Logical Reasoning Chapter 1

What does every Logical Reasoning question consist of?

Every Logical Reasoning question consists of the 3 same parts - the stimulus, the question stem and the answer choices.

What is the stimulus?

The short paragraph or passage that you read before answering the question and it contains the main information or argument you need to understand.

What is the most important part of a question?

Stimulus is the most important part of an LR question.

What should you do when you first spot an LR question?

Always read the stimulus first. Always read the whole stimulus.

What are the 4 types of stimuli?

Arguments, Premise Sets, Debates, Paradoxes.

What is the most common stimuli type?

Arguments are the most common stimuli type, so the bulk of your Logical Reasoning score will depend on your ability to analyze arguments.

What is the question stem?

The question stem is the part that comes after the stimulus and tells you what the question is asking you to do.

What should you do while answering a question?

While answering the question, you will take your stimulus-based strategy and apply it to the question types.

How are the LR question types categorized?

Every correct answer on the LSAT falls into one of two categories: it is either powerful or provable, so we split our question types according to whether they’re seeking a powerful correct answer or a provable correct answer.

What are the answer choices?

An answer to an LR question is the choice that best completes the task asked by the question stem, using only what can be supported by or applied to the stimulus.

Which is the trickiest part of an LR question?

Answer choices are the trickiest part of an LR question.

How can answer choices be categorized?

Answer choices can also be broken down to powerful or provable types too.

What should you do while reading the answer choices?

You need to know what you are looking for in an answer before you start reading the answer choices. Read all the answer choices all the way through.

What are Cluster sentences?

Cluster Sentences are sentences that are hard to understand because they squeeze many ideas into one messy sentence. The problem is that they’re not sharing one clear thought – they’re trying to share several at once, all tangled together.

How can you deal with cluster sentences?

To make sense of them, you need to break the sentence apart and find each full idea inside it.

What are specifiers?

Specifiers are small words that help connect big ideas to their explanations.

What is the problem with specifiers?

Specifiers are used to explain something, then explains part of that explanation and then explain that part too. By the time you reach the end, you might forget what the sentence was even about.

What is a classic cluster sentence trick?

Divorcing the sentence's main noun from it's verb is a classic cluster sentence trick.

How can you handle the difficulty of separated nouns and verbs?

The easiest way to overcome the difficulty of separated nouns and verbs is with comma tricks. Commas tell you when to pause while reading the sentence.

What is a core element?

A core element is a part of the sentence that cannot be removed without destroying all grammatical sense of reason. It has the sentence's main noun and verb in it.

What is an optional element?

An optional element is a piece of the sentence that can be removed without any bad grammatical consequences. It's specifying things that happen in the core of the sentence or in other optional elements.

What do comma’s indicate?

Commas indicate that something on either side of the comma is an optional element.

How can you figure out which piece of the sentence is the core element, and which piece is the optional element?

You can figure out which piece of the sentence is optional by looking at it by itself and seeing if it's a complete thought. If the piece makes sense as a full sentence on its own, you've zeroed in on the core element. If it does not make sense, you've found an optional element.

What should you know about optional elements in a sentence?

Optional elements are grammatically optional. not meaning optional. The information contained in optional elements could be essential to your understanding of the stimulus.

Can a part of a sentence only be the core element or only be the optional element?

Sometimes, parts of the sentence are both core and optional, both sides of the comma could stand on their own as full sentences and could be removed without bad grammatical consequences.

What is middle - out?

When you have two or more commas in a sentence, use middle-out. All you have to do is see if the middle piece can be a complete sentence by itself. If the middle can be a complete sentence, both the outer pieces are optional. If the middle piece can't be a complete sentence, it's just specifying. You can delete it and read the core outer pieces back to back to clarify your understanding of the sentence.

What role do optional sentences play in a sentence?

Most of the time optional elements are for the most part, specifiers. Meaning, you have to treat them as chances to break the sentence down into smaller pieces.

What role do commas play in a sentence?

The commas around these optional parts are little specifiers that tell you to notice that not all the information in the sentence has to be here.

Which part of the sentence isn’t required to be there?

Optional elements, the words that don’t have to be there, can be filtered out when you’re first trying to figure out what the sentence could possibly mean.

Can the optional elements be completely ignored?

No, Return to the optional elements to get the sentence’s full meaning once you’ve identified the core.

What should you do when 3 or more commas are present in a sentence?

Cluster sentences often contain 3+ commas. Even though that’s an odd number, we can still break the sentence down by looking at the commas in pairs, and use middle-out. You’ll take the sentences apart two commas at a time, using some commas more than once to form pairs if needed.

What do specifiers tend to specify in a sentence?

Specifiers tend to specify things directly on the other side of their comma.

What is specifically true for sentences with 3 or more commas?

The fact that both sides of the comma could potentially be optional elements, this is especially true when a sentence contains 3 or more commas.

What does it mean when a part of a sentence appears in both comma pairs?

When a part of a sentence appears in both comma pairs, it stands out. This usually means it’s either very important or not important at all. To figure it out, you should focus on that middle section first and work your way outward. This approach helps you understand the structure and meaning of the sentence more clearly.

What should you do if there are no commas for specifying?

While most of the time, the test makers will use commas for specifying, but sometimes they will not. To deal with this, develop an intuitive sense of where specifying occurs, so you’ll be able to sense the specifying without commas. Look for specifiers, but more importantly look at what is being specified and constantly break down the sentence and try to imagine where the commas might appear. Try to figure out what is being specified and about what or whom.

What is exceedingly common on the LSAT?

Triple-specifying is exceedingly common on the LSAT.

How can you overcome the LSAT language?

To overcome LSAT language you need to master the language. To do this make sure to translate the stimulus.

How to Translate?

(i) Read and understand each sentence piece by piece

(ii) In the beginning of your prep cover up the Stimulus with a Post – It after you're done reading, say what you just read in your own words. Use practical, easy- to- remember, casual words. Make it sound like something you would say in real life.

Basic L.R question game plan

(i) You must read and translate every stimulus

(ii) Translating is the opposite of skimming. It’s not about quickly getting the main idea — it’s something you do after you already understand the main idea clearly.

(iii) At first you will have to translate consciously It will quickly become subconscious with practice. It is completely okay if the translation puts the ideas in a different order than the stimulus. Get rid of connector words, like ‘it was thought that’, and change it into something simple like ‘they thought’. Translate small, manageable chunks of the Stimulus first, especially if it is a large and confusing set of cluster sentences.