Necessary Assumption-Bridging and Blocking

MindyKale

Is there a way to identify whether the question requires a bridging or blocking assumption from the question stem or stimulus?
i.e. is there a way to definitely prephrase an answer choice for NA questions in a foolproof way?

604wannabealawyer

The Assumption negation technique but only use for contenders. otherwise, you are wasting a lot of time.

Alex

Every argument has so many possible assumptions that it makes it hard to have a formulaic and foolproof way to prephrase them.
I’ve seen questions where there’s an obvious gap where a bridging answer seemed likely, and the correct answer was a defender. You can absolutely still go in with a good prephrase based on any glaring gaps, however.

Often I find the bigger and more obvious the gap in the stim, the more likely it is to be a bridging answer. Stronger arguments tend to be the ones with defender answers.

I will say, on recent tests, I’ve seen a less bridging answers and more defenders...

Cant Get Right

Oh man, this question triggers so many different things for me. It’s a really important question. I don’t have time to go into it all atm, but if you haven’t heard back from me on this by tomorrow afternoon, tag me to remind me to come back and answer this!

MindyKale

@"Cant Get Right" Reminding...> @"Cant Get Right" said:

Oh man, this question triggers so many different things for me. It’s a really important question. I don’t have time to go into it all atm, but if you haven’t heard back from me on this by tomorrow afternoon, tag me to remind me to come back and answer this!

Reminding..

Shrilaraune

Did @"Cant Get Right" ever get back to you on this? I'd love an answer too!

Cant Get Right

Lol, sorry guys! So I was away for a little bit and had like 150 notifications when I came back and this just kinda got lost in the mix! Thanks for the reminder @Shrilaraune !

Anyway!

Okay, so here's the question:

@MindyKale said:
is there a way to definitely prephrase an answer choice for NA questions in a foolproof way?

The answer to this question is absolutely there is! In fact, I can often pre-phrase dozens of them for NA questions. Therein lies the problem though. We aren't interested in an answer. What we really want is The Answer. The very possibility of many different right answers removes any real possibility of reliably coming up with The Answer.

Pre-phrasing is something I've come more and more to dislike. Even when it works it's terrible, and there's rarely any way to know when it's going to work and when it's not. And when it doesn't work you're really going to be in bad shape. If you do happen to pre-phrase The Answer, you would have recognized it when you saw it anyway. This is best case scenario, and it really doesn't benefit you.

Now let's say you pre-phrase a correct answer that happens not to be The Answer. Now you're in really bad shape. Worse still, the LSAT writers probably have a pretty good idea of what the likely pre-phrases are, and that is highly exploitable information. You are tangled in their web before you've even read the first AC.

One situation which I think is really revealing of a much better alternative to pre-phrasing is the Flaw question with a valid looking stimulus. Y'all know the ones I'm talking about? I used to get a lot of anxiety over these. Then I realized that no matter how clever the writers may have been here in constructing the stimulus, the format of the test forces them to give it away. Lying somewhere in the AC's is a correct explanation of the flaw. So instead of letting the stimulus inform my understanding of the AC's, I let the AC's inform my understanding of the stimulus! When approached this way, the test will frequently reveal its hand.

So the same process drives much of my approach to other question types and other situations as well. My work in the stimulus is to understand the argument, not to answer the question. Answering the question happens in the AC's. I think this process is vitally important for NA, Strengthen, Weaken, MBT, MSS, RRE, PSA, Flaw, and often SA. And I think it's significantly better than the alternatives for most other question types as well.

So give this a try and see if you can get the test to do some of your heavy lifting for you. As with any strategic approach, it is only as effective as your fundamentals, but I think at almost all levels above about a 150, this will maximize potential.

Hope this helps, and happy to elaborate more if any clarification is needed!

Shrilaraune

@"Cant Get Right" Hey there! Thanks for getting back to us! I'd love it if you could elaborate on this process! Maybe with an example questions?
Thank you!

Wesley-B

@"Cant Get Right" Thank you for posting this. Super helpful 2 months later.