December 2016 LSAT Section 4 Question 20

At Tromen University this semester, some students taking French Literature 205 are also taking Biology 218. Every stu...

tomgbean on December 18, 2019

The truth of E

Hi, I got this question right because all the other answer choices were "eliminatable" but I hesitated on this because I wasn't sure that it had to be true. It is not excluded that biology majors cannot be french literature majors. A deduction could be that some students who take french literature 205 who are not french literature majors could be from other majors. While biology majors who are taking french literature 205 could also be french-literature majors. The passage didn't tell us only french-literature majors and biology majors are taking french-literature 205...only that some students taking french literature 205 are biology majors.

Replies

Create a free account to read and take part in forum discussions.

Already have an account? log in

BenMingov on December 19, 2019

Hi Tom, thanks for the question.

I think it's possible that there may be some confusion regarding what the question is asking for. This is a Strengthen with Necessary Premise question, which means that you take the answer choice as provided in order to fully validate the argument. It is not the case that the information in the answer choice has to be fully supported by the passage. Otherwise this would be a must be true question.

In this case, we have the following reasoning in the passage:

Premises: FL205 <-some-> B218 - > BM
Conclusion: FL205 <-some-> Not FLM

Answer choice E provides the following condition.

BM - > Not FLM
FLM - > Not BM

Added to the reasoning in the passage this becomes:

FL205 <-some-> B218 - > BM - > Not FLM

This fully validates the conclusion that FL205 <-some-> Not FLM

I hope this helps. Please let me know if you have any other questions.

tomgbean on December 19, 2019

Hi Ben. Thank you for your response. I think i did treat this as a must be true question, which is why I thought the answer choice would reflect the chain of logic in the passage, not add to it.

BenMingov on December 19, 2019

Hi Tom,

You're welcome! Glad we figured it out.

Skyler-Simon on July 9, 2020

Does FL205 - some - not FLM mean NONE of the FL205 students can be FLMs?