Fact, Opinion and Argument

This is the most demanding type on the subtest, because it asks you to judge the writing rather than report it. It is also the one where a clear rule does most of the work.

Fact against opinion

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A factual claim is one that could in principle be checked. An opinion is a judgment, a preference or a value.

Notice the right column. Each one rests on the fact beside it and adds a judgment: too long, disappointing, better, a mistake.

The test is verifiability, not truth. "The Earth is 4,000 years old" is a factual claim, and a false one. It is not an opinion, because it is the kind of statement evidence bears on. Getting this backward - treating "false" as "opinion" - is the standard error here.

The markers

Opinions announce themselves.

Evaluative adjectives: best, worst, better, remarkable, disappointing, excessive, unacceptable, ideal.

Obligation words: should, ought, must, needs to.

Hedges of judgment: seems, appears to be, arguably, in my view.

Comparatives without a measure: "more efficient" is factual if efficiency is defined and measurable; "more sensible" is not.

Argument: claim plus support

An argument makes a claim and offers something for it.

The shorter interval should be abandoned. Units that adopted it report no improvement in readiness, and the aircraft spend more days out of service.

Claim: the shorter interval should be abandoned. "Should" marks it as a judgment.

Support: no readiness improvement, more days out of service. Both are factual claims, and both bear on the claim.

That is a well-formed argument. It could still be wrong - the reports might be unrepresentative - but the structure is sound.

Support that does not bear on the claim

The other case, and the one questions are built on.

The shorter interval should be abandoned. It was introduced by the same office that mishandled the fuel contract, and it has never been popular with crews.

The claim is the same. The support is different, and neither piece touches it.

Who introduced a policy does not establish whether the policy works. Nor does whether crews like it. Both statements might be true and the interval might still be the right call.

Ask of each piece of support: if this were true, would it make the claim more likely? If the answer is no, the support is irrelevant however true it is.

Three shapes worth recognizing:

• Attacking the source rather than the claim.
• Popularity offered as evidence of correctness.
• A single case offered as a general rule. One unit's experience does not settle a policy, and a passage that leans on one example is making a weaker argument than it sounds.

Questions this type asks

"Which statement is a fact rather than an opinion?" Apply the verifiability test and scan for evaluative words.

"The author supports the claim by" - name the kind of support: statistics, an example, an appeal to authority, a comparison.

"Which would most weaken the author's argument?" Look for the choice that undermines the support, not one that merely disagrees with the conclusion. A choice saying "the author is wrong" does not weaken anything; a choice saying "the units reporting no improvement were the three that implemented it incorrectly" does.

"The author would most likely agree that" - an inference question wearing different clothes. It must be forced by the passage.

Working one through

Simulator hours are cheaper than flight hours, and the gap has widened as fuel costs have risen. Some argue that simulators should therefore replace a larger share of training. But cost is not the only measure: a simulator cannot reproduce the physical demands of flight, and the skills that decay first in pilots who train mostly in simulators are the ones hardest to recover.

Which is an opinion rather than a factual claim?

(A) Simulator hours are cheaper than flight hours (B) Fuel costs have risen (C) Simulators should replace a larger share of training (D) A simulator cannot reproduce the physical demands of flight

(A), (B) and (D) can all be checked against records or measurements, whether or not you personally can check them.

(C) contains "should", and no amount of evidence settles it without a value judgment about what training is for.

(C) is the answer, and note that the passage itself attributes it to "some" rather than asserting it - the author's own position comes after the "but".

What you can skip

• Formal logic. Named fallacies and syllogisms never appear. The argument questions ask what supports, weakens or is merely asserted.

Where this leads

This is the last of the five question types, and the judgment it asks for - separating an assertion from what backs it - is the same discipline that keeps an inference inside the passage.