Verbal Reasoning Tutorial - How to Answer Verbal Test Q's (Part 2)
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- Опубликовано: 9 июл 2024
- This is part 2 of our verbal reasoning tutorial, here our expert test developer talks through how to answer a typical verbal reasoning test.
Verbal reasoning tests usually take the form of a written passage followed by a series of questions with possible True, False or Cannot Say responses.
It is important you know and appreciate the meaning of each response if you are to score highly.
True - The statement follows logically given the information contained within the passage.
False - The statement cannot logically follow given the information contained within the passage.
Cannot Say - It is not possible to determine given the information contained within the passage alone; i.e. more information would be required to say for certain.
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It would be easier to compare accounts, but whether or not easier comparison of accounts = easier comparison of performance is up for question. Preceding statements seem to indicate that financial statements are of dubious usefulness and I believe it is implied that accounts are part of or equivalent to financial statements, so it is clearly possible that accounts can be useless for performance comparison. So 'Can't Say' is probably the best answer.
That's right. And I'm glad you have noticed the difference. Some people find the distinction tricky to get right. Nice work!
I'm going on a limb here and argue the opposite. The text says that the very reason that it's hard to "compare different companies' accounts" is because of much leeway in the standards. Now that statement is either true or it is not (and we are told to assume that what's in the small paragraph is true). If it is true, it implicitly, but definitely means that "creating less leeway [affecting comparability of company accounts]" in the standards will make it easier to compare. What it really hinges on is whether "tightened standards" are equivalent to "less leeway". Common day language usage would indicate that to be the case, but strictly speaking that would not necessary be so as anyone with half a brain knows that people who create such tests intentionally love to obfuscate things to trick you. After all, tightening standards could 1) also mean to come up with pointless little rules just to annoy accountants or 2) that the people responsible for setting standards have no idea of how to do it competently.
Obviously that is not really true as is 1) implied by the text and 2) implied by the fact that at least some people writing texts about such issues do.
Therefore, in the real world, if you are a specialist on economic theory or anything of the like, the answer is a resounding "True (but probably we shouldn't for other reasons)". Luckily a lot of these tests allow you to not just answer "True", "False" or "Cannot say", but they'll let you choose from "Definitely true", "Probably true", "Probably false", "Definitely false" and "Cannot say". In that case considering the "malice" of the person creating the test, the correct answer is "Probably true" because it cannot definitely be known that "tightening standards" means the same as "eliminating leeway [that would affect the comparability of company accounts]."
Your answer has some merit. If the question were to include the answer options you suggest, then the conditions change such that a Probably True answer would be acceptable. As expressed in the video, there is a difference between inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning. The probably true answer works with inductive reasoning. However, in this situation, the question with its necessary constraints and answer options, it eliminates that possibility meaning that the answer is cannot say.
That statement is TRUE. i dont care what anyone say
so the conclusion was implicit, rather than implicit, I guess that difference is important for these tests
I thought false
This is not a question of Fairness but Logic.
As this video is contrary to the answer given under "Verbal Reasoning - Free Test 2 - Solutions Booklet". There, the same team has published the answer to the same question to be "TRUE", and try to justify as follows: "... it is fair to say that the accounts of a company are tied to the 'performance' of a company, and so it would be easier to compare the performance of different companies if reporting standards were tightened."
Please check here: www.assessmentday.co.uk/verbal/Free/Verbal-Reasoning-Test2-Solutions.pdf
Dear A'wdema,
Well spotted!
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have amended the explanation in the Solutions PDF to reflect the updated answer which we discovered whilst making the video.
You should now be able to download the latest PDF file.
Thanks again for your comment.
I don't think the updated explanation really works. The statement in the text does say that leeway in the standards is causing the difficulty in comparison. This means if there were less leeway in the standards to start with, comparison would have been easier: if the cause never happened, the effect would not have happened either. Correlation does not imply causation; but causation does imply correlation.
However, the question is not talking about the a different initial state of the standards but a change in them ("tightening" of the standards), and it is possible that the disruption caused by changing standards could make it more difficult to compare performance.
Therefore, the answer is "Cannot Say", but not for the reasons you outline in the PDF.
I hate these tests.