Struggling to make the connection between the premises and the conclusion. Please help!

QB1Kenobi

So, I can identify the conclusion and the support for the argument, but I'm having a hard time understanding the relationship between them. For some of the questions I can intuit the answer, even if the connection isn't clear, but for other questions, namely the ones that have a lot of background information, or more than one premise, or has two arguments, for example

city official: ....

police chief: ....

Once I identify the argument, I get stuck trying to make sense of what I'm looking at, and then I fail to understand the answer choices well enough to eliminate the wrong ones or recognize the right one. What usually happens is I get down to two answers, either the right one and the wrong one, or two wrong ones. For the latter, I cross out the right answer thinking it's wrong, and for the former, I choose the wrong answer even though the right one looks right but I don't understand why it's right.

I do go in and look at why I was wrong, and it usually makes sense, but it's like it's not sticking, and it's really frustrating to keep making the same mistake. For very question I get wrong on an LR section, at least one of them is from the assumption family.

I'm using Khan Academy to do drills, and for strengthen/weaken questions, I can't get less than 2 wrong, or even get the all right at the advanced level.

I really want to master this test. I'm aiming for a 165 at least, 170 at most, but I can't defeat these harder questions.

Can someone please help?

HamburgerNotHelper

First, depending on how long you've been studying it's important to be patient with yourself. Connections can take a while to make, and it can make you feel like you keep having to relearn the same lessons over and over.

Now, as for the relationship between premises and conclusions, what exactly do you have trouble understanding? Is it certain premises where you just don't understand what they're saying? Or do you not understand how the author intends for the premise to help their conclusion? Could you also give an example of an LR question that you find difficult? If you can, just post the Test, Section, and Question numbers for the question.

cladefeed

I struggled with this for a long time and still do. I've certainly not "mastered" this test, but I'll share what helped me break from 150s to 160s. Before, when I'd go over explanations by JY, PowerScore, LSATHacks, etc, I'd often react "how'd they get that from the stimulus?"

That's because, while I was good at identifying which sentences contained the conclusion and premises, I wasn't picking up on the key features of the argument. So the transition was going from "this sentence is the conclusion; these are the premises," for example, to:
- The premises make a comparison between X and Y
- The premises are descriptive, but the conclusion makes a prescriptive claim
- The conclusion introduces a completely new concept that's not mentioned in the premises

Pointing out these things helps me anticipate what needs to be in the correct answer.

QB1Kenobi

@HamburgerNotHelper Thank you for the encouragement! I've been studying off an on for a few months and it does feel like I'm having to relearn the same lessons lol.

Now, as for the relationship between premises and conclusions, what exactly do you have trouble understanding? Is it certain premises where you just don't understand what they're saying? Or do you not understand how the author intends for the premise to help their conclusion?

I think it's that I don't understand why the author is saying what they are saying in support of the argument. So for example, in PrepTest 79, Sec 1, number 10 is a strengthen question that I got wrong. A, B, and E were the obviously wrong answers to me. I got stuck between C and D and chose D, but C is the correct answer. When I looked over the explanation, it makes total sense that D is wrong because, even though it mentions atmospheric heating, it doesn't directly address the conclusion that more and snow and ice will make the atmosphere cooler.

As I read the explanation, I realized that I didn't make the connection between the conclusion and why ocean water and land were mentioned. I didn't pick up on the fact that the author is comparing ice and snow to land and ocean water, so I crossed out C because I thought "well the argument doesn't say anything about ocean water and land heating the atmosphere. It just says that more ice and snow will reflect more sunlight back into space, making the atmosphere cooler."

I was more focused on the atmosphere than what the comparison between snow and ice and ocean water and land meant for the atmosphere lol.

I've done 5 strengthen questions and have gotten 1 right. the others I got wrong for the exact same reason. One of them I actually did choose the right answer, which was A, but then I overthought it because I got there by process of elimination, not because I fully understood the connection lol. That one is PrepTest 78, section 3, number 21. I scratched out A and chose D, even though I knew why D was wrong. How much iron is absorbed by the body is irrelevant to the argument lol.

Not making the connection is causing me to have trouble paraphrasing or predicting what the right answer is on strengthen questions because I don't know what I'm supposed to be supporting.

