#HELP Weakening vs. Strengthening

tyglecias18

I am writing this to make sure I have it right, if not please correct me. When it comes to weakening questions, you are supposed to attack the premise. For strengthening, you are supposed to attack the support. Right? I was going through one of the lessons on strengthening and got confused from the lesson on weakening questions.

canihazJD

You never attack a premise. Always accept them as true. You are trying to make the conclusion less (or for strengthening, more) likely to follow from the premises, by affecting the relationship between the two. Remember that it is a comparative selection, meaning the correct answer can also be a very bad weaker (or strengthener... or any other question type that gives you a comparative stem) and still be 100% the correct answer.

tyglecias18

Thank you for clearing that up!

WinningHere

@canihazJD I have not seen before anyone say that a weaken or strengthen question has a comparative selection or stem? What is comparative in that? Thanks

canihazJD

@WinningHere Its literally in the stem. Which of the following if true MOST weakens, strengthens, etc. You have to evaluate each answer choice in relation to the others. The most ridiculous answer you've ever heard of will be correct if the others are wholesale irrelevant because the one will be comparatively better, filling the requirements of the stem,

Occurs in RRE, MSS, parallel to name some more. Just because we memorize constructs that WE assign to the material doesn't mean we get to ignore what they actually give us. Remember question types (weaken, strengthen, etc. and their accompanying strategies) are OUR constructs... the test writers are under no such constraints.

While you will often be able to get the answer without using this concept, I promise, just like our intuitive attacks, conditional logic or just about every other tool we use on this test, there are times the test will punish you for not having it on your tool belt so to speak.

Quick rant: This is often why you have people arguing against correct answers... failure to grasp the mechanics of the question. But they can argue all they want... its still the right answer. Dave Killoran has a great response to this... something along the lines of, "You cant argue with the test. You can either change the way you think or you can get this question wrong." < /rant >

In an MSS question for example, you are not being asked to find a strongly supported answer but the most strongly supported one... which could very well be a very weakly supported answer. Most level 5 "most" stem questions will play on this. A very good and significantly under-addressed aspect of the test to be aware of.

Cheers.