Strengthen & Questions - Approach?

[samuelfbaron]

Hello Geeks,

I am having a bit of difficulty with approaching strengthen/weaken questions.

I find that with Strengthen questions, each answer choice I'm almost stretching the scope of... saying "oh that could plausible".

Is there an approach to strengthen/weaken questions?

I know that for strengthen questions there a number of answers we are to look for, for instance ruling out possible explanations, confirming an assumption, etc. Does the credited response always have to affirm or provide further support to a premise?

[rinagoldfield]

Hey Samuel F Baron,

The right answer choice on a strengthen question usually won’t affirm a premise"”it’ll affirm the LOGIC of the argument. In other words, it’ll support the connection between the premise and the conclusion.

Strengthen/Weaken questions are best worked via a process of elimination. Sometimes, the strengthener/weakener doesn’t obviously pop out; you have to find it by nixing out of scope and irrelevant answer choices.

Wrong answer choices won’t address the premise-conclusion connection. They’ll touch on background information, or deal only with the subject of the conclusion without linking back to the premise, or will be totally out of scope. They can also do the opposite of what you’re looking for (weaken on a strengthen question and vice versa).

In terms of stretching answer choices to "Oh that could be possible," remember that LSAT inferences are BABY inferences. Watch out for adding assumptions to answer choices. Lots and lots of "could be"s means the answer choice is probably wrong.

Hope that helps. Strengthen/Weaken are hard.

[samuelfbaron]

Fantastic! Thanks for the tips!