Necessary Assumptions

Comments

• LSATcantwin Alum Member Sage ⭐

  December 2017 13286 karma

  Get yourself a notebook. For each question follow these steps.

  1.) write out the conclusion
  2.) write out the support
  3.) write out what you think is missing, or a hole you see.
  4.) negate EVERY ANSWER
  5.) write out an explanation of why the right answer is necessary to the argument.

  Doing something like this really forces you to see; the argument, trap answer choices, how the NA affects the argument, and how subtitle the NA might be.

  Doing this a significant amount of times really helped with my NA questions!
• goingfor99th Free Trial Member

  December 2017 3072 karma

  Assumption negation technique is king! (I'm not sure what 7sage's specific term for the technique is.)
• calcal101 Alum Member

  December 2017 582 karma

  @goingfor99th said:
  Assumption negation technique is king! (I'm not sure what 7sage's specific term for the technique is.)

  This; when I think I have the answer to a Necessary Assumption question, I negate the answer choice. If that negated AC absolutely destroys the argument, then that's the right AC!

  Another trick: before bubbling, ask yourself: is this really necessary? Like REALLY necessary?
• thisissparta Alum Member

  December 2017 edited December 2017 1363 karma

  Do you have any particular questions that you find difficult? You could shoot me a PM with a list of questions, if you'd like. Hopefully I can help you in locating/grasping the trend whilst answering the questions. More generally, the negation technique works well. But I fear that general tips to approach these question types aren't going to be of much substantive help.