#lsat question

Check out Part One: Conclusion and Premise and Part Three: Answering the Question

It does not matter at all if you remember that the stimulus is called a “stimulus.” You will get no points on the LSAT for memorizing vocabulary words someone else made up to describe the test. All you really need to know here is that you need to read that paragraph, sentence, or short dialogue that precedes the answer choices - that’s the “stimulus” - and you need to read it slowly and carefully. 

Step One: I want you to read the first sentence and stop. What is this stimulus going to be about? Is this paragraph introducing an issue in the world? Is this a dialogue between different people? Perhaps it’s a person expressing their opinion on a topic. Whatever it is, do not go on to the second sentence if you don’t understand the first.

If you’re new to LSAT-ing, you might think it sounds really silly to harp on this, but making sure you understand what you read before just barrelling ahead is critical, both in the Logical Reasoning and Reading Comprehension sections. You need to shift your brain from manic “I HAVE TO GET EVERYTHING DONE IMMEDIATELY OR ELSE” mode to the understanding that working slowly and steadily will get you a lot more questions right than rushing and hoping for the best. Your first priority has to be comprehension - that will give you the accuracy you need, and then the speed will come with practice.

Step Two: Once you’ve checked your comprehension of the first sentence, go on to read the rest of the stimulus (if there is more - every now and then, you get a really short one). Identify what the conclusion, or point, of the stimulus is. The vast majority of stimuli have a conclusion, but some don’t. You’ll know you’ve found the conclusion when you can say, “Therefore, [insert conclusion here].” If the sentence doesn’t really work after the word “therefore,” it’s probably a premise that leads to the conclusion.

If you’re not finding a conclusion, don’t freak out. Some stimuli don’t have one - every now and then, you have to make one yourself, or perhaps you have to see how the premises themselves work together. In other questions, you just see a little argument between two people, and those might have two conclusions.

We’ll see tons of examples of this, so don’t let yourself get overwhelmed now. You just need to understand what you’re reading in the moment - that’s how you’ll be able to do any kind of question, from the easiest to the hardest.

If you feel that you don’t quite “get” the stimulus, do not move on to the answer choices and hope it’ll start making sense once you’re there. The answer choices are meant to be tricky and often close-to-right, and they’ll trip you up if you don’t know what the stimulus is really about before you read them. 

Step Three: Judge the stimulus. Be rude if you have to. Is this a crappy argument? Think about why! If you practice this enough, you’ll be able to predict what the question will be before you even read it. Let’s use my example from the conclusion and premise post: 

The city council will vote Wednesday about whether to fund a new road-building project. The measure can only succeed if at least six members of the city council vote in favor, but all the city council members who have served more than three years will vote against the measure. So we know the measure will not pass.

Get critical here - this argument sucks. You can’t be satisfied with saying that it sucks, though - you have to be able to say why it’s so unconvincing. What makes this such a weak conclusion? “The measure will not pass?” How do they know?

I wrote the argument, so I can easily see the huge hole I wrote into it: we don’t know how many city council members there are total, so we don’t know whether veteran members opposing the measure will preclude achieving six votes. If I read this stimulus, I’d be ready for a question asking me about the flaw in the argument or maybe asking me for an assumption the author is making behind the scenes.

For this argument to be correct, it would have to be true that there are fewer than six city council members who’ve served fewer than three years. If that was true and the author simply forgot to say it, then this argument would suddenly become convincing.

So let’s say I’m taking the LSAT for real: I’ve already anticipated the question and answer, and I’ve only read the stimulus itself. I’m setting myself up to succeed, big time.