The Critical Reasoning section of Graduate Management Admission Test is one of the most difficult parts of the examination. The Critical Reasoning (CR) questions measures the analytical reasoning skills of every GMAT aspirant. The CR question includes with two main parts, the stimulus which contains the short argument and the question stem that basically asks questions based on the stimulus.

The evaluation of question argument in Critical Reasoning does not require vast knowledge of the certain issues or topics. To choose the right answer, examinee should carefully scrutinize the argument and indentify the premises and conclusion as well as the crux of the argument. Well, the examinee must select the ‘best’ answer to the question.

It is the cognitive ability of examinee that GMAT Critical Reasoning section wants to measure. The argument questions in Critical Reasoning greatly challenge one’s ability to think critically and analytically. This can be done by requiring the test taker to recognize reasoning errors and unstated assumptions, draw reasonable inferences from stated premises, and follow an argument’s line of reasoning.

The GMAT Critical Reasoning section gives their questions in a form of paragraph-length argument. It is the type of question in the given argument that will determine on what approach that an examinee will use to easily answer the problem. These tasks will be around on these following: recognizing how to weaken the argument, recognizing how to strengthen an argument, identifying the implicit assumptions, drawing conclusion from a series of stated premises, recognizing different patterns of reasoning, and recognizing the main point or conclusion of an argument. And the three most common question types that can be found in Critical Reasoning sections are the: unstated-assumption questions, undermining-evidence questions, and supporting-evidence questions.

There is a need to identify the question type of every given question argument. Recognizing what question type in the problem helps the examinee to choose the best approach to answer the question correctly. Understanding the question stem before reading the argument is one effective way to easily determine what the argument is all about when reading it. Since GMAT examination has a limited time, then reading first the answer choices will not give an advantage for it will only waste one’s time.

There are effective strategies to easily handle the three most common used question types in GMAT Critical Reasoning section. The very first step is to read the question stem before reading the argument. After doing so, the reading of argument and identifying its premises and conclusion is the next step. It will be followed by scanning of answer choices that most reflected on the unspecified assumptions that have already been occurred on the test taker. Chances are these assumptions can be found on the given answer choices. However, when the assumption is not one of those answer choices, then examinee must carefully consider each given answers. And when the examinee will still unable to determine the best response then it is much better to look the most opposite answer of the question. Definitely these are the wrong answers, and elimination will be applied immediately to increase the chance of choosing the right answer on the remaining choices.

Taking the examination in GMAT where Critical Reasoning is a part of it needs a lot preparation. It needs thorough practice to develop one’s analytical skills. If the test taker is still in school, then enrolling to critical thinking course will not be a big problem. But it will not be the same to those GMAT aspirants that are working individuals. So, choosing online Critical Reasoning preparation and GMAT study materials is the best choice.