The most common type of question to appear on a conflicting viewpoints passage is called a new claim question. This kind of question introduces a new kind of claim or hypothesis and asks you to figure out which of the people or hypotheses in the passage would agree or disagree with it. These questions are primarily reading-based and will require you to read each paragraph in the passage. This means that these questions will usually take the longest amount of time to complete.
One of the most important skills you can acquire to help you solve these questions more quickly and effectively is understanding the claim before you go looking for the answer. This seems like simple advice, but people often read the claim once, sort of understand it, and go looking for the answer hoping that what they find in the passage will help the question make more sense. While this may work for some students, it takes way too much time and isn’t very reliable.
A good strategy to make sure you understand the claim is to first read the whole question, then read the claim again. This ensures that you understand the question and makes sure that you get another fresh look at exactly what you will be comparing to the paragraphs in the passage. If you don’t understand the claim after reading it again, read it one or two more times to make sure you really get it before moving to the passage!
Take special note of the way the question wants you to compare the claim to the passage. You will have cases where you are asked to find the people or hypotheses that agree, disagree, would be supported by, or would be disproved by the new claim presented in the question.
After understanding the new claim and moving to the passage, the goal is to read through each of the paragraphs without looking back at the question to read the new claim. That is why it is so important to understand it before looking away from the question! At this point, you will want to spend a very short amount of time on each paragraph within the passage. To confidently spend minimal time comparing the paragraphs, you need to be able to locate the current claims quickly.
The current claim for each paragraph is usually found in the first or last sentence of the paragraph. If it is not, you can typically find it quickly by scanning for similar keywords that are in the new claim. After you find the current claim for a paragraph, you simply need to ask, “How does this compare to the new claim I just read?” After doing this for each paragraph, you should have gathered all the information you need to solve the question.
As long as you spend a decent amount of effort trying to understand the new claim of the question, and then locate the current claims within the passage quickly, you should be able to solve these problems quickly and methodically! Don’t be afraid of these questions just because they are lengthy. Remember these steps, and you should have an easier time with them.