I think that you're a couple of weeks out. What would be most impactful for you right now with this conversation? I think I, so I'm really focused on what's always nice. This go around and have drilled a lot of different types of questions.
And I think that in noticing some of the weaker spots for me, any kind of strategy that would be helpful for must be true questions or even strengthen and weaken questions. Those are the two that I think I feel like the answers are so obvious that I sometimes like don't like overlook them. So if you've any strategy there or also I'm pulling up a protest that I got a couple of questions incorrect on, I don't really know how this goes. Let's start with the general questions about must be true is in strength and weaken.
So how are you currently approaching must be true questions? I mean, I think that what's most effective for me is kind of going to the answers, trying to apply each to the premise and then like eliminating and whatever I'm left with is normally like down to two or three and then I just can just simply pick an incorrect one. Okay, okay, do you have a diagram then? If I feel like it makes sense to diagram, I will diagram.
I don't always see the diagram immediately, especially if it's framed in a way that isn't like super obvious that conditional does that help you? Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, there are some cases where it's worth diagramming. And so yeah, in those cases you do want to spot those subtle conditional statements because some will involve indicator words like then or if or when or whenever we're implying necessary sufficient relationships.
Other times it's a little more subtle. And so see if the stimulus is very tightly packed, are there conditional links there or do you see the same variables in multiple sentences or multiple clauses? If you do, that's an indication you might be able to link together those two statements in some way. Right.
And I guess I would apply like absolute terms versus relative terms as well. Exactly. So the more absolute is more likely to be a conditional. And something else you said about like weak language I think is relevant here too because must be true questions.
You do want more moderate language. You could even call it weak language like saying some or at least a few versus all or a majority. It's more likely that more moderate language is supported by or guaranteed by the stimulus then more extreme language would be. Right.
Which all makes sense. I'm trying to pull up. What's the language that you have in mind here? Well, okay.
So this question is asking or rather the premise kind of lays out that like a lot of absolute language in small countries in the Southern Hemisphere permits seats on a security council. And then it gives another so this question breaks down like an overarching rule and then says each of these countries is in favor of something. And then also like there's an and and also has a greater role. And then you get a negative which is some countries are like this and then which of the following must also be true.
So I think that when you're approaching a question where you have all of those positive conditions and negative condition is the best way to approach that question to take the negative role and like take a positive positive of it or. Yeah, I think there are some tricks for translation. So if you said something like no countries in the Southern Hemisphere are on the security council, that means if if something is a small country, then it must not be on the security council. So by removing that negative at the beginning, we can at least have one of the variables positive and then maybe it can more easily link to the others.
Okay. Yeah, which I think probably was where my mistake came from this question. So in some cases, you might want to diagram each statement individually if the links are not immediately obvious. Sometimes they scramble the order of things.
And in other cases, you might have to diagram it by and link them as you go. But you also want to have the contra positive available to you as a tool. And I often recommend especially on tougher questions that if you end up with one long conditional, you actually take the contra positive immediately before scanning through the choices because the correct answer could either come from the original statement as you diagrammed it or the contra positive and they're of course both equally valid. Yeah, I mean, I think that I feel like a seven and a half out of 10 or approaching conditionals.
I definitely know about like the unless conditionals and things that are kind of triggered a diagram, but I guess how would you recommend drilling conditional statements just getting better at approaching them and diagramming them? Well, you could do a lot of games, for example, so a lot of conditional games that gain out grouping games involve conditional statements. And so you could practice your ability of diagramming them correctly and then linking them together and taking contra positives. But if you want to practice it in logical reasoning, I would say look at a lot of inference questions, a lot of must be true questions, a lot of those will involve for more formal logic, not all of them, but some of them.
A lot of sufficient assumption questions as well involve conditional statements. Okay, this is funny because I would say like on the games, I do decently well and I only go like minus zero or one, but the games I get most hooked up on our grouping games. So like it makes sense that if I have like the consistent problem I have is with conditionals a little bit like that's something that I could be stronger in and it would probably help multifold. Yeah, exactly.
That's awesome. That's definitely an area I would focus right now. You said you only have a few weeks left, but this is one of those big win items here where if you improve on conditionals, then that'll hurt the effect across multiple sections of the exam. That's definitely worth spending some time there.
Okay, great. I did want to talk a little bit about strengthening and we can as well since you raised that. So I would I would structure it a little bit in terms of like what are some alternative possibilities or explanations for the situation in the stimulus? For a weekend question, you want to promote the likelihood of those alternate possibilities in order to make the conclusion less likely given the evidence.
And for a strength in question, you want to downplay alternatives in because by downplaying alternatives, you are then relatively promoting the stated cause or relationship, whatever the evidence is talking about. So I think that with strength in the meeting, particularly, I get a little bit like it becomes a little bit more difficult to prephrase something. Is it recommended or I guess, I mean, like I try to put it in, I try to think about it, but it is like me, you're up really on the subject of timeframe with this, that as many things as I can like attempt to anticipate at some point, like you should have to dive into the questions. Is there either way to prephrase these questions or is it just best if you have a good hold of what the main point is and then go through and like eliminate based on does healthy or you know, does it hurt?
Pre-phrasing is a great tool to have available to you. And if it comes to mind, great. If a particular possibility, possible strength in a week comes to mind, that's excellent. You can scan the choices and look for it.
Maybe it will appear, maybe it won't because it's informal logic. There are multiple ways to strengthen or weaken a given argument. So your prephrase may not be the only one. It's the sort of thing where there's not a mechanical formal mathematical process to come up with pre-phrases because they're informal logic.
It's just basically chance whether you happen to think of it or not, but the more LR questions you do, the more you start to see the patterns and especially these recurring topics that can even make it a little bit easier to prephrase. But I wouldn't rely on it and you can't really. But definitely use it when it comes up. Okay.
Best option is to scan A to E and pick the answer that most strength is or most weakness. Because sometimes you also get two answers that we get and one is substantially more important than the other. Exactly. Yeah.
Okay. That's helpful. Thank you. Awesome.
Great. Hallewell, we're about up for today. But what would you say is the biggest insight you got from our coaching call today? I think in terms of how I should utilize the next week and a half, definitely going to re-vis the conditionals which have like a umbrella approach for a lot of parts of the test, not just one type of logical re-sanguine and then also just going to kind of not get super bogged down with the details of the start of the weekend and just I on the prize go through a limit as, you know, I go through each answer.
Perfect. Great. I will please keep in touch as you move forward. Happy to help you however I can, Hallewell.
Thanks for tuning into the show. Please subscribe if you haven't done so already to be notified of new episodes as I release them and feel free to reach out if you need anything at all as you move forward with your prep. I'm happy to help however I can. In the meantime, I wish you all the best and take care.