Logical Reasoning Cheat Sheet

[edelmiroarredondo]

Hello all,

This is my first post to this forum, I have read so much from all of your posts, great advice.
I will be taking my LSAT in less than one week.

I seem to have a good grasp of almost evertyhing on the LSAT just some errors deciding on a few logical reasoning questions, for example: the family #2: help. assumption, justify, strengthen.

and also weaken questions.

can someone please let me know of some great techniques to tackle these problems, or hints and tricks.

Cheat sheet, PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!

[Kristina Moen]

Hi Edelmiro!!

Welcome to the Forum. The Help and Hurt families are very similar, and you'll use many of the same tools for both!

First, are you identifying the conclusion correctly? That is the first important step. You need to know which part of the argument is the premise and which part is the conclusion. You can review Premise and Conclusion Indicators in Lesson 1 (and Lesson 1 homework), which are helpful.

Second, once you identify the premise and the conclusion - are you identifying the type of reasoning? Not every reasoning type has a name, but it's important to know if you see conditional reasoning, causal reasoning, or a study/poll/survey. For those reasoning types, we've given you a list of ways to weaken/strengthen them! For example, you can strengthen a study/poll/survey by saying that the sample size was representative or the questions were unbiased. You can weaken a study/poll/survey by saying that the sample size was NOT representative or the questions WERE biased. Those are just examples! Review the "How to Attack a Causal Relationship" in Lesson 3. To strengthen a causal relationship, you just do the opposite! These give you many prephrases to work with.

Third, Is there a missing link between the premise and the conclusion? For example, does the premise talk about "dogs" and the conclusion is suddenly about "all animals?"

Fourth, make sure you know the difference between a Justify/Assumption/Strengthen question. Know what the question stems look like, and also conceptually what makes them different. An Assumption is something required by the argument, and a Justify asks for something that makes the argument a slam-dunk! Review Lessons 4 and 5.

So to summarize:
Identify the conclusion.
Note if there is a particular type of reasoning. If it's conditional or causal, diagram it! Make sure you're doing it correctly.
Note if there's a missing link between the premise and the conclusion.
Finally, make sure you know what is being asked in the question stem!