Match flaws | Video lesson

0:01- [Instructor] This question asks us the flawed reasoning in the critic's argument is most similar to that in which one of the following. That means we're dealing with a match the flaws question. We'll be presented with the flawed argument in the stimulus, and then the answer will exhibit a very similar type flaw.

0:19Now, I wanna give you some helpful ways to approach the second question but if you wanna try it yourself first, that's totally fine too. So go ahead and pause your video now if you wanna try the question yourself before I explain it, or just wait three seconds without pausing if you don't wanna try it yourself.

0:37Alright, it often helps for match the flaw questions if you write the argument down into its conclusion and support. So as we read the stimulus together, I want you to try to locate what the critic's opinion is and why the critic thinks that that opinion is true.

0:55So the critic says the contemporary novel is incapable of making important new contributions. The evidence is clear, contemporary psychological novels have been failures. Contemporary action novels lack any social significance, and contemporary romance novels are stale and formulaic.

1:17Now note the language of the first sentence. The critic uses very strong language here. The contemporary novel is incapable of making important new contributions. Great, that's an excellent candidate for the conclusion especially given that the next sentence explicitly introduces the evidence to us.

1:37So, I like to mark conclusions like this. Now we ask ourselves why, why does the arguer believe that the contemporary novel absolutely can't make important new contributions? Well, it's because contemporary psychological novels have been failures, and contemporary action novels lack any social significance.

2:02And contemporary romance novels have these bad qualities listed here. So a great way to identify an argument's flaw is to look for the gap between the advents and the conclusion. The conclusion only addresses the contemporary novel in general. Anything that falls into the category of contemporary novel the critic says can't make important contributions.

2:27But this opinion is based on just a couple specific examples of contemporary novels, like action novels and romance novels. To put it into something visual for you, let's say that this circle represents all of the contemporary novels in the world. And now here, these little circles, would be the action novels and these would be the psychological novels and these would be the romance novels.

2:54But you might be able to see, they don't necessarily make up all of the contemporary novels in existence. There could be all of these other kinds of contemporary novels as well, that we just don't know anything about, maybe they're huge successes. Further more, just because these listed types of novels have failed, doesn't mean that they need to keep failing.

3:15So there are two of the problems that this argument exhibits. So now we're gonna look at the choices, and evaluate them. And we're gonna work through the choices until we find the argument that exhibits a similar flaw to the one we just uncovered. Choice A, since no government has been able to regulate either employment or inflation very closely, it's impossible for any government to improve its nation's economy.

3:45This argument has the same kind of strong conclusion we see in the passage. It's impossible for any government to improve its nation's economy, and this is based on the fact that so far no government has been able to regulate either specifically employment or inflation.

4:04So this choice is assuming that there's no other way to improve a nation's economy, just like the passage was assuming that there's no other kind of contemporary novel than what was listed. So this is a match, and what a relief because on test day we would pick it and move right along to the next question.

4:22For completion sake though, let's look at why the other choices are wrong. Choice B, because there has been substantial progress in recent years in making machines more efficient, it's only a matter of time before we invent a perpetual motion machine. Okay, this argument is flawed but not in the same way that the stimulus is flawed.

4:44This choice makes a big jump in saying that because we've made quite a lot of progress in making machines more efficient recently, it's inevitable that we're going to invent a perpetual motion machine. That's a big shift in scope from what has been accomplished to what will be accomplished, so it's flawed but that's not what we were looking for.

5:06Choice C, the essayist Macaulay was as widely read in his time as Dickens, but has been neglected since. Thus writers who are popular today are likely to be forgotten in the future. This argument has a type of conclusion that doesn't work for what we're looking for.

5:23It says that writers who are popular today are likely to be forgotten in the future. So not only is the language not as strong as the language of the conclusion in the passage, but it's dealing with what will happen in the future. Whereas the stimulus is about what contemporary novels are incapable of right now.

5:44Moving to choice D, this politician has not made any proposals for dealing with the problem of unemployment and thus must not think the problem is important. We can eliminate this argument because the shift is between not making proposals about a problem and not thinking that the problem is important.

6:04Certainly it's a flaw but again, it's not the same kind of flaw as what we see in the passage. The passage eliminates something general because of two specific examples, we don't see that pattern happening in choice D. Finally choice E, in international commerce the corporations that are best suited for success are large and multinational.

6:28Thus small corporations can not compete at the international level. This argument has a great conclusion since it's stating that small corporations can't compete at the international level, but the evidence doesn't match what we're looking for. We don't see for example, two instances in which small corporations can compete and then a conclusion that says okay, they just can't ever compete.

6:53What we see here is a flaw of assuming that just because large and multinational corporations are best suited, that means that small corporations can't compete at all, and that's different from what we see in the passage. So to recap, even though the topics in the choices will usually be different than the topic in the match the flaw passage, it doesn't matter.

7:15Your job is to find the argument that reasons in a flawed way and in a way that's similar to how the argument in the passage reasons. And a good way to do that is to break down the argument into its conclusion and support, and look for why the argument isn't sound.

7:31So have a strong description of that flaw in your mind so that you don't get distracted by all of the other flawed arguments in the wrong choices.