Imagine this: You’re home for the holidays, and your Aunt Beth is telling you all about her new diet. This year she’s cutting out turnips, she says, because she read somewhere that one in five people who eat turnips eventually get cancer. If you haven’t tuned her out by now, you’re probably rolling your eyes because her argument is ridiculous. Okay, Aunt Beth, but what proportion of the general population develops cancer over a lifetime? How many people were surveyed? How did this study select its participants—is this statistic based on a representative sample? How many of these people smoke? How many people who don’t eat turnips end up getting cancer?
She’s made a silly argument, and you’ve already come up with several commonsense reasons why her argument doesn’t hold water. This is the main skill that Logical Reasoning tests. Get better at thinking critically by poking holes in bad arguments, and you’ll get better at Logical Reasoning. You’ll also become a force to be reckoned with at the dinner table.
Logical Reasoning questions generally fall into two categories: “Open” question types and “Closed” question types. Don’t get too caught up in these labels. The best strategy for all Logical Reasoning questions on the LSAT is simply to take the time to understand the passage, figure out what the question is asking, and make a strong prediction before jumping into the answer choices.
There are, however, certain tried-and-true strategies for each Logical Reasoning question type. Learn more by clicking on each of the question types listed below.
Student A reads the passage quickly and passively (“Ok, yup, got it”) and, 10–15 seconds later, moves on to the question. (“Alright, I guess I’m looking for the conclusion of this argument. What was the conclusion again?”) They scan the passage again (“Let’s see if it says ‘therefore’ anywhere!”) but can’t immediately identify it.
By the time they take a third look, they’re distracted by the feeling that they’ve spent too long on this question already. (“I’ll just go into the answer choices and see if anything sounds good.”) They proceed to the answer choices dazed and confused. They narrow it down to a few choices, don’t feel great about any of them, pick one quickly, and rush to the next question to repeat this process.
Student B reads the passage methodically, pausing after each sentence to digest what just happened. They spend a full minute on the passage—maybe longer for the tougher ones. If it’s an argument, they understand exactly what is being argued before moving on to the question, and they’ve already identified one or several flaws in the argument.
They read the question (“What is the conclusion of this argument?”) and immediately predict the answer because they understood the argument the first time around. Reading the answer choices, they find the one that matches their prediction, confidently pick it, and move on, knowing that they just got yet another question right.
Take a guess which student will do better on the LSAT.
Most question types are open. Here is a brief summary of each open LSAT Logical Reasoning question type:
A Live subscription to LSAT Demon unlocks opportunities to practice Logical Reasoning questions in a group setting every day:
