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Here's a Logical Reasoning question from the October 2004 LSAT.
Let's make a short chain of phrases, as usual, to show how the argument progresses (this can be done with underlining, once you feel comfortable just doing that):
In Dracula, vampires become bats --> people think this is essential to all vampire stories --> Not true --> Many vampire stories before Dracula
The argument's basically saying that vampires turning into bats isn't essential to vampire myths because there are myths before Dracula. What's the jump in the logic here, the place where the reasoning breaks down? The argument jumps from the idea that some vampire myths predate Dracula to the idea that vampires becoming bats isn't essential to the vampire myth. If this connection is really true, older myths must not have had the vampire-to-bat component. That would show that the vampire-to-bat component isn't essential to vampire myths, since older vampire myths didn't always have that component.
So, let's pre-phrase an answer. The argument assumes something like "some of the vampire myths that predate Dracula didn't have a vampire-to-bat component." We see right away that choice D fits this well, since it mentions the vampire-to-bat component not being in one of the pre-Dracula myths. Let's go through the other choices quickly:
A) Out of scope. What the argument's assuming in saying that the presence of pre-Dracula myths means that the vampire-to-bat component isn't essential to vampire myths is that one of the old myths doesn't include that component. Whether it portrays vampires as nocturnal or diurnal doesn't matter.
B) Out of scope. What matters here is chronology (pre-Dracula), not location (Central America).
C) Wrong for the same reason as B. Location isn't important...whether or not there were pre-Dracula myths outside Europe doesn't matter. What the argument's really assuming is that some pre-Dracula myths didn't have the vampire-to-bat component.
D) Correct.
E) Out of scope. What Stoker was familiar with doesn't matter here. What matters is that there were pre-Dracula myths without the vampire-to-bat component, whether or not Stoker knew of them.
Remember:
1) Use a chain of phrases (underlining accomplishes this best on test day because it's faster, but for practice on this blog, writing them out makes things clearer) and a pre-phrase to answer the question.
2) Get rid of answer choices that are out of scope, or don't directly bear on the issue that is important to this question. Sounds simple, but sometimes all the wrong answers are in this category, as was the case here, and people still get tripped up.
I am very new to the LSAT, so forgive my ignorance here, but do the questions vary widely in difficulty? Would this be considered an easier question for this particular section?
ReplyDeleteNo need to apologize!
ReplyDeleteYes, some questions are more difficult than others; they don't necessarily go from easiest to hardest in order though, as is the case on some tests, like the SAT. I would call this a moderately difficult one...there's no official rating scale or anything, but that's my hunch.
Hope that helps.