Note that "John works five days each week" so naturally expanding the set of conditions would no longer force the conclusion to hold by that principle alone. Negating D means that John worked on Sunday or Saturday and thus cannot have worked the 4 days in an insurance company.

The argument doesn't depend on answer choice E since it could still hold that four days are in an insurance company, Fridays he's a blacksmith if he works another day (e.g. Monday) as a blacksmith.

This question gives light that necessary assumption types of questions must have their answer choice destroy the argument completely in terms of logic, while choice E only weakens the logic at best.

Misinterpreted this type of question as a resolve paradox question as to why the ivy evolved from the plants to fend against humans but not animals.

Thought answer choice D was too ambiguous in meaning "the number of new cars sold by Regis Motors (in all previous years)."

Without the context of banks borrowing money (from somewhere like the government) themselves and the sentence providing the concept of banks lending at a loss, I was thrown for a huge loop in the first sentence!

Knowing now how the argument and question is designed, I find it well put that the way to take care of the "large company" condition for the total lending decrease is to make use of the fact above by negating it.

This question exploited the fact that people would take the first question as context and dismiss it.

Sometimes the key to the answer is in plain sight.

For this question, I assumed that "way over budget" meant the budget of the agency is surpassed and they're in debt (assuming that the premise was stating "overall" budget vs "project" budget). The wording is ambiguous and in my opinion not a very good question, which is why I'm thankful that this section is experimental.

I'm also taking my first exam in January having studied ~2-3 months so far and would love to have a study partner. If you're still available, feel free to send me a text at 3096600309

@JRamirez I agree; the improper English feels so off!

"as many people consume caffeine as consume any one of the other addictive psychoactive substances"

sounds like the wording should be

"at least as many people consume caffeine as consume any one of the other addictive psychoactive substances"

for the "greater than/equal to" relationship. The original only sounds like an "equal to" relationship while the latter is still nearly as confusing (especially if English isn't your strong suit...).

A step implied but left out is to ignore the "No/None/Not both/Cannot/etc." indicator when negating and writing the statements.

@Claw @kaleighh.04 The pair of statements are logically equivalent since they're contrapositives of the other (flip the subjects and negate both will get the other statement).

I struggled with this section. One thing that helps to think about for which part is sufficient and which necessary is to give counterexamples that are the negation of each clause.

For example, on question 2: "Businesses do the environmentally “right” thing only if doing so makes good business sense." We have 2 clauses:

Do ... right thing ...

Makes good business sense ...

To give a negation example, let's ask "What if doing so makes only ok business sense? Can businesses do the environmentally right thing then?" No, it is explicitly stated that businesses do the right thing *only* when doing so makes "good" business sense. There is a restriction.

On the other hand, let's ask "If businesses do an environmentally 'neutral' thing (or a 'wrong' thing), does doing so have to mean that action does not make good business sense?" No, we're not restricted given the information we have. The action could be environmentally neutral and make a lot of good business sense.

So we know that the clause "Good business sense..." is the necessary part (which doesn't rely on the action being environmentally "right").

I got question 3 wrong, but reinterpreting the sentence as "Only written-down oral myths have survived" helps since the wording is deceptive.

Another way to look at the question is to imagine the set relationships. Written down myths are the superset, because surviving myths must be in that set (since there are no surviving myths that were not written).

By that principle, "written down" is necessary for the myth's "survive" which is exactly what the sentence is saying. i.e. "survived" is sufficient to say that the myth was "written down".

For this type of question, I was also confused about whether we were comparing species of corn together rather than Sorghum v. Other species. My understanding is to try thinking of another example: "Circles are more round than flat."

Step 1: What are we comparing? Circles v. flatness?

No, circles are merely the object we do the comparison on (Same role "Some cultivars of corn..." plays).

We compare roundness v. flatness, the way that sorghum is compared in proximity than "...most other cultivars...".

Step 2: What are we comparing? Whichever trait circles are more closely related to, same as proximity to "Some cultivars...".

I've found that the way the sentence is structured is confusing. Rephrasing it as "Sorghum is much more closely related to some cultivars of corn than to most other cultivars of corn." can help see a bit better.

Step 3: What is the winner? Roundness/Sorghum. Hopefully this helps you as well!

I got this question correct but it took me long to figure out. I think the habit of referring back to the referents in the clauses help to hammer home what information the author precisely brings up in a clearer way since it can remind you while you're reading.