Group One: Argument-Based Questions That Require You to Evaluate Reasoning
(Includes: Identify the Flaw, Basic Assumption, Required Assumption, Strengthen the Argument, Weaken the Argument, Supporting Principle & Conform to Principle, Sufficient Assumption, Match the Flaw)
For all of the question types in this group, our task is to identify an argument in the stimulus, figure out why the support given is not enough to justify the point made, and then to address this problem in one way or another, per what is being asked of us in that specific question stem.
Identify the Flaw is the most common Logical Reasoning problem type, and these questions simply ask us to select the answer that most accurately represents the reasoning issue in the argument.
These are very similar to Flaw problems, but instead of expressing the gap in the argument as a reasoning mistake, they represent it as an “assumption” made by the author.
Required Assumption questions, also commonly known as Necessary Assumption questions, ask us to identify the one answer that must be true in order for the argument itself to be valid. Note that the right answer does not have to “fix” the argument in any way—it is simply something that must be true in order for the argument to work at all.
An effective way to test whether an answer is indeed necessary is to try considering the opposite of it. If the opposite of the answer choice would destroy the reasoning in the argument, it’s a great sign that the answer choice is indeed something that is required for the argument to work.
Strengthen questions ask us to identify an answer that helps bridge the gap between the given point and the given support, and Weaken questions ask us to identify an answer that hurts connection or exposes a problem with it.
Keep in mind that Strengthen and Weaken question stems are written in terms of which answer “most strengthens” or “most weakens,” but for all such problems there will only be one answer that actually strengthens or one answer that actually weakens. Our task is never to see which of two answers strengthens more, or weakens more. Our task is to recognize why four answers simply do not perform the given task (most commonly because the wrong answer is not relevant to the given argument), and to find the one answer that does indeed strengthen or does weaken.
These two types of principle questions are very similar. We can think of a principle as being a more general description of the reasoning structure that exists between the support and the conclusion in any given argument. Supporting Principle questions ask us to identify a general reasoning rule that would best justify the author’s reasoning, and Conform to a Principle questions ask us to identity the reasoning rule with which the given argument matches up best.
Sufficient Assumption questions require us to identify one answer that would completely solve the reasoning issue that exists between the given conclusion and support. We want to look for that one right answer that will, when inserted into the argument, make it so that the support does indeed make the conclusion 100% valid.
These problems require us to identify the answer choice that has the same reasoning issue as the original argument. Each of the five answers for these problems will themselves have arguments, with conclusion and support that must be evaluated, and so you should expect for these problems to take a little bit longer to solve than others.
Original article and pictures take www.thelsattrainer.com site
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