Why am I getting confused between strengthening and weaking an argument?

abigailgfaulkner

I started out doing really good on weakening questions. When the strengthening questions came into play, they were a bit more difficult. Now that they are intermixing, I am extremely overwhelmed and confused. Any tips?

MattyCzar

It might just take some time to sort it out in your mind. Exact same thing happened to me, all the strengthen/weaken questions and the strengthen/weaken EXCEPT questions flowed together. As you're learning, take a second to understand exactly what the question is asking, then read the stimulus. Maybe make a little cheat sheet for each question stem so you know what mindset you need as you read the stimulus. It takes time, but with enough reps and experience, the small differences in question stems will become clearer.

natemanwell1

Please post how you are approaching these questions. People on the forum cannot give you targeted advice without knowing your process, as on the face of it, this question does not make any sense-are you generally unable to do the questions in a reasonable way due to lack of preparation (which would not be much of a problem), or do you generally know the content and are thinking thinks that strengthen actually weaken, or vice versa (which would be a much bigger problem). Each of these question types has 3 associated answer choice types 1) an answer choice that relates to the gap, and moves its ends it in the correct direction (expand for weaken, close for strengthen) 2) an answer choice that relates to the gap but does not move it in the correct direction (by either moving it in the wrong direction or not moving it at all), and 3) an answer choice that does not relate to the gap. Therefore, eliminating answer choices should be essentially the same in both question types, as you are removing answers that either affect the gap in the incorrect way or don't affect it at all, so if you just sensibly remove the answer choices that clearly won't work, most of the work is done. It's also not provided by your post what the technique you employ is. Generally, for strengthen, in order of best to worst it is [close the gap most on net preferably from both ends, the weaker end, the stronger end], and specifically [provide a sufficient condition, eliminate an alternative explanation, eliminate an obstacle, show an expected correlation holds, provide a necessary condition], while for weaken it is [expand the gap most on preferably from both ends, stronger end, weaker end], [remove necessary condition, provide alternative explanation, provide obstacle, show expected correlation does not hold, remove sufficient condition]. Once again please post your approach so people in the forum can give you more targeted help.