. SO after you are done reading a passage, if there is a graph or chart, ignore it and go on and answer the non-graph questions. You will reference given graph or
How do you approach the "Main Purpose Question"?
Contains the words "Main Purpose"
Assuming that you are following through with all the other core ideas mentioned earlier, primarily the strategy of writing notes, then it should not surprise you that you already read it and wrote out the answer on the si
How do you approach the "Paragraph Question"?
It is possible that the question will also use the words "main purpose", but the question will specifically mention a particular paragraph, thereby differentiating it from the MP Question we discussed
How do you approach the "Shift Question" ?
A classic type of wrong answer that you should expect within the given four options is an answer that is partially correct.
How do you approach the "Relationship Question"?
The basic idea here is that it is exceptionally likley that P1 and P2 disagree with each other so if you encounter this question the answer shoudl sound neutral that say things like further elaborated on
How do you approach the "Agrees Question"?
a one sided answer is an option that very clearly seems to match one of the two passages, but it isnt really mentioned at all by the other passage. Such an option can be initally tempting since it so clearly connects to one of the two passages but such an
Mantra One of Writing
Shorter is better
Mantra 2 of Writing
Dont be repetitive
Mantra 3 of writing
Avoid unnecessary Punctuation
Mantra 4 of Writing
No Slang, Informal, or Creative Language
What do semicolons do
separate two full sentences
What do dashes do
dashes come in pairs
What do commas do
Commas set off a description
What do colons do
colons further elaborate on what was just said before the colon
Being
if you see this word within a given answer choice, the likelihood that the choice is the correct answer is super small
which" v "that
Cross out both choices and choose from the rest of the answers
he or she" & "himself or herself
these two expressions are singular and will never be plural
one
the word "one" will not intermingle with any other words
we / us / or
just like "one", you will know how to use any of these words if one of them is already present
such as
do not put any punctuation after this exact phase
s- verbs
verbs that end in s are SINGULAR
parallelism
when you keep the form of a string verbs the same
Run-Ons
a run on is a classic error grammar. A run on is when you combine two full sentences with a comma. There is pretty much going to be at least one run on touched away somewhere within every writing section.
Six Classic Linking Verbs
is/are was/were has/have and they usually come in pairs one is in the question and the other is in the answer
Who" versus "which" / "that
use the word "who" if a person was just mentioned
Use words "which" or "that" if a things was just mentioned
as
if you initially use an "as" you almost always need a second one