i love this! i'd like to join!

definitely interested!!

i chose B for question 11 because the "members and institutions of society as a whole" seemed to allude to the first paragraph where they said that because of government policies, native languages largely disappeared. JY's explanation doesn't seem adequate to me, because he seems to assume that for this to be true, every single member of society has to have an impact on whether or not native languages are supported. the way i read it, they were just saying that society as a whole needs to not be against the preservation of native languages.

however, the members and institutions of society as a whole don't necessarily have to cooperate with native communities, they just have to not institute policies that actively work against language preservation. i think i made a leap in my original reasoning but it felt reasonable given that i would have had to make some assumptions to agree with A as well. does anyone have any insight into that? #help

A - incorrect. it doesn't mention a necessary condition anywhere, so this is irrelevant.

B - incorrect. a lot of people seem to feel there's a contradiction between the idea that we don't have historical records but we're inferring things from history. however, there isn't an actual contradiction here. they're basically saying, "although we don't have historical records for the earliest times in history, we can assume what happened back then by studying periods in history that we do have records for." they're finding patterns in the history we know, to draw assumptions about the history we don't know.

C - incorrect. it doesn't make any recommendations about what should be done, so this is irrelevant.

D - incorrect (this was my answer). i chose this just because nothing else seemed right, but i wasn't confident about it. i can see now that there really isn't a causal relationship anywhere in this argument. they are only saying that one thing came before another, not that it caused the other thing. so basically this is also irrelevant.

E - correct. because they said that they reverted back to the original barter system, that totally assumes that it came first, without actually supporting that assumption. without the word "original" this probably wouldn't have been right, but they definitely are assuming what they're trying to prove.

wow! it's crazy how just one word can change the entire argument. it's frustrating to miss those things but i guess i just need to read more closely on some questions. does anyone have any tips for how to read more closely without losing time? i rely on my intuition for all the LR questions, and it's getting me to -3 or -4 most of the time, but i want to close the gap and i feel like the close reading is sometimes my downfall. #help

i struggled with this question and chose E both times. the reason why i chose E was because when reading the stimulus it seemed like it was assuming that jones' theory wasn't just the best theory in the field. if it is the best theory and is best suited to explaining the phenomena in the field, then a resolution or an explanation wouldn't even be needed. E felt like it touched on that point, by saying that a lot of other scientists in his field were trying to answer the same question that jones answered, therefore there would be a lot of data relating to jones theory to choose from, so the corrected data would be closer to jones' theory because it was the best theory and everyone else was trying to get at it. i see now that i can't assume that jones' theory is either correct or incorrect, unless one of the answer choices explicitly states it. E on its own isn't a good choice, i was just filling in the gaps with assumptions i shouldn't have made.

B was my second choice but something just didn't sit right with me about it. but since this is a RRE question, we can generally assume that there is something wrong with the fact that the corrected data is closer to jones' theory. they heavily imply that there's something wrong with what's happening, and we need to figure out what it is. in that case, it makes sense to say that the scientists in the field are simply harder on all the rest of the data than they are on jones' data - i.e. they've come to accept jones' theory and the data that comes along with it, but everyone else gets twice as much scrutiny. because of this, they're more likely to find mistakes and go back to the data from jones' theory.

i'll definitely be starring this question and coming back to it though!

dying over how JY pronounces miguel

another reason why i felt that C was the wrong answer choice was because it takes an example about smoking and some other habits and extrapolates it to all habits. maybe this strategy only works for smoking, drunk driving, and drugs, for example. maybe it doesn't work for breaking any other habits except those three. answer choice C isn't necessary for that to be true, so it isn't necessary for making this argument work either.

i think the wording of D makes it tricky because it makes it sound like it's rare for the soil bacteria to be present. in fact, it can be true that alfalfa only fixes nitrogen when the bacteria is present and simultaneously be true that the bacteria is always present. this is why it's such a big leap to assume that the bacteria isn't present and that that explains the problems with alfalfa growth. as an analogy, assume some answer choice were to say that humans can only survive when there is oxygen for them to breathe. when the LSAT writers are talking about a subject we're unfamiliar with, that can sound like it's some rare thing, but when you talk about something we all know (like breathing) it becomes clear that humans absolutely need oxygen to survive, and that they pretty much always have it, rendering it an irrelevant answer choice.

