Weaken Q's: eliminating incorrect answer choices.

[jeremiah230!!]

I am uncertain as to how I can tackle Weaken questions – particularly "most weaken" ones – in a way that maximizes accuracy and efficiency. I have thought about it a lot, and feel as if for some weaken questions, the first answer choice I find that weakens the conclusion in the stimulus is the correct one – for example, where the stimulus contains an implicit assumption and the answer choice denies that assumption, as the conclusion could not be weakened any more than this – but when there is no such implicit assumption, I feel as if I can never be sure that I have picked the answer choice that "most" weakens the stimulus until I have eliminated the remaining four.

Is there some better way to go about this (that you're willing to share at no cost )?

Thanks.

[Stephanie Oswalt]

Hi Jeremiah,

Thanks for the post! We have a lot of great resources that discuss weaken questions! Here are just a few:

https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/common ... vs-weaken/
https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/weaken ... questions/
https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/lsat-p ... he-day-11/
https://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/bid-31 ... arguments/
https://forum.powerscore.com/lsat/viewt ... 82&p=60371


This should be enough to get you started, but for even more topics I would suggest searching through this forum as well as the PowerScore blog that's listed in the above links. We also discuss weaken questions in great detail in our courses and LSAT Bibles.

Thanks!

[jeremiah230!!]

Thank you for this response, these links were very helpful.

I also stumbled upon this link here, and this really helps me solidify my idea of what I need to do in order to do these questions most efficiently.

https://www.powerscore.com/lsat/help/lr_prephrasing.cfm

A somewhat good analogy for this popped into my head. A good prephrase - at the very least, for Weaken questions - is sort of like a big commercial fishing net. The overall size of the net, and the size of its holes, need to be such that anything you are aiming to catch will definitely wind up in it. If the net is too small, or the holes are the wrong size – if the prephrase is more specific than it should be – you might not catch the fish that most weakens the question, because it wont even be in your net of contender answer choices in the first place.

However, if you use the perfect net, you will catch the right answer choice, and all the wrong ones either wont be in your net to begin with – because they do not do what you prephrased the correct answer must do – or because they swam right through the holes of the net, because they were ultimately inadequate for some reason. Ultimately you are left with the right fish.