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bcrossMay 31, 2020
Which questions to diagram
How can you anticipate which questions to diagram? So far I’ve seen in the key takeaway section that it can be beneficial to skip pre-diagramming, but I’m still confused on how to identify those questions.
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Thanks for the question! Figuring out which questions to diagram and which ones to leave alone is definitely a skill that comes with time and that you’ll figure out more as you begin to do more questions. That being said, there are some indications. For example, generally speaking, the shorter and simpler a stimulus is, the less likely I am to fully diagram it out, since I can keep track of everything in my head.
There are also “indication words” that usually (not always) suggest that logical chains will be involved, and so when you see these words, it is much more likely that you’ll have to diagram. For example, words like “if,” “only if,” “unless” often signal some kind of diagramming will happen, especially when you see terms repeated in different sentences that signal chaining together different sentences. Other words might be quantifiers, like “most,” “some,” or “all/none” (all/none is the big one here, in my opinion). And as I said, as you go on, you’ll figure out which questions have kinds of logical chains you’ll need to put together, versus which ones you can just read the stimulus and go into the answer choices. Overdiagramming can definitely lead to wasted time, which is not good on the LSAT, but diagrams are definitely a useful tool we want to use when we can.
Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.
