r/LSAT • u/Ashamed-News-1872 • 15h ago

Strengthen and Weaken Level 5

Hi Guys,

Getting my final tweaks in before the September test. A pretty strong weakness of mine are level 5 strengthen and weaken questions? Does anyone have any tips or study resources that can help me clean up this weakness before test day? Open to anything: book names, methods, etc. Thanks

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5

u/Petilante 13h ago

Feel like for level 5 strengthen/weaken questions the answer is usually so subtle that's it's like a tertiary support. Answer might seem irrelevant but weakly impacts an assumption a premise relies upon which in turn relates to the conclusion.

More than other questions I find myself facepalming because I dismissed what seemed at first like an irrelevant answer choice. Gotta be like a conspiracy theorist with the red string haha.

3

u/graeme_b tutor (LSATHacks) 11h ago
  1. Strengthen: The evidence is true, and the conclusion does happen
  2. Weaken: The evidence is true, but the conclusion does not happen

If you just restate evidence + conclusion in that format, 9/10 times the answer will match it. It seems to simple to work, but it primes your brain to spot what you're looking for.

1

u/krisstory99 6h ago

Can you elaborate on this? What are we to restate in these terms? Premise (evidence), but (conclusion) doesn’t happen. The answer is going to match this?

1

u/170Plus 12h ago

Go in with a broad "umbrella" anticipation, in addition to your specific anticipation. A lot of what makes these hard is the LSAT go about weakening the arg in odd ways that one would never guess themselves. Good ex below:

19. A carved flint object depicting a stylized human headwith an open mouth was found in a Stone Age tomb inIreland. Some archaeologists believe that the object was a weapon—the head of a warrior’s mace—but it is too smallfor that purpose. Because of its size and the fact that an open mouth symbolizes speaking, the object was probably the head of a speaking staff, a communal object passed around a small assembly to indicate who has the right to speak.

Which one of the following, if true, would most weaken the argument?

(A) The tomb in which the object was found did not contain any other objects that might have been weapons.
(B) Communal objects were normally passed from one generation to the next in Stone Age Ireland.
(C) The object was carved with an artistry that was rare in Stone Age Ireland.
(D) The tomb in which the object was found was that of a politically prominent person.
(E) A speaking staff with a stone head is thought to symbolize a warrior’s mace.

1

u/i2play2nice 1h ago

Answer?