I hope that makes sense.

QB1Kenobi

@cladefeed said:
I struggled with this for a long time and still do. I've certainly not "mastered" this test, but I'll share what helped me break from 150s to 160s. Before, when I'd go over explanations by JY, PowerScore, LSATHacks, etc, I'd often react "how'd they get that from the stimulus?"

That's because, while I was good at identifying which sentences contained the conclusion and premises, I wasn't picking up on the key features of the argument. So the transition was going from "this sentence is the conclusion; these are the premises," for example, to:
- The premises make a comparison between X and Y
- The premises are descriptive, but the conclusion makes a prescriptive claim
- The conclusion introduces a completely new concept that's not mentioned in the premises

Pointing out these things helps me anticipate what needs to be in the correct answer.

THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I AM STRUGGLING WITH!!!

Whenever I read the explanations I'm like "HOW DID THEY GET ALL OF THAT FROM THESE SENTENCES???"

I can pick out the argument, but I suck at analyzing it! I'll sit here for 40 minutes trying to make sense of what I just read, or going back and forth from the stimulus to the answer choices, but all the answers sound right and wrong lol.

And I can analyze the heck out of stuff in the real world! I'm a psychology major, all we did was analyze everything! but every time I pull out my LSAT prep, my analytical skills decide to go on sabbatical!

Thank you SOO much!

HamburgerNotHelper

@ahunt9618 Thank you for the reply! Strengthen and weaken questions can be especially tricky because sometimes its difficult to see how something supports an argument and why that support may not be good.

To help explain this, I'll go through my thought process as I read 79.1.10 to show you how I understand each sentence of the argument.

When I start reading, I note that the first premise is describing a phenomenon with a verifiable effect: More sunlight reflection means cooler global atmosphere.
Then, the next sentence tells me that some types of terrain increase this effect compared to others: Snow and ice reflect more than oceans and non-snow land.
Next, I know we're at the conclusion mainly because of the signal "Therefore." The conclusion is now telling me: Therefore, more snow and ice coverage means a greater likelihood of a cooler atmosphere.

Okay, so the argument described a phenomenon (sunlight reflection and cooling), made a comparison between two things about that phenomenon (ice and snow > non-snow land and oceans), and then concluded that if we had more of the better thing, the phenomenon would be increased.

Before going into the answer choices, it really helps to make sure that you have an idea of what you are looking for from an answer choice. For this question, I want something to make the conclusion that more snow and ice coverage will probably lead to a cooler atmosphere. That could happen through either making ice and snow seem even better (something like "ice and snow are better at reflecting sunlight than all other terrain types") or through making the other possible options seem worse (something like "land and oceans suck for reflecting sunlight" or "all other terrain types cause something to happen that makes the atmosphere warmer").

I know roughly what I want. So, let's review the options.

A : This does not help the argument. Low atmospheric temps being required for snow doesn't mean anything because I do not know anything about low atmospheric temps. They could be incredibly common or uncommon. I don't know.

B : This does not help the argument. Again, I do not know anything about these "other factors" and how they might make snow/ice better than land/ocean.

E : This does not help the argument. All it tells me is that land can vary in its ability to reflect sunlight. But we already know that no matter what ice/snow is better than land, so who cares?

D : This does not help the argument. Again, because our conclusion wants something to make snow seem better, we need something that places it on a pedestal. This does not do that because it affects all types of terrain. This answer tells me that sunlight reflection could also have a heating effect too no matter what terrain is doing the reflecting because reflecting sunlight is inevitably going to mean "passage of sunlight" through the atmosphere.

C : This does it because it makes the idea that snow and sunlight are better even more likely. It does this by giving us another reason to think that land and ocean are worse (one of the things we were looking for!)

Sorry for the incredibly long post but I wanted to showcase how I think through these questions and come together with a plan for selecting my answer choices. If you're still confused or found that my answer was lacking, feel free to ask for more help or clarification! If you want even more help with understanding arguments, I'd highly recommend the book "The Loophole" by Ellen Cassidy! It teaches this material way better than I can and covers a lot of material that I found incredibly helpful for LR.