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LR: Strengthen, Sufficient, or Required

MoosaderMoosader Alum Member
in General 234 karma
I am really struggling on making these distinct. I can recognize the stems, but the answers are gnarly for me.

Any advice? I am going through the trainer right now, and I'll have to review, but he seems to be rather brief on these, especially Required vs. Sufficient.

The biggest clue I can read is that the sufficient answers can be crazy, and mention weird things. But, obviously, this is not enough. I am totes struggling, and any help is appreciated. I'm thinking I should get Cambridge now.
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Comments

  • GSU HopefulGSU Hopeful Core ⭐
    1644 karma
    I remembered these in a multitude of ways but ultimately what stuck with me is this:
    -For strengthen, your job is to find the flaw in the reasoning and address it by closing the gap. Strengthen answers don't have to completely fix the argument, but they have to address the reasoning in such a way that makes its stronger, no matter how much or how little.
    -For sufficient assumption, you need to figure out what exactly is wrong with the argument and fix it completely with the answer choice. To put it in a real world context, if you had a client that pleads the argument at hand, you want the answer that, if true, would win him the case immediately with a summary judgement. You are looking for the answer that would be sufficient to guarantee that the argument would work.
    -For necessary assumption, you must find the gap in reasoning and find what NEEDS to be true in order for the argument to work. We are not looking for answers that will strengthen or completely fix the issue, we are looking for what needs to be true in order for the argument to make sense. To check yourself, you can use the negation test. Find the answer choice that you like and negate it. If your answer is correct and its negated, the argument will completely fall apart. By negating it, you are showing that it must be true in order for the argument to work at all. Hope this helps.
  • PacificoPacifico Alum Inactive ⭐
    edited June 2015 8021 karma
    I think JY handles all of these really well, so if you end up using 7Sage that will likely be of great help to you. The only other thing I would add to piggyback on the advice given is to keep the contrapositive in mind for both SA and NA questions (especially SA). They love to throw in an SA or two per test with a contrapositive answer that will be worded so as to look totally ridiculous at first glance.
  • MoosaderMoosader Alum Member
    234 karma
    Thank you so much. I'll work on the negating technique some more.
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