Strongly support

[Hithere17]

Hi,

I am hoping that you can help with this question.

My understanding is that ALL strongly support questions are in the 1st family of questions, which means that no outside info can be used in the answer. I also thought that strongly support is the same as must be true.

I am now seeing that "strongly support" appears alongside strengthen questions which does allow for outside information in the answer.

Could you please explain the rules that need to be applied when I see the term "strongly support"

Thank you

[David Boyle]

Hi,

I am hoping that you can help with this question.

My understanding is that ALL strongly support questions are in the 1st family of questions, which means that no outside info can be used in the answer. I also thought that strongly support is the same as must be true.

I am now seeing that "strongly support" appears alongside strengthen questions which does allow for outside information in the answer.

Could you please explain the rules that need to be applied when I see the term "strongly support"

Thank you

Hello Hithere17,

Frequently, "strongly support" is associated with Must Be True. However, the flow of information is important. If it's like, "Which statement below does the stimulus most strongly support?", that sounds like Must Be True. But if the direction is different, and like, "Which statement below most strongly supports the conclusion?", then that looks more like a Strengthen.

Hope this helps,
David

[Dave Killoran]

Hello Hithere,

I wanted to expand a bit on the idea underlying your question. The thing you have to be careful with on the LSAT is taking a word to always have a particular association with a question (or concept, for that matter). The word "support" is a great example—depending on how that is used in a question stem, it can either be a First Family ("Which one of the following is most strongly supported?") or Second Family question ("Which one of the following, if true, most strongly supports the argument above?"). You can't just see "support" and automatically determine that it's First or Second Family question stem—you have to look at the context

Note that "support" isn't the only word like this on the LSAT. "If" is another great example: "if" by itself is a sufficient condition indicator, but "only if" is a necessary condition indicator. There are other words too, but you get the idea. It's always context that helps determine absolute meaning.

Thanks!

[Hithere17]

thank you so much.