Trouble with weakening and Strengthening questions.

lsatstudy18

Hi everyone,

I'm having a very difficult time finding the answer to these sort of questions. I completely understand the Premises and the conclusion. I'm able to break down the prompt very well.

My issue comes in when I start reading the answer choices and nothing seems to click. Normally I'll look at the answer choices and the ones that are wrong I can pick out easily. But, for these I just see words on a page that just don't make sense to me.

How do I engage these questions?

P.S. I've watched the webinar and it still doesn't fix my problem, I feel like it's very broad and very little explanation now how to view these in a different light. Again, that's just my opinion.

keets993

Hmm...I think perhaps your issue comes from not understanding the structure. The first step, as you've stated, is being able to correctly identify the premise and conclusion. However, you have to be able to go beyond that and see how the premise supports the argument. It's the arrow that JY draws between the premise and conclusion. When you do these questions, do you try to think up of different gaps or assumptions that the argument is making? Do you take a moment yourself, to try to come up with ways that it can be weakened or strengthened before diving into the answer choices? The point of engaging with the stimulus and analyzing the structure (also known as anticipating) is not necessarily to correctly guess where the gap is but to be thinking in a critical way when you get to the answer choices. That way you're able to analyze what effect the answer choices are having on the argument. Remember, for weaken questions you're trying to lessen the likelihood that the conclusion is true. Alternatively, for strengthen questions you're trying to increase the likelihood that the conclusion is true.

Let me know if you have any other questions, hope that helps!