Logical Reasoning "Weakening" Pre-Phrasing

[bbacero]

I've been working through the Powerscore course book, and after finishing the Logical Reasoning "Weaken" section, I'm a little disappointed. I keep reading that these are among the strongest to Pre-Phrase, but I'm just not getting it. I keep thinking of a few possibilities, but none of them ever seem to be a possible answer. Instead, I feel like I'm wasting time since none of my pre-phrasing ever seems to accurately predict for me.

Ironically, I find the "Assumptions" section much easier and have almost no problems Pre-Phrasing. Any hints?

[Nikki Siclunov]

The idea behind prephrasing is not to "predict" the correct answer verbatim. Rather, it is to think about what the correct answer will do (not necessarily "say"). In Weaken questions especially, a strong prephrase will force you to critically evaluate the argument, and determine a possibility, which - if true - would undermine the conclusion of the argument. Clearly, there are many ways to weaken that conclusion, and it is possible that your prephrase does not match the exact answer test-makers had in mind. But keep in mind two things: (1) the more you work through these questions, the more you will start seeing patterns in how test-makers tend to weaken certain types of arguments; and (2) the very process of prephrasing will "prime" you to seek a similar answer. As a result, your prephrase will serve as a "lens" through which to critically examine all five answer choices, and ultimately speed up your comparative analysis to help you determine the correct one.