I'm confused about MBT questions. I've noticed that the majority of questions I get wrong on LR are MBT, NA, SA, and Flaw/Weaken. So i tried to refresh on MBT, and realized I don't have a straight strategy for any of the MBT questions.
every question I've answered, has an answer choice were something had to be assumed. and I'm confused because we were told not to assume.
so how do we infer the correct answer choices from the given argument.
I'm also stuck on NA.
I've been treating NA as MBT, and before I used to do the negation test, it was too time consuming and it would just in general confuse me especially when I'm timed.
I've been scoring -11 to -13 on LR and keep getting -5 to -3 on the blind review of these sections.
Frequently missing the NA, Flaw (level 4 to 5) and MBT question types in blind review.
I'm a little confused and frustrated and don't know what to do at this point, I'm registered for the october test too. any advice?
4 comments
The way you approach a MBT is effectively the same as NA, SA, etc. More often than not, I find there isn't really a key to getting a specific question type right. And if you're getting -11 to -13 on full sections, you probably aren't understanding the passage/question as well as you think you do.
Before you look at the question or the answers, you should have a full grasp of the argument (or often for MBT stuff, what the premises are leading to since there is no argument). You should have an argument prepared against the conclusion, and once you read the question, a prediction about what the answer should say. The prediction might not always fit, but this is to prime you to develop an expectation from the answers rather than looking for the answers to fill in the gaps.
I honestly don't find it effective to think of specific questions as weaknesses. If you develop better intuitiveness about the argument, the skill translates across types. And also, if you're willing, don't be too attached to the October test. If you give yourself the time to get really accurate, you could raise your ceiling considerably. Good luck!
Thank you!
Well for MBT don't use any sort of negation test. I visually represent each individual fact, for example if the stim is a set of 4 sentences that are all conditional statements, some chaining together and others not, write them out in conditional logic A>>>>>B form, and then look for an answer that is forced by the stimulus. All firefighters are public servants, and all public servants work very hard. Now a Must be True, answer would be something as simple as, 'Nobody who doesn't work very hard is a firefighter.' (/Work hard>>>>>/firefighter, Firefighter>>>>work hard). these are simplistic, but as far as the 'assumptions' you mentioned, you just take everything in the stimulus as absolute fact, unquestionable, and the answers are what is up for debate. Now, many MBT questions are not conditional, but simple sets of facts. For sets of facts, look for facts that share a common term, or a similar idea, and connect them together to try to squeeze out an inference if there are no immediately obvious answers. Often, if you find two facts with a shared idea or term, and chain them together, you can draw a defensible inference, which is often the credited answer. The main thing to get here conceptually is MBT doesn't warrant a negation test because MBT questions are not an argument, they're simply sets of facts that can be used to draw inferences when combined. Now for necessary assumptions, that is where you use the negation test, isolate the argument into premises and conclusion, either visually or mentally, and then run the negation test in that gap between premise and conclusion. For example, "Student reviews of Mr. White have been slowly, but steadily decreasing from 4.5 stars to 2.5 stars over the past two semesters. Therefore, Mr. White's teaching ability has been regressing over the past two semesters.' identify how the premise supports the conclusion, here student reviews are used as a proxy for teaching ability. So a necessary assumption would be something as simple as 'student reviews are indicative of teaching ability in teachers', if we negate to 'student reviews are not indicative of teaching ability in teachers', the whole argument falls apart, as the student reviews are useless as a proxy. Remember to use the negation test on the answer options and use your prephrase to effectively narrow down the answers to 2-3 options, which you then can run the negation test on. Obviously, real LSAT problems are going to be much more convoluted than that, but it would do you a lot of good simply to isolate the premises, look at the premise that most directly supports the conclusion, see how and by what means does the premise support the conclusion, or why would the author think the premises support the conclusion, and run the negation test in that space. Often, the correct answer on NA questions is weaker and more timidly worded than you would expect, so don't reject answers for being modest or obvious. Hope that helps.
thank you!