hi everyone! i recently attended a seminar geared towards ap/honors students. the speaker gave us a few tips and reminders for when you are faced with a true or false question and i thought i would share!
every part of a true statement must be true
look for negatives, qualifiers, absolutes and long strings of statements. for example, if an absolute is present, the statement is most likely false.
if a question has negatives: “cannot” “not” “never” “no” - discard the negative and read what is left - decide whether the remains are true or false. if true, the opposite is usually false.
words like the above negatives are absolutes and require the statement to be true 100% of the time and are usually false.
words like “sometimes”, “often”, “frequently”, “ordinarily” and “generally” typically result in true statements as modest claims often reflect reality.
in long sentences that contain phrases separated by commas, analyze each statement on its own. if any one statement is false, the entire thing is.
most standard true & false tests contain more true than false answers. if you need to guess, answer true. this will give you greater than a 50% chance of being correct.