Yeah pretty much this is a s/n confusion.

R -> LP

U <s> LP

LP <s> EC

-------------

EC <s> R and U

it only makes sense if the first two premises changed (the first becomes a some, or the second becomes and all and both are flipped.)

Anyways, for flaw questions, just look for the answer choice that leads you to negate the conclusion. C says that there is a possibility that the program and ec kids are not urban and not rural. That would destroy the argument.

B is wrong because it uses the word better. If you see the word better, you could think of it as better than.. what? If no alternative is listed, that means that it is a comparison between the thing and without the thing. B says sometimes it is better to openly discuss than not to openly discuss. We don't know anything about not openly discussing, so we can't draw a comparison about it.

D is correct because we do know that open discussion can diminish its appeal, and we know that when debated the topic is gaining popularity. In both those cases, they are alternatives to "greater acceptance of truth", so it is MSS that discussion and debate will not always (do not necessarily) lead to a greater acceptance of truth.

C is wrong because determining who is at fault isnt going to do anything about getting us to say that cameras DO increase traffic safety. Even if we do say that side-impacts are decreasing from the stimulus, and people who run reds, perpetrators of the side-impacts, are therefore less, we can't use the same premises from the stimulus to reach a different conclusion.

For example, say that because dogs are pets, dogs are nice. I cant just weaken your argument by saying that because dogs are pets, they are not nice.

D is just much cleaner, we do know that there are less side-impacts, but D introduces the idea that side-impacts are more dangerous. If there are less of the dangerous accidents, then the cameras DO increase traffic safety. D is correct.

I didn't read this one clearly. I should read the answer choices more clear. I chose C, and it is wrong because it says that the argument assumes that because something hasnt been proved to be true, that therefore it must be false. The argument does say that they haven't proved that the toys cause injuries, but they arent saying that the toys are not harming kids.

D is the correct answer because it is attacking the competitors who don't listen to their own advice.

This one tripped me up because i was so hellbent on finding my prephrased answer that wasn't there.

In a PAI disagree, i should be looking for a point of disagreement between two speakers (duh). The Dean is basically just saying nuh-uh so we can't really get any information about what he is against. But we do see the professor saying that they think it should be an anthropology class. We do see a point of disagreement about whether the class is listed properly, but that isnt part of the ACs.

So the next step is to look into the support. Professor believes that the way the books are examined is determinant in the type of class it will be. The Dean just focuses on the readings, so the mismatch is that the two disagree on whether or not the approach to the readings should determine the type of class.

Answer choice C is correct

This question tripped me up because I misplaced what the conclusion was.

The last line is the conclusion, and it says that the film's distributors didn't do anything that could reduce interest. Why? Because they didn't show advanced screenings. So we have to assume that advanced screenings would reduce interest in the film.

So this question tripped me up but I get it now. If only I got it the first time lol...

Flawed Parallel Reasoning question, so we gotta identify what is going on in the stim

Artist never wins, even though they should (under a given criteria)

Other people experience the same thing

Therefore, winners are actually the opposite of what the artist expects to be winners under the criteria

So we are looking for, at a bare minimum, an answer choice that runs directly against what the speaker believes to be true of his own works.

That eliminates A because we aren't saying there is some other criterion, we already know that the criterion SHOULD be opposite to the speaker.

That eliminates B since that is going with the speaker's belief (bad food, win, so the contest is about bad food)

C doesn't mention anything about the speaker

D is the correct one. The student has a good proposal that should be taken seriously, but isn't. Others have the same experience. Concludes that criteria is opposite (that the bad proposals are taken seriously).

I found it helpful to think about "what is the conclusion trying to say."

We know that the conclusion is trying to fill in the blank about something related to people's desires. What do we know about those desires?

1. It is not true that the advertisers create the desires

2. People have these desires, and buy things under the belief that the purchase will satisfy the desire

3. The advertisers attempt to induce this desire

So most likely, the correct answer will say something along the lines of "are made by the consumer and are only exploited by the advertisers."

And the correct answer is D.

The question stem, although phrased weirdly, is a flaw question.

The approach for flawed questions is to find the conclusion, ask why we believe that conclusion, find the gap, and then go hunting. For last resort, look for an answer choice that, if true, would weaken (i.e. go against the conclusion)

The conclusion: some of his students must have heard the lecture from the beginning.

