- Thu Aug 27, 2020 5:43 pm
#78488
Hi chloeuk24!
The way that you've worked through answer choice D is exactly the right way to go!
Answer choice (D) states that the politician "reach[es] a conclusion based on evidence that is similar to evidence commonly thought to support an analogous case." What I'll do here is put in double brackets the elements that we need to unpack--the politician "reach[es] a conclusion [[what conclusion?]] based on evidence [[which evidence?]] that is similar to evidence commonly thought to support an analogous case [[what evidence/analogous case?]]." The author of the stimulus reaches a conclusion that a democratic government should not restrict what people wear because of the evidence that clothing is "clearly a venue of self-expression," which is similar to the conclusion that democratic governments should not restrict speech based on the evidence that verbal speech is self-expression.
Again, you've done this exactly right. Answer choices like these, as you can see, are stated in very general terms rather than the specifics of the stimulus. Since your ultimate question is about what the quickest way is to identify the right answer on such a question, my view is that the quickest route is to give substance and specificity to the generic terms. On a paper LSAT, rather than using brackets, I'd trace my pencil from one of the generic words (e.g. "a conclusion") up to the stimulus to confirm whether I can find such an element. Of course, if you're taking the LSAT-Flex, you'll have to scroll up and could then highlight the relevant text if it's present. I would probably wait to do this until you have at least quickly glimpsed at all of the answer choices and have tried to separate them into contenders and losers.
Lastly, in my experience as an LSAT tutor, often students will read and re-read generic answer choices such as these several times. This is why I emphasize the importance of going back to the stimulus to be able to point to something for the purposes of verification and confirmation, making sure that each element mentioned in the answer choice is indeed found in the stimulus. Avoiding that trap of failing to go back to the stimulus can hopefully also help you save time by making it less likely that you'll need to re-read the answer choice several times.
