Tips for mastering LR conditional language?

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  swanganie Yearly Member

  July 2021 294 karma

  Sharing afew LR problems with conditional language I'd saved over the past few months:
  PT09 S2 Q13
  PT51 S1 Q21
  PT51 S3 Q14
  PT51 S3 Q19
  PT60 S3 Q12
  PT71 S3 Q11
  PT71 S3 Q17
• swanganie Yearly Member

  August 2021 294 karma

  Bumping one last time. Anyone out there have study tips?
• 1 Like

  Avatar Roku Member

  August 2021 edited August 2021 71 karma

  Hi there,

  I’m not going to answer all the questions, just a few problems that I did do.

  PT 71, S3, Q11

  If you don’t understand my explanation, please refer to LSAT Hacks as this is where I got my question clarified/ answered. Plus, there are plenty forums such as Powerscore and Manhattan that answer all your questions!

  This was definitely a tricky conditional problem. Basically, the logic as this:

  If taught w/ methods appropriate and devote significant effort —> student achieve broad mastery of curriculum.

  Thus, if such broad mastery is not achieved (failing the necessary), those students are not being taught w/ methods appropriate to their styles.

  If we want to break this down even further, it goes something like this:

  A and B —> C
  Not C, —> Not A or Not B

  However, the conclusion in the stimulus states this: not C, therefore not A.

  When working on this problem I thought to myself, well yeah, if we don’t have C, therefore we don’t have A or B. And they just stated that we don’t have A. Isn’t this valid? Well, you’re missing B.

  In order for this to be valid, we need a sufficient condition to state it is not B. Because if this is not the case, could actually still be there. But the author is making it certain that if we don’t achieve broad mastery, then those students are not being taught w/ methods.

  So we would have to add this sufficient condition: “As long as secondary school students are taught w/ methods appropriate to their learning styles, they will devote significant effort to their studies.” Which is just “A —> B,” where the contrapositive is “/B —> /A”

  It would look something like this:

  /C —> /A
  Or
  /C —> /B —> /A

  In either scenario, the conclusion is being drawn that the students are not being taught with methods appropriate to their learning styles.

  PT 71, S3, Q17

  Translation of the stimulus:

  If you want a successful economy, then you need a flourishing nat’l scientific community. If you want a flourishing nat’l scientific community, then requires many young ppl to be excited to become professional scientists. And to spark this excitement, good communications between scientists and public is necessary/ needed.

  An easy conditional chain that can be read like this:

  Successful economy —> flourishing sci. Community —> many young ppl 2 b excited —> good communication

  Simpler chain: A —> B —> C —> D

  Question is a MSS, but I also feel this may be somewhat a MBT. But MSS is still okay. Let’s go for process of elimination.

  A) “if scientists communicate…” stop right there. When I read this I was like okay this is wrong because we can’t start with the necessary condition. This is like starting with “D” in the simpler chain above. WRONG.
  B. This was okay for me when going down so I didn’t cross it out. So, I left it in the back of my mind and continued with the answers.
  C) “No nation can have a successful economy unless at some point scientists have communicated well w/ the public,” which is just “nation can have a successful economy —> communication happens between scientists and public” which is exactly our “C —> D” part in the simpler chain above! Correct. At this point I would place this high in my mind on correct answers; but I will still look at answer choices D and E to eliminate.
  D) I think this is probs a trap for anyone who thinks that one phrase “in any nation” is part of the conditional. To me, I don’t think it is as it merely qualifies that we are talking about any nation, not just a specific nation. This is wrong.
  E) “in any scientific endeavor” I’m like what scientific endeavor? I know endeavor means goal and like aspiration for something. But they never mentioned this in the stimulus. Plus, the question stem is telling us that the stimulus provides the most support for which one of the following statements. This means the answer choices should be provable and can be supported by the stimulus. This AC is wrong.

  Okay, so in my mind I would choose C. But double checking (B) which was my contender, the reason why this is wrong is because it is saying that the extent to which a scientific community flourishes depends on the number of young people. Well, what does this even mean? In the stimulus they say the requirement is that “many young people become excited.” To me, Answer Choice B was kinda off because the these two things are not the same thing. Answer choice B is specific. They’re saying for a community to flourish, it depends on the number of young ppl excited. But what number??!?! Did they say a flourishing community depends on a specific number? nah, they just said many.

  Hope this helps.
• zoomzoom Member

  August 2021 462 karma

  I know this won't really sound like helpful advice, but I honestly found that conditional language just takes time to absorb and master. Unless you thought conditionally your whole life, being at a point where conditional language just comes naturally takes time. For me, a few months to be exact.

  What I will say is that you can expedite this process by weaning off flashcards and practicing constantly via questions. LG also have a ton of conditional language so you can practice there as well.

  It's always through real practice through questions that familiarity and mastery is bred, not be regurgitating terms on a flashcard (of which I am guilty of).
• swanganie Yearly Member

  August 2021 294 karma

  Appreciate the feedback! So far, I'm finding LG conditional logic to be a breeze compared to LR. It's primarily group 3/4 conditional indicators and "the only"/"only" that seem to really trip me up under time. I'm starting to log all the questions with conditional logic, so I can can use them as drill material.

  Sharing a few more LR questions that got me over the past couple weeks:
  PT S Q
  31 2 21
  32 4 21
  48 1 20
  40 3 15