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Reviewing Incorrect Answers

Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 5:49 pm
by yaleber
When I review an incorrect answer choice I'm not sure what specifically I should look for. I guess what I'm asking is: is there a way I can be as specific as possible in finding out the reason why my answer was wrong? EX: scope is a sure reason but for the most part I find myself saying "ohh yeah okay I guess that answer doesn't make sense". I apologize for being really vague on this but it seems I find a way to justify its falsity without really thinking carefully. Any help would be great. Thanks.

Re: Reviewing Incorrect Answers

Posted: Tue Nov 15, 2011 7:48 pm
by Manhattan LSAT Noah
Good question.

I think you should start by assigning categories to wrong answers. But, that can be a cop-out, especially if you're saying "out of scope" for every other answer! What I have students do is explain them to me. What I find is that the process of verbalizing the issue to be a useful mental workout (and I obviously don't accept "it doesn't make sense"). If you're short on time, just work on the wrong answer choices that you couldn't easily or quickly eliminate - but ideally you're doing this for all of them.

There are question-specific issues too. For example, with sufficient assumption questions with a lot of conditional logic, you'd probably want to figure out how the wrong answers relate to the stimulus both formally and in a common sense way. With matching questions, see whether the wrong answers have conclusion, premise or linkage mismatches (or combination of those). I think some of the most rewarding and most difficult wrong answers are those to the tricky flaw questions. For many of those, it's about saying "you didn't do THAT" - and say what the that is and be sure you know.

Also, you may want to see what our teachers say about the wrong answers on our explanation forums and see if your ideas match (and, if you disagree, post your reasoning - maybe you're right).

I hope that helps.