Assumption & Strengthen Q's Killing Me.

[RonMurillo]

Hi, any major help for beating anxiety about assumptions & strengthen q's? I seem to freak out and slow down too much when I get assumption q's. I cant seem to stop and think. The oct 2004 practice test killed me with so many assumption and strengthen q's. What should I do? It seems like i lose my thought process and worry about time and rush.

Its really holding my score down. Im averaging 30/50 to 33/50 on the logical reasoning parts combined and I know i can get it up to possibly over 35 but it's those 2 types of questions that just throws me off course.

What can I do? My first attempt at the lsat test is in June and I'm panicking.

[Nikki Siclunov]

Ron,

Panic is never a good thing, and the surest way to overcome it is to feel confident about your approach. In this case, solid conceptual understanding of assumptions would be key. Are you consistently applying the Assumption Negation Technique? Do you understand the inherent conditionality between the conclusion of any given argument and its assumptions? Do you understand the different functions an assumption can perform?

Assumptions could seem daunting at first, because it's such an abstract notion (what did the author assume but didn't say?). In some ways, however, they are so much like Must Be True questions: they never introduce new elements into the stimulus, and if the conclusion of the argument is indeed true, then the assumption(s) upon which the conclusion is based must be true as well. Thus, by negating the correct answer choice to an assumption question, you'd immediately weaken the conclusion.

If Assumption/Strengthen questions are pulling your score down, it's not too late to fix it before Monday! Re-read the chapters in the Logical Reasoning Bible or your coursebook relating to Assumption questions, apply the approach to about 100 assumption questions, review them carefully, and you should start getting them right. As you do, I bet your level of anxiety about assumption questions will decrease.

If there are any particular Assumption questions that you can't figure out, you know where to post your questions

Good luck!

[RonMurillo]

Thanks. It's crazy that looking over those questions now, I can see what the answers are but when being timed, I lose my wits.

Any tips on how to quickly navigate through long, complex, assumptions questions? I seem to stall too much when I encounter them?

[Nikki Siclunov]

Being timed often has the unfortunate side effect of slowing you down: you stop thinking about structure and start triaging your work. Your critical impulse is dulled. You rush. There is no easy fix for this other than to focus on the question at hand. If you are confident in your reading ability, it doesn't matter how convoluted the argument is: you can almost always simplify it. Most arguments contain needless minutiae whose only purpose is to confuse you.

Once you focus on the structural elements of that argument, you can easily break it down into premises and conclusion(s). This, in turn, will help you identify the logical gaps that ultimately represent the assumptions upon which the conclusion depends. Before you know it, each question becomes a simple exercise of recognition of pre-existing templates, patterns, and reasoning paradigms.

None of this is unique to Assumption questions, by the way: all LR questions should fundamentally be approached with the same principal objectives in mind.

Best of luck!