This is a continuation of the Simple Guide on Strengthen and Weaken Questions. Take a look to refresh all the potential weakening and strengthening answer types. The hardest questions I have ever come across are Strengthen, Weaken, or Most Strongly Supported. I recommend looking at that guide too, specifically “The Best Way to Improve on Hard MSS Questions”. The answer choice (AC) ranking is highly applicable to Strengthen/Weaken questions.
Table of Contents:
Strengthen/Weaken (S/W) questions have lots of curveballs, perhaps the most out of the question types. These questions can be difficult due to having to rank multiple “correct” ACs, decode causal logic, and evaluate if and how five divergent ACs can affect the conclusion. Finally, they are often full of abstract language that makes it difficult to understand the argument we need to strengthen or weaken.
S/W appears on the surface to be a more intuitive question type, but tends to be problematic for advanced students looking to perfect LR. Under time pressure, the harder S/W questions can pose significant difficulty and often leave us guessing between two choices.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, a strategy I have seen improve student success on S/W involves initially doing a shallower read of the stimulus.
Most are not capable of memorizing a difficult stimulus, retaining all nuance, plugging in each AC, and considering the impact on the argument without glancing back.
This applies specifically to hard S/W questions, as the ACs can be unpredictable. In the Simple Guide, we see how many different types of ACs we may have to consider. Point being, the correct AC can be completely out of left field, requiring us to re-read the stimulus to consider its impact anyway.
Experiment yourself; I find it can be more efficient to spend most of our time plugging in ACs to the stimulus and comparing them. I will elaborate on this comparing process near the end.
Try this for an example of what I’m talking about: PT 147 S4 Q22
S/W questions involving causal logic can be some of the most convoluted and brutal to understand. There are so many possible ways to S/W a cause/effect relationship, so our best bet is to get a gist of the relationship, its support, and move straight to plugging in the ACs.
PT 124 S1 Q8: Brutal question that only ⅓ of students get correct. Take as much time as you need and try to spell out the case for all contender ACs.
PT 146 S2 Q22: Take the time to write out the rationale for your contender ACs. Another good exercise in AC ranking, which will be covered soon.
The second question is a particularly good example of one of the hardest traits present in S/W questions. We sometimes have to get creative to understand how an AC affects the conclusion. Often, there will be a few that seem to fit, and paying very close attention to the wording of the conclusion can help disqualify the wrong one.
Which of the following most strengthens the argument?
School District X received a huge funding increase last year. Soon after, School Y in District X started a school-wide free lunch program. End-of-year test scores there improved significantly from last year. Thus, the test score increase was primarily due to students’ increased caloric
intake.
A) A new advisory board at School Y ensured the lunches had the optimal ratio of all vitamins relevant for brain performance.
B) Upon receiving the funding increase, District X mandated that each school launch and use all available funds for one new initiative every year.
C) School Y’s test scores rose from the lowest to the highest in District X over the course of the year.
Choice A
This looks relevant. The “brain performance” seems good for our conclusion. However, the conclusion specifies caloric intake. Not food intake or anything broader. Having the optimal ratio of vitamins, not even quantity, does not do much to support that the students consumed higher calories, nor that those calories were the cause of the improvement.
This AC doesn’t do much. It tells us something positive about the lunch program. Perhaps it supports the idea that it was taken seriously, and thus more likely to provide a significant increase in calories.
However, it could also be interpreted as a weakener; the cause of the test score increase was the vitamins and not extra calories.
Choice B
On first glance, easy to overlook. However, it tells us that this was the only thing that School Y spent the new funding increase on. This eliminates lots of alternative causes. A “huge” district-wide funding increase could mean tutoring, better teachers, etc., all of which could have contributed to the test score rise. This isolates it to the lunch program, and also provides support that the program was well-funded (“huge” increase, and school Y’s share was spent only on it).
Does this do a ton to support the conclusion? No. However, it concretely, without requiring any assumptions, rules out alternate causes.
Choice C
This may seem tempting. However, there are multiple issues here.
Conclusion
B is the best answer. It provides guaranteed support without any assumptions by ruling out alternative causes. A and C both require assumptions to obtain a positive effect on the conclusion.
Ranking Answer Choices
In difficult S/W questions, we will have the oft-frustrating task of ranking the better of two ACs. This process is very similar to the one I outlined in the MSS Guide. With MSS questions, we quantify the leap an AC needs to make so it “Must Be true”. We then compare the gaps between competing ACs and determine which gap is smaller.
With ambiguous S/W choices, we quantify the assumption each AC would take to achieve our goal (either strengthening or weakening). We then compare the assumptions between ACs again and determine which is more reasonable. As mentioned in the MSS guide, write down and compare the required assumptions for each competing AC.
Often, we find that we overlooked an assumption that made an AC inferior, usually because it seemed really strong. Quantifying the assumptions precisely, instead of going off “vibes,” is how you get closer to perfecting logical reasoning.
Try these. All are difficult questions where a trap AC was chosen at roughly equivalent rates to the correct one.