Why? Because any of his students who heard it from the beginning would have thought it fascinating, and some did.

diagrammed:

heard from the beginning -> fascinating

(some of his students) fascinating

-----------------------------------------

(some of his students) heard from the beginning

So we know from this that there is some sufficient/necessary mix-up, just a matter of how they phrased it in the answer choices.

Now, honestly, I don't understand why D is correct, but I know A, B, C, and E don't fit in with that suff/necc confusion, but as far as my understanding goes, this is one of those questions where you just either POE it or you get lucky, or you take the L.

My understanding of the written explanation is that there is a Harry Potter spell called reductio ad absurdum, which I can basically apply to questions with suff/necc confusion (maybe in other flaw questions?).

• IF I am given answer choices that give possible scenarios

• THEN I take the stimulus to be true. (i.e. the conclusion and premise are true in that some of his students heard the lecture from the beginning and also found it fascinating)

• THEN I go to the answer choice and take the variables from the stimulus that I know to be true and plug them into the answer choice

• FINALLY, if they contradict (i.e. the conclusion that I assumed to be true and the conclusion that I created when I assumed the conclusion was true and plugged it into the answer choice)

• Then that answer choice is correct.

Note that I will be asking a tutor for this question, so follow if you want to keep yourself updated!

EDIT:!!!

So I just asked Emily about this question, and she was amazing! Kind of walking me through my own process.

So we know that this is a flaw question, so that means that one of the answer choices, if true, would weaken the stimulus (weaken the conclusion).

So step 1 is to identify the conclusion, we know that the conclusion is "some of my students must have heard it from the beginning"

The next step is, yeah, seeing the sufficient/necessary confusion. BUT WE DONT SEE THE TYPICAL REPHRASED ANSWERS HERE SO

The next step is to POE and see which one of the answer choices, if true, would lead us to weaken the conclusion (maybe saying that "none of the students must have heard it from the beginning.")

So we take D to be true

IF heard from beginning AND fascinating, then NOT PBS

We know that PB thinks that some students were at the beginning and that some found it interesting, so then we can conclude with D that NOT PBS, but that contradicts PBs conclusion and therefore D is correct

I panic-clicked C because I couldn't see how this was circular reasoning. But now I do.

The argument concludes that the products are the best. Why? Because:

1. Their products are the most expensive. IMO READ CONCESSIONS LIKE STATEMENTS OF FACTS. "Although" means not only that the company knows their product's price may be high, but also that they acknowledge it is the most expensive.

2. They are using the idea that price equates quality. And since the company's product is the most expensive, it is the best. Also, since other companies are not as expensive, they are worse.

Reading the argument like this, we see here that the company thinks their product is the best because it is the most expensive, and they reason that because they are the most expensive, therefore it is the best.

This one threw me off because there was no argument. But looking back with a clear head, it makes sense.

Basically, what we are trying to support is the view that "this is fair and should blah blah blah." What is fair and blah blah blah? The view that the more famous the musician, the greater the pleasure of his or her audience.

Now that we know what we are trying to strengthen, I find it hard to pre-phrase an answer here. So I go POE down the ACs.

A: A is correct, if I make the assumption that the talent of musicians elicits greater audience pleasure. So far, I like A, but if there's something better, I'll switch.

B: Incorrect, we don't care whether the finest pianists are unknown to the public. If anything, this might weaken the view by saying that if famous musicians aren't known, then how could they elicit greater pleasure?

C: I think this is a trap. I'd have to assume that the larger the audience, the more pleasure you elicit. But I feel like that's more of a leap. It is possible that a famous musician just grabs larger audiences because of his fame, even though nobody likes his music. And I think in comparison to A, it is much more reasonable to assume that talent elicits pleasure instead of the size of the audience elicits pleasure.

D: Says nothing about pleasure.

E: Like B, if anything, might weaken. The fact that the most famous musicians are difficult to appreciate goes against the idea that the more famous a musician is, the more pleasure audiences feel. How could one gain pleasure while finding it difficult to appreciate?

For me, this question was rough because it was content-heavy. Another thing was that I panicked when I realized that I was stumped on a question like this, and then I bombed the rest of the PT.

NA question, so look for the conclusion, identify the gap, and then go hunt, and do the negation test as a last resort/double check

The conclusion: the facts show otherwise (the policies of the government officials HAVE produced serious environmental degradation)

Why? Since the provision was repealed, hundreds of miles of vital streams have been buried.

