Frustrating LR barrier Forum

[piney]

I've been studying for the LSAT on and off since last spring. I've read through all the good LR books. Although I don't spend as much time on certain questions, and I've gotten a lot better at recognizing correct and wrong answer choices right away, I'm still getting 2 or 3 questions wrong in each section. They're almost always questions where I was 99% sure I had the correct answer, and sometimes when I go back to it, I still can't figure out why I was wrong.

For example, PT 58, Section 4, q.9. "A" is an attractive answer, but because the stimulus says nothing about how the snakes "appear," only that the disease is "difficult to detect," I jumped on answer choice B, which isn't perfect, but is easier to "inferr" from the stimulous than A. It turns out A is correct.

Questions like this are destroying me. What am I doing wrong, and how to I start getting -0 or -1 in each section? I have less than two weeks, but really can't afford to get a this many wrong in each LR section.

[SumStalwart]

With these questions, I would spend as long as it takes to understand why the correct choices are correct and the wrong are wrong. At this level, you cannot simply drill, you are already comfortable with the information, you just need to fine tune your logic.

My fluctuation is from 0 to 3 per LR section (the least that I have missed was -2 out of both LR sections combined), so I still have some work to do. However, I have seen the most gains from breaking down the problems that I missed. If you don't understand why an answer is wrong, think about it until you do. This is how you'll overcome the plateau.

[Yakitate]

I jumped on answer choice B, which isn't perfect, but is easier to "inferr" from the stimulous than A. It turns out A is correct.

With this question type, the answer has to be perfect; There is no gray area for inference questions. Either the information in the passage DEFINITELY lets you draw some conclusion, or it doesn't.

The last two sentences of the stimulus prove A to be correct.

B cannot be inferred from the passage. Why? Because a greater proportion of pythons with the disease doesn't mean they're more susceptible to contracting it. Lets imagine 10,000 total pythons come from north america from various breeders from various pet stores and because of highly regulated cleanliness standards only 3 of them are infected with the disease. That's a pretty small proportion of snakes with the disease, but perhaps the proportion is so small due to the cleanliness standards of snake breeding in north amerca. On the flip side, what if only a total of only 10 pythons come from Africa and all 10 of these pythons happen to come from a filthy disease-laden pet store and 3 of the pythons become infected with the disease because the store is just gross. Does it mean that these pythons in Africa are more susceptible to contracting the disease? No, it just means they came from an unclean environment where they were more likely to get the disease.

In answer B, I think by "susceptible" they mean "more physiologically or biologically vulnerable to contracting" the disease, which cannot be inferred from the passage.