Self-study
Hello , I am new to lsat studying . I'm am terribly struggling with to find the gap of why the premises doesn't lead to the conclusion. It's hard to come up with a bunch of reasons as to why it doesn't lead to the conclusion . If I do come up with a gap it doesn't match the answer choices.
Anybody else struggling? What are some ways I can come up with different reasons why the premises doesn't lead to the conclusion faster and more accurate?
Also , is finding the missing gap useful for only strengthen , weaken , flaw , sufficient assumptions etc?
1
3 comments
I personally think that "find the gap" is overrated. Don't get me wrong, it's great for sufficient assumption, and works reasonable well for many flaw questions, but I don't like it for strengthen or weaken questions. The reason is that it is simply not true that there is one and only one thing that will strengthen or weaken any given argument. There are a lot of things that can strengthen or weaken a given argument. So, coming up with some "gap" in the argument is not necessarily what the question is going to be looking for. In fact, some hard LR questions are designed to prey upon your preconceived biases about what strengthens or weakens the argument.
Anyway, I teach a completely different approach to strengthening and weakening to my students that doesn't depend on finding a gap at all.
If you are interested in learning more, I offere tutoring services. I'm a former logic professor, and my current rates are $130/hr. I'm also current working on a pilot program for an alternative kind of tutoring. For more info, check out my post in the tutoring marketplace: https://7sage.com/discussion/59135/a-different-kind-of-tutoring-from-a-different-kind-of-tutor-ph-d-in-philosophy-and-logic-dollar40-hr
Hey there,
Recognition like this takes time. I've been on my LSAT journey for around 1.5 years, and it took me a while to gain that speed when analyzing premises and conclusions. I once heard on an LSAT podcast that to train your mind for that mode, you need to keep getting into the habit of making those conclusions in your head. Before you even look at the answer choices, I try to predict the answer just by reading the stimuli right off the bat. Any guess is better than no guess. Once you get into the habit of coming up with something that makes sense to you, given the premises and conclusions, I can almost guarantee you will slowly start to see your predictions in the answer choices.
The second thing I will add is that I also struggled with it at first. Take away the clock, don't focus on how long it takes you to get a question right. Speed comes with accuracy and time. I would literally sit there during drill and take an hour to do just a few problems because I was making myself sit until I could understand the question inside and out, especially why the correct answer choice was the correct one.
Any shift in description or labels are indications of a jump. For example, a stimulus could say
"Dogs are the perfect pets. Therefore, dogs are the best pets."
While perfect and best may seem VERY similar, they ultimately are not. There is a gap here that you need to fill. This gap would need to connect perfect to best.
A sufficient assumption that would fill this gap is "All perfect things are the best things"
So, whenever you notice that there is even the slightest tweak of wording or description in the conclusion, that would indicate that there is a gap.