Here, we should really just lean back and zoom out. If there is no clear connection between the premise and the conclusion (i.e. the fact that streams are buried and therefore there is serious degradation), then we have to make the necessary assumption that burying vital streams is serious environmental degradation.

We find something similar in answer choice E. If the ban had not been repealed, less mining waste would have found its way into streams. If true, then we can say that repealing the policy caused it. Kind of like a correlation, if the cause leads to the effect, then you would expect that without the cause, you wouldn't see the effect.

E negated, if the ban had not been repealed, EQUAL OR MORE mining waste would have found its way into streams, then we would not be able to say that the policies created the environmental degradation, since there would be environmental degradation with and without the policy.

Hey, yk, what, why not? I'm not an (official) tutor, but I've been consistently hitting 170s plus. You can check out my profile and see if you wanna reach out. Currently helping out 3 other people on 7sage, and they're all improving, but I would gladly help you help me go over some things before June.

Well, I think the most important part of this question is whether anything can lead to a valid logical chain. Recalling from the core curriculum lessons, and as many people have explained below, we have an "all" into a "some", which cannot lead us to a valid claim.

Hence, the only valid inferences we can make are if we isolate the two sentences and infer from them individually. We know that if some readers are writers, that is a biconditional "some" arrow, meaning that some writers are also readers.

In Lawgic:

Readers <-s-> Writers = Writers <-s-> Readers

That would match with answer choice C.

Another valid inference we could make is that "No non-readers are law students." Remember the 4 groups of conditional indicators: "no" is a group 4 negate-necessary indicator. So this translates in Lawgic as:

/Reader -> /Law Student

(and if you chose to make "non-readers" your necessary condition, which is also the contrapositive of the translation above)

Law student -> Reader

Though this isn't an answer choice in your example above, I think it is important that when you do conditional logic, it's important to try to grasp all the possible correct inferences that the question may ask. Especially if you face an MSS question in the future.

Try this one!

"All library users are readers, and some readers like writing. Some aliens are library users."

Which one of the following follows logically from the above?

A. Some aliens like writing

B. All aliens are readers

C. No aliens are readers

D. Some aliens like reading

E. Some readers are aliens

I think that everyone has dips! I'm scoring in the 175+ range, but even on some days I get a 170. In times like that, yes, it sucks, but you just have to remember to really use the LSAT skills that you've learned throughout your time studying and try not to just depend on your own knowledge. I found that to help me!

@ArianaCrumpe95 I can answer this one! For example, consider the following:

The arguments below are vulnerable from the criticism that:

"All dogs can bark. My favorite celebrity sometimes barks when he is excited, therefore he must be a dog."

Another example:

"If you are a dog, you can bark. But my favorite celebrity is not a dog, therefore they must not be able to bark."

In both examples, the pattern is a flaw called confusing sufficiency for necessity. In the first example we are affirming the necessary condition, when the only valid thing we can do is deny the necessary. The second example is denying the sufficient condition, but that doesn't allow us to draw any valid conclusions.

If these topics are going over your head, I recommend going over the core curriculum. A lot of patterns will come to you through practice and exposure, but in order to recognize the patterns on the LSAT, you must first understand the logic of the LSAT. You got this!

@listening A wrong-answer journal is like a record of a question that you got wrong, and then writing why you got it wrong, and what to improve on. I don't necessarily write out my own wrong-answer journal now, but I do look over all my wrong answers and make a note on why I got it wrong, what the pattern of the correct and incorrect answer was, and the overall pattern of the question.

I found that after breaking through 160, what becomes of the utmost importance are patterns. I feel like I got up to the 160s with like intuition, general knowledge, or like after the core curriculum. Breaking 170 required me to come up with patterns and specific approaches to questions, and being able to identify patterns in the stimuli which allowed me to prephrase the general direction of the question. I just think of it as the LSAT and logic can only have so many types of questions to throw at you, so once you identify the patterns, even though they change the variables, the structure stays the same.

Another thing that I had to learn the hard way was to be humble and take the LSAT beatings lol. I was devastated after scoring way below my PTs on my LSAT attempt, and I really had to take it from scratch and learn all over again. Write out your logic chains, do your low-res summaries, do your wrong answer journal. Everything that sounds cliche, works. IMO, be the robot that LSAT wants you to be, at least logically.

