LR Questions Approach/Strategy

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  Matt Sorr Alum Member ⭐

  November 2023 edited November 2023 2245 karma

  I think you should accept the premises as true, as it will pay off 99% of the time. I've done probably 50+ PTs worth of LR questions, and I can only think of maybe two or three instances where I've heard JY and other commenters on explanation videos consider the possibility that the correct answer choice attacked a premise. Even in those cases, there was usually a way to interpret the correct AC in a way that it didn't attack the premise.

  I don't think that accepting the premises as true prevents you from prephrasing, however. It's absolutely reasonable to say to yourself something along the lines of, "Okay, while the premises may be 100% true, they still lend very little support to the conclusion." Additionally, you can accept the premises as true and still question how "powerful" they are. For example, in a Must Be True question, the argument may say something like, "the apple the scientists grew is the largest in recorded history." Then, an incorrect answer choice may say "there has never been a larger apple than the one the scientists grew." It would be incorrect because the premise simply isn't "powerful" enough to prove it. While the scientist's apple may very well be the largest in "recorded history," that doesn't mean it's the largest apple ever. Just the largest apple that we know about.

  Sorry for the long-winded response but I hope this helps some!
• evanescence Core Member

  November 2023 edited November 2023 194 karma

  @"Matt Sorr" said:
  I think you should accept the premises as true, as it will pay off 99% of the time. I've done probably 50+ PTs worth of LR questions, and I can only think of maybe two or three instances where I've heard JY and other commenters on explanation videos consider the possibility that the correct answer choice attacked a premise. Even in those cases, there was usually a way to interpret the correct AC in a way that it didn't attack the premise.

  I don't think that accepting the premises as true prevents you from prephrasing, however. It's absolutely reasonable to say to yourself something along the lines of, "Okay, while the premises may be 100% true, they still lend very little support to the conclusion." Additionally, you can accept the premises as true and still question how "powerful" they are. For example, in a Must Be True question, the argument may say something like, "the apple the scientists grew is the largest in recorded history." Then, an incorrect answer choice may say "there has never been a larger apple than the one the scientists grew." It would be incorrect because the premise simply wouldn't be "powerful" enough to prove it. While the scientist's apple may very well be the largest in "recorded history," that doesn't mean it's the largest apple ever. Just the largest apple that we know about.

  Sorry for the long-winded response but I hope this helps some!

  Thank you, Matt, for your response! I've been beating myself up lately about my LR approach. I will be accepting the premises as true! I know it's been stressed (especially on LSAT Demon) to prephrase before you check the AC's (and to even NOT read the question stem beforehand). When I'm reading an argument in the stimulus, I do question the strength of the evidence (premises), but whenever I've prephased before checking the AC's, I'm usually way off. Maybe I'm just lazy/obsessed with the clock, but other than asking "but, why?" when identifying the premises/conclusion, I go straight to the ACs. Do you have any advice? Could this be why I'm missing -4/-6 in an LR section? After completing all those PT's worth of LR questions, what do you think works best?
• Matt Sorr Alum Member ⭐

  November 2023 2245 karma

  @evanescence I totally understand the struggle of figuring out how to approach LR questions. I experimented with a bunch of approaches before settling on one.

  To answer your question, before I go into the answer choices, I do a couple of things. First, I just try to identify any assumptions or weak points in the argument. I try to think of literally anything in the argument that's not airtight and take notice of it. Second, I gauge how aggressively I want to hazard a prephrase. On question types like sufficient assumptions, where the correct answer choice has to connect some very specific dots, I try to figure out what those dots are before going into the answer choices. That means I usually try to come up with as accurate of a prephrase as possible, where I'm confident that the correct answer choice will have to look similar to my prephrase. For question types likes strengthen or weaken, however, I don't spend much time thinking about prephrases, if at all. My reasoning is that there's about a million different ways you could strengthen or weaken an argument. Trying to precisely guess the approach the correct answer will take seems pretty futile to me. Sometimes before going into the ACs I'll quickly think of one or two possible ways to attack or support the argument, but I don't let myself become attached to my prephrase, as I know it's highly unlikely the correct AC will match it. And on some questions, particularly those that are denser, I don't even attempt to prephrase. I just try to let the answer choices "feed me," as JY often puts it.

  On a side note, to consistently get below -4 on LR, I found it largely centered around improving my time/section management. Personally, when I was around -4, I found I could usually go -0 or -1 in BR. This indicated to me that I was capable of getting below -4 but just wasn't spending my time wisely. If that sounds at all like your situations, you may also want to look into different ways to "time" the section.

  Again, I'm not an expert by any means, but these are just a few things I've found useful.