October 2010 LSAT Section 3 Question 3

Commentator: If a political administration is both economically successful and successful at protecting individual li...

blake_hogan7 on August 29, 2023

Question 6 - which order should I be studying the modules?

Question 6 is an obvious example of 'Generalization/Example' question from the 'Descriptive Passage' family which was BRIEFLY discussed in no great detail in an earlier module. I was told that being able to identify these structures like that of 'Generalization/Family' would help me optimize my test taking in the logical reasoning/reading comp section, but here I am once again encountering a question with an obvious structure that I have not yet learned about. It is a bit frustrating, so I am wondering in what order should I be studying the modules for the most optimal learning experience?

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Emil-Kunkin on September 8, 2023

There are a few ways to answer this, and it's a legitimately good question.

I would start by saying that everything builds on itself, and that there's no truly linear way to learn. Ultimately the skills of learning how to dissect an argument like we do in argument structure and main point questions help us in strengthen and weaken questions as well, and even apply to reading comp passages where the author makes and argument. Sufficient and necessary underlie quite a lot of lr questions, but also feature prominently in the games.

My simplest answer is that I do more or less like the order that the modules are laid out in. At least for the first 7-8 of them I think it does make a fair amount of sense. However, I would certainly want. You to feel free to move around as you want: perhaps skip to only the games or reading comp ones. Perhaps focus on the lr question types that involve dissecting arguments (structure, methods of reasoning, main point) before looking at those where we are attacking arguments (strengthen, weaken, flaw, some principle questions, and the two variants of strengthen).

To your more direct question, I'm not a big fan of trying to memorize or prepare for specific structures. While there certainly are patterns you will see and recurring flaws or ways of proving a point, I think it's much more conducive to learning for you to try to notice patterns in a bottom up manor, rather than to lean on an artificial top-down framework and try to apply that in every case.