Skill building support/contrast (TC) GREGMAT

GRE Verbal Problem Solving
1

The civilization’s greatest fear was _________ from its indentured servants; measures were thus enacted to maintain their _________. However, these did not always work and revolts did take place.

Can anybody explain to me whether the second blank is support or contrast?? I think it is supported because of the word ‘THUS’. But my answer is wrong

2

You’re supposed to solve blank 2 first. You can only use the “thus” for support once you’ve filled in blank 1, but how do you fill that in?

3

i solved the 1st blank as support for the semicolon( ; ) then went to 2nd blank

4

What was your guess for the first blank?

5

I didn’t guess any word…just building the skill to recognize whether a blank is support or contrast…in the website, there is a section for this

6

It’s not that simple. You need to recognise the support/contrast that lets you guess the blank specifically. It’s not possible to guess the blank just from supporting the idea of “measures were thus enacted to maintain their i)--------”, so the support with the semicolon would not be correct here.

7

can u explain it more?? am i not supposed to find out the relevant support/contrast words or phrase??

8

You have to find the support/contrast thing that tells you specifically how to get the blank, not just any support/contrast

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9

Modern war is waged _________, not violently, and a nation _________ its rivals’ goods in favor of homegrown products, even if _________, is a government’s favorite weapon.

Is blank 1 being supported or contrasted and by what word, phrase or punctuation.

10

b1 is contrasted because of not after it…correct me if i am wrong @ganesh

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11

Thanks Riddh

12

is into a support word?

13

provide an example

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14

I still couldn’t figure this out even after reading the explanations above. Let me know if you think I should start a new thread.

Spoiler alert! I’ll be revealing the answer below.

Here’s my approach. I chose to solve for Blank 2 first, because it’s hard to connect Blank 1 to its subsequent idea.

  1. Support/contrast word: “however” [I got this correct]
  2. Support or contrast?: contrast
  3. Idea/sub-idea: “these [measures enacted] did not always work and revolts did take place”
  4. Connotation of idea/sub-idea: negative
  5. Words that change/retain logic: “not”
  6. Change or retain?: change [from positive to negative; “these did always work” to “these did not always work”, which keeps the idea consistently negative]
  7. Connotation of blank: positive
  8. Semantic guess: peace, obedience

However, I got Blank 1 incorrect. Here’s my initial reasoning:

  1. Support/contrast word: “was”
  2. Support or contrast?: support
  3. Idea/sub-idea: “Civilization’s greatest fear”
  4. Connotation of idea/sub-idea: negative
  5. Words that change/retain logic:
  6. Change or retain?:
  7. Connotation of blank: negative
  8. Semantic guess: revolt

But when I knew I got it wrong, I tried to back-solve it from the answer, but I found some logic flaws.

  1. Support/contrast word: “;” [this is the correct answer]
  2. Support or contrast?: support
  3. Idea/sub-idea: “measures were thus enacted to maintain their [peace, obedience]”
  4. Connotation of idea/sub-idea: positive
  5. Words that change/retain logic:
  6. Change or retain?:
  7. Connotation of blank: positive [this doesn’t make sense then, because “civilization’s greatest fear [which is negative] was [positive] is logically wrong.]
  8. Semantic guess:

I tried to resolve this by switching perspective of which group (servants or civilization) perceives revolt or peace to be positive or negative. Again, for Blank 2:

  1. Support/contrast word: “however”
  2. Support or contrast?: contrast
  3. Idea/sub-idea: “these [measures enacted] did not always work and revolts did take place”
  4. Connotation of idea/sub-idea: negative positive [because one could argue that from the perspective of indentured servants, rebellion is a good thing]
  5. Words that change/retain logic: “not”
  6. Change or retain?: change [from positive negative to negative positive; “these did always work” to “these did not always work”, which keeps the idea consistently negative positive]
  7. Connotation of blank: positive negative
  8. Semantic guess: peace, obedience

So now the connotation of Blank 2 is negative, let’s move on to Blank 1:

  1. Support/contrast word: “;”
  2. Support or contrast?: support
  3. Idea/sub-idea: “measures were thus enacted to maintain their [peace, obedience]”
  4. Connotation of idea/sub-idea: positive negative [this idea is no longer positive]
  5. Words that change/retain logic:
  6. Change or retain?:
  7. Connotation of blank: positive negative [“civilization’s greatest fear [which is negative] was [positive negative] is now consistent, but…]
  8. Semantic guess: revolt [But now “revolt” is negative when it was positive]

I guess “civilization’s greatest fear [which is negative] was [positive negative]" is from the perspective of the civilization, so you can do a perspective shift? But I think I’m over-complicating things.

Can you let me know where I got wrong?

15

How did you guess this specifically? This is the key to answering this one. “Fear” only gives you negative connotation, but somehow you arrived at “revolt” which is actually a correct semantic guess. Can you try and reverse engineer your thought process and figure out how you thought of that?

16

Here’s a simplification:

I am scared that my friend will do X; to lessen my fear, I took measures to stop my friend from doing X. But my measures did not work and my friend did revolt.

Here’s my reasoning:

  1. X is an action done by my friend.
  2. The only action that’s referenced in the entire passage is my friend’s revolt in the last sentence.
  3. Hence X must be related to revolt.

Another line of reasoning is:

  1. My measure did not work and my friend revolted.
  2. What’s my measure trying to achieve? My measure is meant to stop my friend from revolting.
  3. Why did I implement the measure in the first place? Because I’m scared my friend will revolt.

Re semantics, I think I got it? Or am I skipping/missing some steps?

Re connotations, I’m still feeling uncertain why “;” is the right support punctuation. Here’s my best guess:

Let:
Idea 1 = I am scared that my friend will do X
Idea 2 = to lessen my fear, I took my measures to stop my friend from revolting [replacing doing X since I solved it already]
Idea 3 = But my measures did not work and my friend did revolt.

I think “;” will work if

  1. Idea 3 has a positive connotation (opposite of what I inferred in my previous post; this requires a perspective shift too)
  2. Idea 2 has a negative connotation now because of the “But” contrast
  3. Idea 1 has a negative connotation now because of the “;” support
  4. This makes Blank 1 negative too.

But here’s the confusion: I just said Idea 3 is positive, which makes the idea of revolting positive, but Blank 1, which is supposed to be revolt, is now negative.

17

Sure, but you’re not really using support/contrast here, you’re using logic, which is fine, but it’s not the math strategy.

18

Because you need the “;” to fill the word in with “revolt” because it indicates that the LHS and the RHS support each other, and the RHS has “revolt”

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19

Ah okay, I think I mistakenly believed that the math strategy is only used to discern connotation, and not semantics. It seems so obvious now that you’ve pointed it out, thanks!

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