Match structure | Quick guide

This question is asking you to choose an argument from among the choices that is structurally the same as the argument in the passage. In other words, the answer will have the same kind of conclusion and the same kind of evidence as the passage.

These questions tend to be challenging, most of all because they take so much time. Part of the reason is that they’re long—you don’t just have to read one argument, you have to read up to six! Given the time constraint, these are questions that many students wisely choose to skip and return to if they have time.

Wrong choices will be arguments that either have a different kind of conclusion than the passage does, or a different kind of support than the passage does, or both.

Top tip: Topic doesn’t matter at all—only the reasoning pattern does. It’s worth noting that the order in which elements appear doesn’t matter either; a passage with the conclusion at the end can match perfectly with a choice with the conclusion at the beginning, for example.

✓ Identify the conclusion and support of the original argument: What is the arguer’s primary conclusion, and what information is provided to support that conclusion?

✓ Consider diagramming the passage’s structure: If you see some repeating terms and they seem to have a discernible relationship to each other, or if the entire passage is based on conditional logic, you can often map the argument in shorthand in order to understand its pieces better. For example, if the passage shows a structure of, “It could be X, Y, or Z, but it can’t be X, so it must be Y or Z”, then the answer will reflect that same structure.

✓ Characterize the conclusion: Is it a definite prediction? Is it an indefinite recommendation?

✓ Characterize the argument in general terms: Ignoring the specific topic to a reasonable extent, can you phrase the argument in a general way? For example, "An event has two possible causes. The arguer rules out one cause, so it must be the other cause."

✓ Eliminate as many choices as you can: If you are pressed for time, one way to begin evaluating choices is to eliminate a choice as soon as its conclusion doesn't match. If the type of conclusion is very different from the original argument’s conclusion, it’s not likely to be a match for the passage's structure. Be warned! This strategy will not work in all cases—time permitting, you should try to eliminate options based on the reasoning structure of the argument as a whole.