Reasoning within the text

The purpose of this article is to help you understand the reasoning within the text questions. These are one of three categories of questions on the critical analysis and reasoning skills. The key feature of these questions is that they ask you to examine the arguments being made by the author. These questions will direct your attention to arguments, claims, conclusions, or pieces of evidence that are presented in the passage. They will ask you to analyze and evaluate the author's argument in some way.

There are two major types of these questions. 
1. Structural - identify how the author is trying to relate various ideas in the passage. 
2. Evaluative - Criticize and consider flaws in author's argument or evidence.

Structural questions

Q: Which of the following quotes is presented as evidence for the author's position?
     -identify  author's position
     - find supportive quotes
*Sometimes eliminate answer options that don't represent ideas from the passage.

Q: Which of the following passage assertions is presented as evidence that computers are affecting people's conception of the mind?
       - eliminate options that don't accurately summarize statements made in passage.
       - determine how the author presents each idea

Q: Which conclusion does the author use this example to support?
       - Choose which claim the author uses


Evaluative questions

*inconsistency, unjustified

Lets look at an example

Nepal is an underdeveloped country that is one of the most disaster-prone in the world. In Nepal, poverty drives people to live ing high-risk areas which makes them vulnerable to disasters. Disasters in Nepal affect a large number of people by destroying their houses, productive lands , other personal assets, and livelihoods. Hence poverty is both a cause and a consequence of disasters in underdeveloped countries. 

Q: What is a weakness in the argument the author makes to support their conclusion about the relation of poverty to disasters?

A: The author fails to explain how people are affected by disasters.
B: The author assumes that the situation in Nepal will generalize to all underdeveloped countries.
C: The author fails to consider the role of poverty in causing disasters.
D: The author fails to consider the role disasters play in causing poverty.

B is the correct option.


Q: What assumption does the author make about gun violence?
Claim: Raising the price of bullets will lower gun violence.
Assumption : People who commit gun violence aren't willing to buy bullets at a high price.
- There is something the author didn't explicitly say but needs to be there for the conclusion to make sense.
- irrelevent, subjective, or biased
- is evidence relevant?

Q: Which of these examples is irrelevant for the claim that sugar is unhealthy?
- is evidence subjective? based on fact? possible to objectively verify?

Q: Which of the following statements is an opinion and not a fact?
- Evaluate author's argument in terms of info in passage.
- No personal opinions.