Recommended Questions to practice "abstraction"

[rjynt199]

Hey there!

I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for questions or test sections that have heavy abstraction within them. I think I've honestly got the content down pretty well, but I've recently been using slightly older content (50s-60s) so that may be why my scores are better. I redid a section from 86 and notice 2/3 questions I got wrong were cause of abstraction issues, so I'm looking to practice that before September. I used up pts late 70s, 81, 84-89, and 92 (when studying for june), but I'm willing to do practice sections from them. I was mainly hoping if there were questions that I could drill without limiting my already sparse content to use for PTs and timed sections, unless most would suggest to just do drills of the especially hard questions from the tests I've already done.
Hopefully this thread could be helpful for people looking to practice this as well! Anyways, thanks for any input!

[Luke Haqq]

Hi rjynt199!

Perhaps there are other question types I'm not thinking of, but assumption questions seem to be a great type of question for practicing abstraction. When one reads an assumption question, often one will be able to sense that something is amiss. This can provide a good opportunity to practice abstracting what you read and then seeking to identify where the hole is. In addition, this can also be a chance to practice prephrasing, which can be a powerful tool that can help you approach answer choices with more confidence.

Parallel the reasoning and parallel the flaw questions also aren't bad for practicing abstraction. In many cases, using tools like the Double the Conclusion and Double the Premises techniques can be sufficient for you to arrive at the right answer quickly, without needing to do much abstraction at all. But in other cases, taking a moment after reading to abstract and digest what you read can be very helpful for winnowing down answer choices.

Finally, all reading comprehension passages seem to be good candidates for practicing abstraction. Students often don't take time after reading a given passage and instead move immediately into the questions. Instead of doing that, PowerScore encourages students to take the time to do the VIEWSTAMP analysis. That involves a good deal of abstraction and digestion of what you've read. If you're not in the habit of doing that analysis, making sure to do so could help strengthen your mastery of the reading comprehension section.