Critical Reasoning on the GMAT Focus: find the conclusion and the gap first

Critical Reasoning questions give you a short argument and one job to do with it. Most wrong answers start the same way: the candidate reads the five choices before deciding what the argument claims and what it takes for granted, and the choices then steer the reading. This guide gives you a method that settles both points before you read any choice, so you read with a target in mind.

Where Critical Reasoning sits on the GMAT Focus

Critical Reasoning shares the Verbal Reasoning section with Reading Comprehension: 23 questions in 45 minutes, an average of about 1 minute 57 seconds per question. GMAC removed Sentence Correction from the Focus Edition, so every Verbal question now tests reading and reasoning. The section produces a score from 60 to 90, and GMAC weights it equally with Quant and Data Insights in the 205 to 805 total.

Step 1: Read the question first

The question stem tells you the job, and the job decides what you look for in the argument. Classify the stem before you read the argument:

• Weaken: find the choice that makes the conclusion less likely to follow from the evidence.
• Strengthen: find the choice that makes the conclusion more likely to follow.
• Assumption: find the unstated claim that the argument needs.
• Evaluate: find the question whose answer would help you judge the argument.
• Inference: find the claim that the stated facts support.
• Paradox: find the fact that lets two surprising statements both hold.
• Role: name what one sentence does in the argument.

Step 2: Find the conclusion

The conclusion is the claim the author wants you to accept; every other sentence either supports it or sets the scene. Signal words such as therefore, thus, so, and as a result often introduce it, but the conclusion can sit anywhere, including the first sentence. When no signal word appears, use the why test: pick a sentence and ask why you should believe it. If another sentence answers, you have found the conclusion and its evidence.

Restate the conclusion in a few words of your own and keep its exact scope. Words such as some, most, all, will, and could change what a choice must do, so carry them into your restatement.

Step 3: Name the gap

The gap is the distance between what the evidence shows and what the conclusion claims. The author bridges it with an assumption and never states that assumption, and most Critical Reasoning jobs turn on the bridge. Arguments reuse a handful of gaps:

• Cause from correlation: two things happened together, and the author decides that one caused the other.
• Sample to population: evidence about one group supports a claim about everyone.
• Plan to goal: the author expects a plan to work and ignores what could stop it or what it could cost.
• Mismatched comparison: the author compares two groups that differ in more ways than the one that matters.
• Percent versus number: a rising share stands in for a rising count, or the reverse.
• Past to future: the author expects a trend to continue because it has continued so far.

Step 4: Predict, then eliminate

Turn the gap into a prediction that fits the job before you read the choices.

• Weaken: expect a fact that widens the gap, such as another cause of the same result.
• Strengthen: expect a fact that narrows the gap, such as evidence that rules out the other cause.
• Assumption: expect the bridge itself, stated plainly.
• Evaluate: expect a question whose two possible answers would push the argument in opposite directions.
• Inference: expect nothing new. Stay inside the stated facts and prefer the choice that claims the least.
• Paradox: expect a fact that makes both surprising statements true at once.

Then read the choices and eliminate any choice that ignores the conclusion, does the opposite job, or needs facts the argument never gives. When your prediction matches a choice, check that choice once against the conclusion and select it.

Example: the method on an original argument

Example: In April, a city art museum began offering a free audio tour that visitors play on their own phones. From May through October, the average visit lasted 84 minutes, up from 68 minutes in the same months a year earlier. The museum’s director concludes that the audio tour led visitors to stay longer.

The question asks: which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the director’s conclusion?

• (A) The museum charges no admission on the first Sunday of every month.
• (B) In April, the museum also opened a new wing that added 30 percent more gallery space.
• (C) Visitors who used the audio tour rated their visit more highly than visitors who did not.
• (D) Several other museums in the region offer audio tours.
• (E) Visitors who used the audio tour stayed longer, on average, than visitors who did not.

Run the method. The stem asks you to weaken. The conclusion says the audio tour caused longer visits. The evidence shows that visits grew longer after the tour began, and the director compares the same months a year apart, which rules out a seasonal explanation. The gap is cause from correlation: the director assumes that nothing else that lengthens visits changed in the same period. So predict another change since April that would keep visitors in the building longer.

Choice (B) matches the prediction: a new wing with 30 percent more gallery space gives visitors more to see, and it opened the same month as the tour, so it offers another cause of longer visits. Choice (E) does the opposite job; it supports the director. Choice (A) describes a policy with no stated change since April, and choice (D) concerns other museums. Choice (C) speaks to how much visitors liked the visit, not how long they stayed. The answer is (B).

The negation test for assumption questions

Assumption questions ask for the bridge, and the negation test checks a candidate quickly: negate the choice and ask whether the argument survives. If the negated choice breaks the argument, the original choice states an assumption the argument needs. In the museum example, the director assumes that no other change since April would have lengthened visits. Negate it: some other change since April would have lengthened visits. The conclusion no longer follows, so the director’s argument depends on that assumption.

Traps the method blocks

• True but out of scope: a choice can be accurate and on topic yet never touch the link between evidence and conclusion.
• The opposite job: weaken questions can include a strong strengthener, and the reverse. Your prediction tells you which direction you need.
• Word matching: a choice can repeat the argument’s phrases and still say something the argument never needs.
• Extreme wording on inference questions: choices with always, never, or all need more support than a few stated facts usually give.
• A new idea on inference questions: the right answer follows from the facts on the screen, so a choice that adds a cause, a motive, or a prediction goes too far.

Pacing

Verbal averages about 1 minute 57 seconds per question, and Reading Comprehension passages need extra reading time, so aim to finish most Critical Reasoning questions in about 2 minutes. If two choices still compete at 2 minutes 30 seconds, pick the one that bears more directly on the conclusion, bookmark the question, and move on. Question Review & Edit lets you change up to three answers per section if time remains, and GMAC lowers your score for every question you leave unanswered, so never let one argument cost you the last questions in the section.

How to practice the method

• Work your first sets untimed, and write the conclusion and the gap in a few words before you read the choices.
• Grade your prediction as well as your answer. A miss with a correct prediction points to elimination; a miss with a wrong prediction points to reading.
• Keep an error log by cause: wrong job, wrong conclusion, missed gap, or opposite-job trap.
• Add the clock once the written steps feel automatic, then run the steps in your head.

GMAX holds Critical Reasoning questions among its 16,000+ original questions, offers adaptive practice, and shows an explanation after every answer. The free plan gives you five practice questions a day, enough to run this method daily until it becomes a habit.