How to Answer Verbal Reasoning Questions
Like in numerical tests where you need to be familiar with basic concepts and techniques to work out the correct solution, the same applies to verbal assessments. In order to succeed in these competence tests you need to know how to answer questions that constitute true, false, can’t say statements.
You need to develop specific strategy and apply skilled techniques to make logical conclusions of written information. Below we will summarise few things that you have to keep in mind and will give you some basic know-how behind answering such questions.
You can also try our free verbal reasoning practice test to assess your understanding of the below concepts. To start with consider the passage and questions below.
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Practice Questions
- One may argue that legislative changes can result in lower concentrations of pollutants.
- It is estimated that there are one million people exposed to outdoor air pollution on annual bases.
- Last year there were one million of premature deaths as a result of urban air pollution.
- Urban climates are different in many ways from those of their rural surroundings.
Meaning of true
The first statement is good example to demonstrate answering verbal reasoning questions where passage supports the statement. From the first sentence you can logically infer that the level of pollution may depend upon anti-pollution legislation. The question asks you to interpret whether legislative changes can result in lower concentration of pollutants. Since you can determine that level of pollution may depend upon anti-pollution legislation you may conclude that indeed legislative changes can result in lower concentration of pollutants.
Meaning of false
Now let’s review an example that demonstrates how to go about answering verbal reasoning questions when statement contradicts the text. To illustrate this, consider the second question and note that the passage opposes the claim. Paragraph refers to estimated figure of more than one million whereas statement refers to only one million. Therefore, you can conclude that the statement must be false. This example is only simple demonstration how to work out questions in verbal reasoning tests; however, you may come across variety of situations or scenarios with different types of contradictions. Moreover, remember that if one part of the question is true whereas the other part is false then the final inference must be false.
Meaning of can’t say
The below paragraph will look at example how to evaluate statements in verbal reasoning tests if there is not enough information in the text to support the claim. For the following consider the third statement which states that ‘last year there were one million premature deaths as a result of urban air pollution’. From the passage we know that urban air pollution is connected to up to one million premature deaths however, we do not know whether the number of premature deaths was one million last year. Therefore, the correct answer is can’t say.
As far as fourth question is concerned, based on your knowledge you may well argue that urban climates are indeed different in many ways from rural ones. However, from the information given in the text we cannot determine the above as it does not provide any references about rural climates - hence can’t tell must be the correct choice.
You can review more sample passages in section on verbal aptitude practice questions where you can see number of different examples with full explanations justifying the answers. In your tests you may come across variety of questions that are likely to be trickier than the above however systematic preparation will help you to answer these quickly and accurately.