#20 - Only poetry cannot be translated well, and therefore

[lina2020]

I'm having some trouble with this question so looking for someone to explain the exact thought process they would have approaching this. As a starting point, I have a few questions below -

1. The question type is listed as a "Must, X" but I'm not understanding why this is not a "Cannot be true" question. Would you please clarify?

2. What is the ideal way to approach this stimulus - would you diagram the conditional statements or just try to gain an overall understanding from reading it?

3. Did I break this down properly:

Premise: Only poetry cannot be translated well (Cannot be translated well > poetry is necessary condition)

Main conclusion: therefore it is poets who preserve languages

Premise: for we would not bother to learn a language if we could get everything written in it from translation.

Premise: since we cannot witness the beauty of poetry except in the language in which it is composed

Subsidiary Conclusion: we have motivation to learn the language.

Thanks in advance for your help!

[Paul Marsh]

Hi Lina! Great questions. Let's walk through them.

1) A Cannot be True question is asking us what Must be False. In other words, "what has the stimulus proven to be 100% false?". But in this question, the stimulus is not asking that. It's not asking for something that needs to have been proven false by the stimulus; instead, it's just asking for us to find something for which there isn't explicit support. So our correct answer will likely be something that maybe could be true but doesn't have to be true (as opposed to something that MUST be false). (If you think about it in terms of False rather than True, this is a Could be False question and not a Must be False question).

2) In general, it's very good instinct to want to diagram conditional statements on LR. It's clear from the jump that we are getting some conditional statements here, as soon as we see a word like "only". However, for this question I think trying to diagram conditionals would be time-consuming, confusing, and ultimately next to useless. When diagramming conditionals, take a second to think, "why am I diagramming these?". Typically, it should be because certain phrases pop up multiple times, meaning we will likely be able to chain together multiple conditional statements. Here, the phrases and terms shift from sentence to sentence. There is no condition that repeats in such a way that we'd really be able to chain any conditionals together. So again, diagramming is not going to be very fruitful here (the possible exception would be maybe diagramming the first sentence, if "only" is logically difficult for you and it would help you to diagram it out; it looks you diagrammed this perfectly). Instead, the key here is just to have a firm grasp on the information being presented. We accept that info as true and want to cross out the answer choices that are explicitly supported by that info.

3) Again, your diagram of that conditional in the first sentence looks good. The rest of what you wrote looks fine too, but for Must be True (as well as Cannot be True) questions we don't really need to break down an argument into its structural parts like this. Focusing on what's the conclusion vs what's the premises (while very important in the majority of LR question types!) won't really get us very far on these Must be True questions (remember that most Must be True questions don't even have conclusions, they're usually just a series of facts). Again, typically we just want to be very clear about what information the stimulus explicitly contains, and (since this is an EXCEPT question) use that to cross out the answer choices that match what was explicitly said.

Hope that helps!

[jyjyk24]

Hello,

I initially was stuck between A and E as the correct answer choice, so was surprised to see that the answer is B. I'm going to try to explain why I think A&E is not correct and why B is correct, but would love to know how I should have arrived to B in the first place.

(A): confirmed by first conditional statement
- translate well x > poetry
- poetry x > translate well
> was initially hesitant about the nonpoetic literature part

(E): correct since there is a qualifier "sometimes"

(B): the stimulus does not discuss the purpose of writing poetry
we only know that poets do preserve language but don't know if it is intentional or not >> is this the correct way to approach this answer?


Thank you!

[Dana D]

Hey Jyjyk,

That's exactly right - we know the outcome of written poetry but we don't know the writer's intent here, so answer choice (B) is the least supported. Good work!