Weakening Qs - Any Tips?

SassyLearnedSquid

I have gone through all of the lessons and drills for weakening questions and find myself increasingly humbled every single time. I think "oh man! This will be the one! I feel great!" and get a 0/5. Strengthening questions? Easy peasy. My brain clicks it into place every time. I don't understand how I'm struggling between the two.

What are your tips for weakening questions? What/who did you sacrifice your soul to?

The weakening questions are my weakest section. I am aware of the humor in this situation and I fear, my friends, that I am not laughing.

hendricks

Hi,

Some things to consider:

1) This video helped me a lot!

2) When I go back to analyze my missed questions, 90% of the time I did not properly identify how the premises and the conclusion are working together. Particularly for conclusions that are conditional, there is a very specific reasoning path to the right answer, and it depends on correct structural analysis.

3) Sometimes it helps me to imagine myself as the lawyer supporting or defending the argument in the stimulus. With each answer choice, I ask "Do I want the judge to believe this?", or "Would this make me look good?" Silly, but it helps!

4) I try to prephrase everything in LR, but I also cut myself some slack on Strengthen/Weaken, because the correct answer can come out of nowhere.

canihazJD

Many people forget that its a comparative selection. You don't need a good answer... just the least worst. You can also have several answers that weaken and answers that would be correct if the correct answer weren't there. You can have 5 incredibly bad answers... one will still be correct. Keep that in mind and combine with a solid question type strategy, e.g., make the conclusion less likely to follow from the premise, and a solid standardized LR attack (e.g., translate, articulate, prephrase, and hunt). Also stuff like your common flaws, scientific method, causal reasoning and conditional logic should be automatic.