An often overlooked part of MCQ practice by students is the Assertion-Reason type questions. Considering that they fetch a cool +5 compared to +3 for normal objectives, getting them right becomes all the more important. This article deals with the strategy students can adopt to maximize their scoring potential in these questions. These type of questions test only the concepts of the students. A reasonably well-prepared student can answer these questions in a matter of a few seconds.
However, many students get these questions wrong due to avoidable reasons. A well defined strategy must be chalked out to attempt these questions.
The First thing you need to do is to see both
statements and check if one of them is incorrect. If you are able
to find an incorrect statement, then you have automatically
cracked the problem.[Only one statement may be wrong in these
questions]. Also research has show that proving something wrong
is much much easier then proving something right. For Maths, you
can randomly substitute a value to check the correctness of the
equation.
Let us say a statement says:
In a cyclic quadrilateral, A,B,C,D are the
angles, then Sin A + Sin B + Sin C + Sin D =0 [Question taken from a recent FITJEE Test Series
Paper]
You can imagine a square which can fit into the
definition of a cyclic quadrilateral such that each of these
angles is 90 degrees and the corresponding value of the equation
is 4.
Thus you do not even have to prove something,
you merely have to disprove something. If
you find that both statements are correct , then you have
eliminated two options. [Please note that
if the substituted values did satisfy the equation, it doesn't
necessarily mean that the equation is correct i.e. You can use
this strategy only to prove something wrong!]
Now you must determine whether one statement is
implying the other one. This is where your subtle concepts come
into picture. After finding out this, you can now indeed be happy
because you have successfully cracked a problem!
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Image Credit : mr_mum1968
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