The secret to do tough Weaken/strengthen question

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• 2 Likes

  JS Free Trial Member

  August 2013 184 karma

  At first when I do those questions, I eliminate the correct question quickly cuz they seems to be irrelevant. After thousands of mistake, I finally found the trap here.
• Midriff Free Trial Member

  August 2013 17 karma

  Ya i did PT 52 q 21 and I did exactly that. I eliminated C because of modern writer. My problem is finding the correct assumption the author is making. But i think that just takes time and practice. For now I am not going to rush these questions. Just stick with them and take my time.
• JS Free Trial Member

  August 2013 184 karma

  Even for most supported question we can also see the weaken/strengthen here.
  For instance, http://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-52-section-1-question-13/
  
  Modern crocodiles seems to be irrelevant to hadrosaur but it debut the presumption here “any animal that has careful designed nests guarded their young long after the young hatched.” which is enough to weaken the whole paleontologist argument here.
• 1 Like

  CJ Shin Free Trial Member

  August 2013 302 karma

  Great! I noticed this trend in the newer lsats.
• JS Free Trial Member

  August 2013 184 karma

  http://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-51-section-3-question-01/
  
  This stimulus talks about human treatment but the correct answer is about laboratory animal.
• paulfan2011 Free Trial Member

  August 2013 125 karma

  Great stuff. I just want to add that the presumptions that exist in LR questions are key to most types of questions. There are only 3 things that makes up an argument, the premise, conclusion, and assumption, an unstated premise. In most cases, you are asked to evaluate the argument, and assumptions, the crucial link between the premise and conclusion, determines the strength of support. Recall from JY's lessons that you rarely gets to attack the premise or the conclusion, your only focus should be on the assumptions.
  
  To use the same examples, in PT 52 S3 Q19, the conclusion is that dinosaurs died from eating this poisonous plant. There are two supporting premises:
  
  Premise 1.) Dinosaurs can die from eating this plant. (They can't taste bitterness and they can't detoxify the poison). But this does not prove that they in fact ate those plants, which is addressed by the second premise.
  
  Premise 2.) The dinosaurs died in contorted positions. But how does dying in contorted position prove that they indeed ate those plants? This is where the assumption comes in.
  
  Assumption: Eating these plants will cause the animals that eat them to die in contorted positions.
  
  Now we can easily weaken the argument by attacking the assumption.
  
  Answer choice A: if animals die in consorted position regardless of consumption of this plant, then it is not the case that dying in consorted position supports the claim that the dinosaurs ate those plants.
  
  Note: In harder questions, the assumptions are really subtle. It is likely that you already made these assumptions, but you have to try really hard not to do that.
• JS Free Trial Member

  August 2013 184 karma

  Thank you for your reply. I find it seems when comes to assumption, premise, conclusion, all questions seem to be same.
  Add one more example, this one talks about "mammal other than seal"
  http://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-23-section-3-question-13/
• manishsahay09 Alum Member

  January 2019 edited January 2019 10 karma

  Yes, the test tries to misguide by throwing new words but these new words are still related to the actors in premise. Such words are generalized form of words in the stimulus. For example - animals for Antarctic seals and modern writer for homer. So, it is not that these answer choices are not related to the premise. They are related to the premise, and also impact the conclusion.This is all we need to check if the statement is along the lines of reasoning.
• redshift Alum Member

  January 2019 261 karma

  Yep. The key thing to remember in strengthen/weaken questions is that there can be outside information in the stimulus. More specifically, for weaken questions, counter examples are used to highlight and expose the flaw in the stimulus. For strengthen questions, we often say that that counter example isn't happening.