From the course: Preparing for the GMAT

Bolded phrases questions

From the course: Preparing for the GMAT

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Bolded phrases questions

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- [Instructor] In my opinion, learning how to work with bold face phrases questions in critical reasoning is a really important skill. You're probably not going to see a ton of these questions on the real GMAT, but the skills involved carry over to function questions in the reading comprehension and even to the skill of reading comprehension itself. So let's work through a bolded phrases question. So we see the question here, the two sections in boldface play which of the following roles in the zookeeper's argument? And we already knew this was a bolded phrases question, right? 'Cause the phrases are in bold. Really easy to spot. Let's read the passage. The number of animal exhibits at our zoo should be reduced. Attendance at our zoo has been declining over the past five years because of the economic recession. Since most of our zoo's visitors are only interested in seeing the lions, tigers, and bears, few visitors would care if some of the less popular exhibits were removed. Okay. Fine. So, now let's have a look at the answer choices, and we just want to glance at them first just to pick up on some of the terminology being used. So we see a bunch of stuff about conclusions, and sometimes, certain terms are kind of synonyms for each other, so you might see things like claims or opinions or arguments. Those are all kind of the same thing. Now, let's go to the sentences with the bolded phrases, and for this drill, we want to actually go sentence by sentence through the entire passage. You don't always have to do this on the real test. At a minimum on the real test, you do have to read the entire sentence the bold part is in. Don't just try to get away with reading the bold part itself. But anyway, for a drill, we're going to go sentence by sentence. So, sentence one. The number of animal exhibits at our zoo should be reduced. This is kind of like a conclusion, kind of of the argument. The next sentence, attendance at our zoo has been declining over the past five years because of the economic recession. And we always want to kind of label a sentence in conjunction with the sentence before it. If we think about how does the second sentence work in relation to the first sentence? Well, I think it's kind of support for that first sentence. It's like a fact being used to kind of support the argument. Let's look at the third sentence. Since most of our zoo's visitors only are interested in seeing the lions, tigers, and bears, few visitors would care if some of the less popular exhibits were removed. Well, this sentence we can also probably label as support for the first sentence. In fact, it's kind of like, a conclusion or opinion, right, at the very end. Few of them would care, that's a conclusion being used to kind of support the ultimate argument that we should reduce the number of exhibits. Okay. So now that we've done the drill, let's have a look at the choices. A, the first is the argument's main conclusion, okay, that's true, what about the second is a claim that argues against that conclusion? Nope. It's all kind of going along with the conclusion, so that's wrong. B, the first is the argument's main conclusion, the second is an intermediate conclusion that in turn supports the main conclusion. Okay, I know it's a little confusing, but that is actually correct. The first is the argument's main conclusion. We already knew that. The second is kind of an opinion that supports that main conclusion. And that's exactly what that final bold part is being used for. It's kind of being used to support that first statement. Okay, so C is wrong now that we know B is right, the first is support for the argument's main conclusion, no, it kind of is the main conclusion. The second is not the main conclusion, it's intermediate. D, it's definitely not something the argument is opposed to. It is the argument. And then the second is not the main conclusion. And then E, the first is support for a claim made later in the argument, not really. It's kind of the argument itself. And then the second is support, that is true. So if we have a look at some common passage parts, just so you get practice identifying them. Background information, stuff that's kind of presented as fact. Claims, these are kind of things like opinions. We might see elaboration on claims, support for claims. We might see one person's opinion and then someone else's opinion, and we might see things like conclusions signified by words like thus or therefore, and then implications, what things mean based on conclusions. So, my tip is, practice labeling the function of each sentence of an article in relation to the sentences before it, if you want to practice this skill, and you can kind of do this with any article. So, remember, labeling the function of each sentence in an argument is a good way to practice the skill, and when you're working with a question in real time, identify the conclusion, glance at the answer choices, and then try to articulate what the bolded phrases do on your own before looking for a choice that matches your interpretation.

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