D is basically very similar to B in that it might as well just be explaining another mechanism by which alfalfa fixes nitrogen, without giving any clue as to why it isn't growing as well year after year.

i changed my answer from D to C in blind review, and i'm still struggling a bit to wrap my head around it, but here's why i'm thinking D is better than C. negating C directly attacks one of the premises, while negating D, without attacking one of the premises, simply removes the support from the argument. the argument does seem to assume that the animals don't use their signals and sounds to refer to concrete objects or abstract ideas, and negating answer choice C pretty much just removes that from consideration. however, the main point of the argument is discussing what constitutes a language and why animals don't have it. so even if you strengthen one of the premises, you still haven't bridged the gap between the premises and the conclusion (that animals don't possess linguistic abilities). assuming C would certainly help one premise of the argument, but D ties the whole argument together and shows how those premises are even relevant in the first place.

me doing this: i bet A is a really good trap answer choice that a lot of people are going to fall for

me once i saw the answer: .......... so anyways

the way my jaw absolutely dropped when i saw i had gotten this one wrong

i'm still confused about 9 because it really did seem to me that if a child is fully capable of describing the situation, they should also be able to describe their thoughts, at least to some degree. what would be our basis for inferring that there would be a difference in the language skills required for each of those tasks?#help

i'm absolutely kicking myself for all the trap answer choices i fell for in this practice test! i was going back and forth between A and E but chose E both times. i felt like A fell along the lines of an assumption question, not a strengthen question, but i guess there's no need for the two to be mutually exclusive. ultimately E is not a good answer choice because who's to say that there's not some big difference between automobile crashes and airplane crashes that make the two irrelevant in evaluating the other? just because they can do it with planes doesn't mean they can do it with cars, and it would require quite a few other assumptions to make that leap. A is a great answer because it supports the idea that they can get rid of actual crashes by further solidifying that there's no need for them besides the safety evaluations. it's definitely necessary for making this a good argument.

i was really torn between B and E but i went with E both times. the reason why E still seems wrong to me is that it seemed to suggest that nobel prizes are always an inaccurate measure of scientists' contributions, which would suggest that even those who DO win a nobel prize may or may not even deserve it. i can see how i would have arrived at E through process of elimination, but E feels too strongly worded to me.

in my mind this question is similar to the other questions that confuse knowledge and truth. someone knowing or not knowing something doesn't have any effect on whether it's actually the truth. in the same way, someone reporting doing something doesn't mean they actually did it. there are a million reasons why someone might choose to report doing something that they actually didn't do. maybe watching themselves work out makes them feel ashamed of how little they exercise, but it doesn't actually motivate them to exercise more. eventually in blind review i got to D through process of elimination, but this one is definitely super tricky.

i originally chose A but then changed my answer to D in blind review. this was due to not reading the prompt closely enough. in my mind, the idea that pulsars can be filled with quarks instead of neutrons IS a new finding, but the idea that a pulsar filled with quarks would have a positive charge is NOT a new finding. the charge of quarks is something that's well established and once you deduce that they could be filled with quarks, figuring out the overall charge of the pulsar wouldn't require any new scientific discoveries.

i knew that B wasn't right but i couldn't decide between C and E so i chose not to change my answer. C seemed like it could also be right because it showed that him continuing to do consulting work didn't mean that he was sane, so it didn't support the prosecution's argument -- but i see now that that's basically strengthening the argument instead of describing the weakness. E is correct because it explains that the evidence given by the prosecution actually could be sufficient to determine that he was sane at the time of the shooting.

i love how the correct answers i missed in this set weren't even the ones i was even mildly considering

today i learned: i completely had the wrong idea of what equivocal means

i originally chose A but now i understand that the hospital executive basically didn't even give a solution. all they said was that since this general problem is affecting us, we should focus on finding a solution to it. they didn't assume one specific strategy would be needed, they just said that the hospital should shift their focus towards that issue. ultimately B doesn't feel quite good to me, but i feel like with process of elimination i could've gotten there if i was confident in eliminating A.

here's what i gathered from this explanation:

the main question in the stimulus is "is the enzyme destruction purely due to heat, or is it something that only a microwave could possibly accomplish?"

according to E, while the extreme heat was caused by a microwave, it could've also been caused by a conventional heat source, if that source had heated the milk to the same heat as the hottest zones created by the microwave. so the idea is that it isn't the microwave itself that kills the enzymes, it is the higher heat created by the microwave that kills the enzymes. if you used a conventional heat source, and heated it up way higher than 50 degrees, it would destroy the enzymes just like the microwave did.

it took me a good while to grasp this but i think that's the gist of it. whether or not it's heat created by a microwave that destroyed the enzymes, it's still heat at the end of the day. that's what E is describing.

i found it important to recognize that the stimulus never said that john could ONLY work on friday as a blacksmith, just that he at least worked on friday as a blacksmith, and could hypothetically have worked every other day as both a blacksmith and an insurance worker. it's kind of a sufficiency/necessity mixup

I spent way longer on this question that I usually do, primarily trying to wrap my brain around C and figure out why it was relevant. After like 2 minutes I decided it was one of the answer choices that's intended to trip you up and waste your time, and I chose D. Then as soon as I got to blind review it suddenly made sense lol

When reading the stimulus, what stood out to me was that they were saying that both the salary and the complexity of tasks must be reduced. To me, it seemed that hypothetically you could reduce one and leave the other one the same and the big problem might still be resolved. For that reason, I chose B because it seemed to show that the two couldn't be uncoupled because one was a cause for the other. It didn't even occur to me to draw the connection between new and inexperienced, although as soon as I saw the correct answer it totally made sense. I almost always go on intuition with these and it gets me there like 95% of the time, but it's always really frustrating when I just totally miss the point!