Sufficient Assumption- Looking for advice

Andrew_Neiman

Hey 7 Sage community,

I have been trying to improve my timing strategies in LR overall but one thing I noticed I've been doing during timed section runs is skipping the sufficient assumption questions that show up deep in the section that often incorporate a few conditional statements/ formal logic. Usually during BR, I get them correct but I noticed during timed pressure my nerves kick in when I realize I'll have to diagram it all and I have other questions to do. (Same usually applies for certain par/par-flaw)

I've been working on getting more comfortable with cookie cutter argument structures and diagramming but I was wondering what else I could do to build more confidence.
I was also curious what practical steps I could take to get to the level of not having to diagram at all.
Do top scorers just see it all in their heads? It gets really hard for me to keep track of everything in terms of comprehension until I can see the structure laid out in lawgic.

I can't seem to figure out a way to keep these questions under 2 minutes and its been frustrating. I'd love to turn these into a strength as I like how they can be reliable points.

I would appreciate any insight.

Thank you!!

danielbrowning208

In a perfect world, you never want to be diagramming SA questions. Sure, every once in a while there will be a convoluted or lengthy question you may want to jot down. But I rarely if ever diagram for SA. While you read, try to think of the information in the stimulus as pieces of a puzzle, where you organize the information into support and conclusion. On SA questions, there will always be a piece missing in the argument (usually two key ideas are unconnected or there is a big assumption).

Diagramming works to identify this missing piece, but it takes valuable time. This is time you don't usually have. Instead of memorizing cookie cutter arguments, I would suggest spending time working on how you read the stimulus and can piece together the argument the author makes. Put the author's argument into your own words so you can understand what's going on. In short, you want to be able to work with the specific argument you see on the page; generalizing to a cookie cutter argument doesn't usually help on SA questions. For example, identifying an argument as causal doesn't tell you what's missing.

RonaldRo

I find that Mike Kim's method is especially helpful for sufficient assumption questions because of how it makes you think in terms of "takes for granted" or "fails to consider."

First, make sure you clearly understand the conclusion, support, and relationship between the two, so that you can state it in terms of "Y because of X." Once you have found that relationship, pause and force yourself to put it in terms of "takes for granted" or "fails to consider"---either "takes for granted that just because she's a good student, she studies hard," or alternatively, "fails to consider that other zoo animals could be taller than him, even though he's the tallest giraffe." Whichever is more intuitive for you for the relevant question stem.

If you've done all that really intentionally, plugging the gap between conclusion and support should often be quite straightforward: if what you've identified is a "takes for granted" issue, a sufficient assumption would turn what was taken for granted into something that's absolutely true. (For "Takes for granted that just because she's a good student, she studies hard," a suff. assumption would be, "If you're a good student, you study hard.") If it's a "fails to consider" issue, a sufficient assumption would eliminate alternative explanations. (A sufficient assumption that would fix "Fails to consider that other zoo animals could be taller than him, even though he's the tallest giraffe," would be something like, "No other zoo animals could be taller than the tallest giraffe.")

EveryCookCanGovern

SAs are nice because the the test writers have 'shown their cards' so to speak in what they are looking for in a credited answer. Because in asking for a sufficient assumption, it is revealed that there is a blatant insufficiency somewhere in the argument - something that is missing that if added will let the conclusion follow from the premises. So you get a very powerful advantage, even when after a first read through of the stimulus you don't see the gap, you know that somewhere it's in there, and you can skip it and come back to it on round 2 to take a crack at it again. The correct answer will always be something so powerful as to force the truth of the conclusion: (correct answer) --> (truth of the conclusion follows from the premises)