And finally, I'd highly suggest NOT studying alone. I went through undergrad with a lassez-faire attitude and it really bit me in the behind studying for the LSAT. Staying on top of your studying, as well as maybe tutoring/studying with other people to really solidify the concepts you have.

Good luck! Keep grinding you got this

I use the light bulb first, just as a first resort, and then I use the video explanation if I still don't understand the lightbulb tip.

Hey! I'm interested! Im in Vancouver too!

Hi! IMO RC is exactly hard because there aren't set "rules" to apply, but there are some strategies!

Personally, I feel like having a low-res and physically writing them down on paper helps! It keeps your brain free to think rather than memorize or remember the passage's structure.

One approach I like to do, from the 7sage CC, is the L.I.P approach

L: Low-res summary. For every paragraph, I write down a phrase of about 3-5 words just to encapsulate what that paragraph is saying. Is it introducing a topic, problem or debate? Is it spotlighting a specific person or event? Is it offering a phenomenon? All these questions would start to paint the picture of what kind of passage you got and, therefore, what kind of questions you might see.

I: Identify perspectives. It is VERY important that you highlight anything that shows the author's perspective. 9/10 times, the author's perspective will be the conclusion, and every passage has an MP question. Not only will identifying the author's perspective help you with the MP question, but it can also guide your understanding of other inference questions as well.

You also need to distinguish the author's perspectives from others' (the OPs). Whether it's a different highlight colour or just a note, identifying everyone's arguments in the passage is absolutely vital.

P: Predict. Predict what the entire passage is about, predict what the next paragraph might be about, predict what kind of questions could be waiting for you post-passage and remember the specifics before you move on. This step is more of a tool to help you stay engaged with the passage and the questions. You don't have to have like hundreds of predictions, but at least have one so that your brain stays engaged and alert.

Finally, after you've done the L.I.P for each paragraph, go over your low-res once more, and really hone in your understanding of the author's argument before diving into the questions. I usually spend about 8 minutes per passage, with at least 4 minutes on the stimulus. On harder questions, I might spend 5 minutes on the passage and 3 minutes on the questions, but I feel like it is more important to get a firm grasp of the stem before moving into the questions, rather than racing through the passage. On easier questions, I still force myself to spend at least 3 minutes on the passage to make sure I have a full understanding and don't have to go back to re-read anything.

Hopefully this helps! I'm always open to DMs here if you want to do a passage together to just see how I approach passages! I currently do have a study buddy, and I've been helping them with RC and timing strategies, so lmk if that's something that might be of interest!

@JaniyahSharp I don't mind! In my applications, there were many opportunities to answer questions. I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'connect,' since in my applications, I used a different aspect for each question. Like for one question, I brought up how I represented my family's restaurant in a legal dispute with the landlord, and another question I used how I learned to crochet during COVID.

I like to focus on the stimulus' conclusion and premises and the relationship between the two. The first thing I do after reading the question stem is to hunt for the conclusion. My inner dialogue does something like this:

"What is the author trying to tell me here?"

[For example, let's say the author conclusion is "all dogs are nice"]

"Why is the author saying this?"

[For example, the author says "all dogs have fur, therefore all dogs are nice]

"So we know that he uses all dogs have fur to support all dogs are nice, so what's the gap? What doesn't exactly line up here?"

"It must be that the author is assuming that if you have fur you are nice, let's look for an answer choice that says something similar"

Just being intentional with your steps and drilling a lot will help you tackle higher level questions.

Drills, drills, drills. The saying "practice makes perfect" is king. Keep doing drills, timed or untimed, to really get in the habit of following a structure or plan when tackling questions.

Second, also blind review journaling. Going over each wrong answer and saying "why did I get this question wrong, and why is the right answer correct?" will force you to really be attentive to the CC.

Finally, be intentional. Intentional as in, don't do a drill because you have a certain quota you have to meet by the end of day. I've noticed that when I really put my mind to it, I get a lot more done studying 4 hours in a day intentionally vs. studying 8 hours a day for the sake of studying.

Don't worry! We all started like that. And I'm not going to lie, it gets harder more often than easier from here. BUT, that rush of dopamine that you get when you get a 5-star question right? Or when you get a drill 100% correct with good timing? That feeling of success is intoxicating, and with hard-word and dedication, you can reach it! I hope you can!

Keep at it!