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Explain or resolve | Quick guide

A quick guide to approaching questions that ask you to identify info that would explain or resolve a situation

In this question, you’re asked what information would help explain or resolve a situation or discrepancy that’s presented in the stimulus. Usually, the situation will be somewhat puzzling, but the answer will be the information that sheds light on the situation, or provides a logical explanation of how that situation could exist.
Wrong choices will be information that either makes the situation even more puzzling, or ones that don’t help explain it at all because the information is irrelevant or without impact.
It’s usually best not to try to make a prediction for these questions, but rather assess the impact of each choice in helping the passage’s situation make sense.
✓ Identify the situation in your own words: There is usually no need to identify conclusion and support—the most important task is to understand what the situation is and why it may be perplexing.
✓ Look for a contrast keyword: There may be a contrast keyword such as “yet” or “however” in the passage—the statements on either side of that keyword will be the statements in conflict (if you're asked to resolve a conflict).
✓ Phrase the situation as a question: Often, it’s a good idea to formulate the situation in the form of a question, such as, “How could the population have grown if fewer people were having children at the time?”
✓ Test each choice against the question you formulated: Since there are too many possibilities to make a strong prediction, test each choice against the stimulus, by mentally adding the information to the stimulus and assessing the impact. If a choice provides information that sheds light on how the situation could have occurred, that’s the answer!

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