Watch Out for Passage Wording on the LSAT!

Many answer choices on the LSAT are written to be enticing. Some answers will be blatantly wrong, but most will only be slightly wrong.

That’s why you have to pay close attention to passage wording in Reading Comp and Logical Reasoning. Both sections make you read huge chunks of text closely but quickly, so when you’re scanning the questions for a passage the words start to run together. Take this snippet, from a very scientific passage about cats:

Traditionally, cats have been excellent self-cleaners. Housecats, more than other cats in the animal kingdom, rely on their tongues for bathing and fur maintenance. While their self-cleaning methods are effective, they also sometimes result in challenges like hairballs.

This is a shorter (and much weirder) passage than one you’ll find on the LSAT, but you can use the same strategies in addressing it. Say the first question asks us for a statement that is true according to the author and gives us four possible answer choices. The first choice might be easy to eliminate.

(A) Cats are excellent space travelers.

A gimme. Space travel is completely off-topic, so we can scratch this one. Let’s look at the rest.

(B) Housecats have proven throughout history to be some of the best self-cleaners in the animal kingdom.

Immediately we remember reading a lot of these words. “History,” “self-cleaners,” and “the animal kingdom” are all mentioned, and the self-cleaning skills of housecats are compared favorably to those of other cats. However, while the passage tells us that cats are “excellent” self-cleaners, the author doesn’t establish that housecats would rank highly among all self-cleaning creatures in the animal kingdom. This might be true in real life (and it almost sounds true in the passage) but we can’t infer it from what the author tells us.

OK, how about this one?

(C) In a way, self-cleaning methods are dangerous because they lead to hairballs.

This statement sounds familiar, and it certainly seems possible that hairballs could be a danger. It’s not true according to the passage, though. The author says that self-cleaning sometimes leads to hairballs, and while this can be a challenge for a cat, it’s not necessarily dangerous. The wording here is slightly too definitive, and the characterization is extreme.

And finally:

(D) Cats such as lions rely less on their tongues for bathing than do housecats.
The middle statement in the passage implies this. Then again, we already knew it was correct: since we paid attention to extreme, errant, and misleading wording, we were able to eliminate the other answer choices.

We can rest comfortably knowing we’ve arrived at the right answer. Plus, we learned something about cats.

Chris Black is a Content Developer at Knewton, helping students with their LSAT prep. He’s also really into barbecue. Law School Podcaster listeners can use a promo code to receive a discount on the Knewton LSAT course.

For more information about the LSAT, check out our podcasts "The LSAT: Everything You Need to Know About the Test," and "Comparing LSAT Test Prep Companies".

Attitude Problems on the LSAT

Attitude questions — you know, those mildly irritating ones that pretty much ask you how the author feels about something — may be the trickiest questions on the Reading Comp section of the test. If only those authors would just come out and say how they felt about the topic (I think that Yeats’ poetry is crap)! Luckily for us, these attitudes do come across loud and clear, as long as you know what types of language to look for.

Here are some things to keep in mind:

1. Eliminate any answer choice with the words indifferent or neutral—if the author didn’t feel anything about the subject, the LSAT writers wouldn’t be asking the question.

2. Check out the adjectives and adverbs that describe the topic: are these mostly positive (comprehensive, informative, insightful, etc) or negative (disappointing, unfortunate, incomplete)?

3. Check out the verbs that are associated with the topic. Does the author say that it attempts, succeeds, or fails at anything?

4. Unless your findings are OVERWHELMINGLY positive or STAGGERINGLY negative, eliminate extreme answer choices (outright disdain, ardent admiration, unmitigated criticism, unconditional acceptance, etc).

Let’s take a look at this excerpt to see if we can figure what the author’s attitude toward Koons’s study is:

Koons’s study provides one of the more enlightening accounts of the Great Migration. Unfortunately, it fails to fully address the reaction of Northern whites to this sudden influx of African Americans.

Okay, so the author describes the study as one of the more enlightening accounts. That’s pretty positive! However, he then adds a negative qualification: it unfortunately fails to fully address something. So, the author has a somewhat positive attitude about Koons’s study. We’ll keep this in mind as we go through the answer choices:

A. Enthusiastic reverence

This is an extreme answer choice. We know that the author feels positively about Koons’s study, but we also know that he has some reservations about it. So this one is out.

B. Complete indifference
This choice claims the author doesn’t have an opinion on the subject—we can eliminate it right off the bat.

C. Qualified rejection
This suggests that the author’s attitude is mostly negative, but we know the author’s feelings are generally positive.

D. Reserved admiration
There’s our correct answer! The author shows admiration for the study (it is one of the more enlightening accounts.) We know this admiration is reserved, because the author points out one of the study’s unfortunate shortcomings (it fails to fully address…)

E. Pointed skepticism
Here’s another extreme answer choice. Plus, it’s overwhelming negative, while we know the author has somewhat positive feelings about the study.

Emily Holleman is a Content Developer at Knewton, helping students with their LSAT preparation. Law School Podcaster listeners can use a promo code to receive a discount on the Knewton LSAT course.

For more information about the LSAT, check out our podcasts "The LSAT: Everything You Need to Know About the Test," and "Comparing LSAT Test Prep Companies".