My best recommendation is to try and break it down into your own words, but also keep an eye out for conditional indicators because sometimes that helps you get a better idea of what the structure is.

Though, if it is something you really arent comfortable with or it eats up a lot of time, I would recommend simply skipping those daunting conditional logic questions that you come across on your test. Try and get through everything else first that youre more comfortable with and if you have time at the end, return to them later and do the best you can. Good luck!

Im in a somewhat similar situation and truthfully, it can be quite a big jump to force when we're only a week out. Something I have been focusing on is simply trying to control the most common mistakes I make. RC is also one of my lower sections and I've had similar scores too. I'd avoid trying to create a whole new approach at this time and instead focus on understanding the fundamental big picture ideas, and play to your strengths. Practicing reading slower for the 'big picture' questions cuz this can lead to getting those MP, passage purpose, etc questions right that are very likely to show up as a question anyway. Reading to understand the structure, main point, and use of evidence, while maybe only highlighting structural cues (however, first, but, although, for example) is good to help you try and read actively instead of trying to memorize everything. Its okay to go back to the passage on a question for a refresher, but if you read for the structure and know exactly where to look, it can save lots of time and improve accuracy imo. Definitely try and figure out where youre making some of your most common errors and focus on mitigating 1-2 reasonable ones to try and steal those extra points that you have the knowledge for already, and continue to prioritize timed practice + review to address these errors. Good luck!!

I know this question is marked with the "Link Assumption" tag but did anyone else also think this was more-so reasoning by analogy? This was a tricky question and I get a little tripped up trying to understand what the missing assumption actually is.

But the way I see it, the author seems to base their conclusion that the reproduction will not be very accurate, on the support that the original was not a very accurate portrait. So I presumed it would be inferable that the author is relying on some similarity between Kostman's ability to create the original painting, and the ability to reproduce Kostman's portrait?

A gap that came into my mind was that maybe whoever is reproducing the painting is very very talented at reproducing paintings, and so the difference in the two artists' skills could have been a relevant difference the argument didn't consider?

Maybe its a bit of both "link assumption" and "analogy" reasoning, but this is just the reasoning path that seems to have stuck with me the most after going over this question again. Did anyone else have a similar mode of thinking? Did it help you narrow down to the correct AC at all? Thanks!

Is anyone able to break down how the missing link it "What if the e-mail does NOT suggest that people do something illegal?" I think i am starting to understand what makes A correct and how it allows us to reach the conclusion, but I am not sure how this missing link is something we were meant to predict/anticipate going into the answer choices??

@J.Y. Ping It seems to work perfectly now, thank you!

Is it a good rule of thumb to always avoid flaw answer choices that concede the truth of the flaw?

As a general rule for sufficient assumption questions, should we avoid picking answer choices that might describe the ideas in the premises/conclusion in words/phrases that arent precisely how the ideas were phrased in the argument? For example, I picked AC B, mainly because i think i confused myself with my diagramming, but I also thought “an act...which the person doing it is genuinely responsible” was pretty synonymous with an act thats “freely performed”, and since I thought it mightve been closest to the gap in the argument, I selected it. I do realize now that an act that someone is “genuinely responsible” for can be much much different than something “freely performed” (as the argument describes it), but I guess I assumed they were synonymous enough that it wasnt a completely unsupported/unrelated idea.

In any case, maybe this is a sign for me to rely less on diagramming lol, I managed to pick up the gap relatively easily and was between B and C, just didnt opt for C because I clearly made an error with my diagramming ://

@J.Y. Ping I just tried on safari and it doesnt seem to work on there either. It actually seems like on safari a lot less features work for me which is weird. Maybe its just a device issue, but I think this bug just started happening recently so im not sure whats caused it

@J.Y. Ping That seems to almost work hahaha!

@J.Y. Ping The problem still seems to be happening, im not sure why. I am on a pretty small older Macbook so it could have something to do with it being a bit outdated, not too sure though!

@J.Y. Ping Yeah I believe it loads below what I can see but I cant scroll down to see it fully. Will try logging in/out and restarting and will give you an update

@J.Y. Ping Im using Google chrome. Everything worked fine until recently so im not sure what its from. Heres the links to the loom's i recorded, hope this helps! https://www.loom.com/share/9870311ddafa429da87a64bcd736b3c8?sid=8393e09e-e032-40ab-8ecc-989b8802349a and https://www.loom.com/share/aa6be8df626a45c5a3046d695023e45b?sid=50de78f4-3726-4c04-b75f-8535bc16a071

Could anyone share with me how they would diagram answer choice D? I got a little thrown off by the "any" and then the "if", both of which are common sufficient condition indicators.

I think if you feel nearly 100% confident in the answer you picked and you need to save time, then a quick skim over the other choices and moving on could be beneficial. Otherwise, I'd simply recommend more practice and to not worry about timing. I'm in a similar situation where timing is a big thing holding me back, but continuing to practice under both timed and untimed conditions has helped ensure my fundamentals are on point. Over time, everything will become a lot more intuitive and you will see progress! Also, I find that getting more comfortable with process of elimination and getting rid of answers that appear to be bad answer choices can be helpful too.

Honestly this sometimes happens to me too and it can be difficult on some of those 4-5 star questions to differentiate premises and context. Something that helps me though is to first keep an eye out for the conclusion and find that, which is usually apparent by some transition word. Then, I'd simply ask myself "why should i believe this conclusion" and refer back to the argument and find the statements that would support the conclusion and just run with those as my premises. Sometimes its easier to find this when words like "because", "since", "after all" are used, but other times its just trying to dissect little details and really take my time figuring out the role of each sentence.

@AgnesAlojado Thank you!

@N I think it relies on us reasonably interpreting that there would be no other way for the heat to be fed into the generator. What other way could we expect the heat to transfer into the generator?

@WesleyNix The difference here is that the conclusion is an embedded conditional (Feed the heat -> reduce bills -> Save money). JY usually recommends 'kicking up into the domain' in situations like this where basically the "feed the heat -> reduce bills" portion of the conditional statement would become part of the premises, and the lone conclusion would be that "money will be saved". Also with C, the statement is not conditional. I know the term "sufficient" is used so that could lead you to believe its referring to a sufficient condition, but its actually used as its dictionary term to explain that the amount saved would be good enough (same meaning as "sufficient") to cover the purchasing/installing cost.

Its good that you are being cautious of the sufficiency/necessity confusion because it comes up a lot. But in this case with the argument and answer choice C, this flaw does not occur. I hope this helps!

@MyaPapaya For the most part, id say so. Between the premises and the conclusion is where you're going to find the gap/assumptions in the argument that'll often lead you to the necessary assumption. But its still important to understand the context and its relationship to the rest of the argument to make sure you dont overlook any important details.

@LevinKin7sageLSATDESTROYER Same!

Anyone have tips/tricks for pointing out trap answer choices? I can usually eliminate some choices with relative ease, but I find it difficult on NA questions to point out the ones that are strengtheners or "pretend to strengthen"

Would the negation test be something that could also be used on "Must be True" questions? Since on both NA and MBT questions we have to find a missing premise or assumption that must be true given the argument?