Flaw Questions

lsatstudier

Hi,

I was wondering if someone could help clarify something for me. When you see this particular question stem, "reasoning is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that it presumes," do you think of trying to find an assumption or just to identify the flaw. Any suggestions for eliminating answer choices for these flaw questions that are more subtle?

Thank you!

Zachary_P

I recommend the two step approach discussed in the curriculum. You basically ask yourself two questions: 1) Is it descriptively accurate? 2) Does it describe the flaw in this argument? If either of these fail, then you can eliminate it as an AC. In my experience there will usually be 2-3 AC's that do not describe anything going on in the stimulus. Now, these can be subtle as the LSAT dresses it up with language similar to the stimulus and vague referential phrasing, but at its core it is just nowhere to be found. A review of the grammar lessons can be helpful to parse through tough referential phrasings and other grammatical elements the writers use to increase the difficulty.

Another way they make a question difficult is by saying something like "the argument fails to address..." Keep in mind that the argument fails to address literally almost everything; it's a three sentence argument. Make sure that the piece of information missing is relevant to the flaw of the argument. Eliminating AC's can be tougher on these questions because more will probably be descriptively accurate (in that they fail to address something not in the stimulus). We just have to remember our task: identify the main flaw in the argument.

Another resource I found extremely helpful is the list of 19 common argument flaws found here:

https://7sage.com/lesson/19-common-argument-flaws/

Memorize these! Almost every flaw question on the LSAT (and many many other questions) rely on these flaws over and over again. You'll hopefully reach a point where you've done scores of each flaw and can recognize what the flaw is before you even reach the AC's. This is how you improve your time on the easier questions to devote more time to the curve breakers.