Logical Reasoning. I keep going for the bait/trap answers

Mike.Jiang

Hello everyone,

I'm having trouble with the LR sections. I can't seem to get a proper hold of when to diagram or when not to, and it usually ends with me taking the trap answers.

I've walked through the 7sage LR guides, but I am not quite sure how to tackle these problems effectively. Does 7sage or does anyone know a drill or another place where I could look.

Thanks in advance.

Katherine

Hi Mike,

I definitely know where you're coming from. I'm at a stage in my studying where many of my wrong answers were narrowed down to 2 choices, and then I went for the trap. I'm coming to 7Sage after having used another LSAT prep company. In general I wasn't pleased with them, but I did like how they characterized some typical wrong answer types.

Often the LSAT writers try to trick you with: 1) Opposites- for a "weaken" question they'll throw in an answer choice that actually strengthens, 2) Overlooked possibilities- for "flaw" questions they don't account for an alternative, 3) Cause v. correlation- if two things are just related, a wrong answer choice might say that one causes the other, 4) Strong language- watch out for answer choices that have "always," "never," "all," "none"...it's rare that there's enough information in the stimulus to make a grand conclusion...5) Irrelevant- many wrong answer choices bring in outside information that has nothing to do with the question stem or stimulus

There are a lot more. Basically, I think it helps to try to categorize WHY the wrong choice/trap that you picked is wrong. That way you know if there's a specific pattern of trap you're falling for.

I certainly need to keep working on this myself.

Mike.Jiang

Hey,

That's exactly my problem. I feel as if I can always get it down to two, but from there I'm just gambling with a 50/50.

Thanks for the advice on the strong language, I feel as if that has been part of the problem.

Peter

There's something I started doing for precisely those LR questions where I'm gambling between two answer choices and I think it has helped me develop an intuition. I write down these questions---stimulus, question stem, both answer choices---by hand as many as three to five times over (parallel questions included). The idea is to ingrain into me the habit of recognizing the key pivot words to the point I can unconsciously conclude an answer choice is wrong without having to consciously understand why. Unfortunately, it's more difficult to conclude a choice is right.