Verbal Reasoning: Critical Reasoning and Argument Structure

Some Reading Comprehension questions are built around a short argument -- often just a sentence or two -- rather than a longer descriptive passage. The core skill is breaking the argument into its parts: the conclusion (the claim the author is ultimately trying to establish), the premises (the evidence or reasons offered), and, very often, an unstated assumption that quietly bridges the premises to the conclusion without ever being written down explicitly.

Common question types built on this structure ask you to identify the underlying assumption, identify what would most weaken or strengthen the argument, or identify a flaw in the reasoning itself. For weaken/strengthen questions, the correct answer must engage directly with the argument's specific logical link -- typically by attacking or supporting the unstated assumption -- rather than simply introducing information that sounds generally negative or positive about the topic.

Consider this original short argument: "A city council member argues: 'Since the number of bicycle commuters in our city has doubled over the past five years, we should reallocate a significant portion of the road-repair budget toward new bike lanes, because doing so will most effectively reduce traffic congestion.'" The conclusion is the recommendation to reallocate the budget toward bike lanes; the premise is that bicycle commuting has doubled; the unstated assumption is that bike lanes would be the most effective way to reduce congestion specifically, not merely a way that would help cyclists.

A weaken answer must attack that specific assumption. Information showing congestion has a different primary cause entirely would directly undercut the argument's logic; information that is merely tangentially related to cycling, without addressing the "most effective" claim, would not.