Understanding the flaw but unable to pick an answer Forum

[fire_fried_rice]

One of my problems is as the title says. I can find the flaw and see where the problem lies between the conclusion and the premises. However, when it comes to picking out the right answer choice, I sometime have trouble, especially when the answer choices are worded in a "difficult" way or not straightforward. For example, on preptest 14 section 2 question 10, I was able to correctly identify the flaw as problem between "overall volume of business" and "larger market share". This stood out blatantly and I went down looking for an answer choice that touches upon that. Yet, I could not bring myself to pick B) assumes that outdoor advertising increased market share by some other means than by diverting trade from competing business. Having read helping guides on other forum, I was able to understand why B is the correct answer choice.

But this sort of problem is really frustrating me and discouraging as well. Of course, part of LSAT is to fully understand the answer choices, but I feel that it's my lack of understanding or lack of ability to think more "freely" that prevents me from picking the right answer choice even with good understanding of the flaw or etc. How can i overcome this? Is the only answer "just practice and focus?"

[MercW07]

Yeah practice will rectify this problem. The LSAT likes to describe simple things in the most convoluted way possible, but with practice youll be able to better understand what they are saying.

[Experiment626]

So, this is how I learned to deal with flaw questions. The ACs have three common types so read the answer choices and evaluate as follows:
Overlooks/Fails To Consider or anything that says something similar- does the statement being made weaken the argument?
Presumes/takes for granted- Is this answer choice a necessary assumption for the argument
Descriptors- Fails to distinguish, Infers, etc- See if the AC describes the issue with the argument

[Mikey]

yeah, the only advice I really have for this is to practice flaw questions in bulks. they use very convoluted language, especially for harder questions, but once you do them over and over you figure the language since they use the same flaws over and over all the time.

flaw Q's ended up being my freebie questions in LR, and I practiced TF out of them in bulks, particularly the harder ones though since they tend to have more of the convoluted language.

[Deardevil]

The thing with flaws is...
Especially for this question,
they are also necessary assumptions.
Realizing that makes this problem easier.

So the government decides to get rid of advertising.
Merchants are against this because they would lose business OVERALL. Why do they think this?
Apparently, there is a report that says that every industry that uses advertising makes more profit.

Okay, what is the flaw that you have come up with?
To me, it looks like the merchants ASSUME that advertisements CAUSE more bank.
Since we do not know what industries rely on to make money, merely assuming something does not result in reliable evidence.

(A) Presupposing that there are no good reasons for restricting the use of outdoor advertising in Penglai
No... Merchants do not ASSUME there are no good reasons; they assume something else.
(B) Assuming without giving justification that the outdoor advertising increased market share
by some means other than by diverting trade from competing businesses
Bingo. Merchants definitely assume that just having advertisements will be sufficient to lure customers.
Try negating this. If they ONLY think that advertising increased market share by diverting trade from other businesses...
How would the OVERALL volume of business drop? Industries are stealing the customers from its competitors, not losing them altogether.
(C) Ignoring the question of whether the government's survey of the island could be objective
What survey? You mean the report? But the merchants take it at face value, so...
(D) Failing to establish whether the market-share advantage
enjoyed by businesses employing outdoor advertising was precisely proportionate to the amount of advertising
Why does it have to be precise? How does one even measure precisely?
(E) Disregarding the possibility that the government's proposed restrictions are unconstitutional
Where does this even happen?

So view flaw questions as NA questions.
This is a good example: merchants think advertising makes more money than without it when perhaps it could be due to something else.

[fire_fried_rice]

yeah, the only advice I really have for this is to practice flaw questions in bulks. they use very convoluted language, especially for harder questions, but once you do them over and over you figure the language since they use the same flaws over and over all the time.

flaw Q's ended up being my freebie questions in LR, and I practiced TF out of them in bulks, particularly the harder ones though since they tend to have more of the convoluted language.

could I ask how you practiced the flaw questions? To a certain extent, I also do believe that the flaw questions are freebies; the flaws, most of the time, stand out. And even if they do not stand out, I can still find the flaw by going through the answer choices. It is just that the convoluted answer choices are giving me a pain

[fire_fried_rice]

The thing with flaws is...
Especially for this question,
they are also necessary assumptions.
Realizing that makes this problem easier.

So the government decides to get rid of advertising.
Merchants are against this because they would lose business OVERALL. Why do they think this?
Apparently, there is a report that says that every industry that uses advertising makes more profit.

Okay, what is the flaw that you have come up with?
To me, it looks like the merchants ASSUME that advertisements CAUSE more bank.
Since we do not know what industries rely on to make money, merely assuming something does not result in reliable evidence.

(A) Presupposing that there are no good reasons for restricting the use of outdoor advertising in Penglai
No... Merchants do not ASSUME there are no good reasons; they assume something else.
(B) Assuming without giving justification that the outdoor advertising increased market share
by some means other than by diverting trade from competing businesses
Bingo. Merchants definitely assume that just having advertisements will be sufficient to lure customers.
Try negating this. If they ONLY think that advertising increased market share by diverting trade from other businesses...
How would the OVERALL volume of business drop? Industries are stealing the customers from its competitors, not losing them altogether.
(C) Ignoring the question of whether the government's survey of the island could be objective
What survey? You mean the report? But the merchants take it at face value, so...
(D) Failing to establish whether the market-share advantage
enjoyed by businesses employing outdoor advertising was precisely proportionate to the amount of advertising
Why does it have to be precise? How does one even measure precisely?
(E) Disregarding the possibility that the government's proposed restrictions are unconstitutional
Where does this even happen?

So view flaw questions as NA questions.
This is a good example: merchants think advertising makes more money than without it when perhaps it could be due to something else.

My problem here was that I was not able to really understand how "by some other means other than by diverting trade" meant that advertising outdoor affected the overall volume of market. To some degree, I think I was obsessed with the idea of "volume" and "profit" since they are two very different things. I anticipated an answer as " the merchant mistakenly attributes the obtainable profit with market share.." or something along that line that would say the profit does not equal to market share.

[Deardevil]

It is not obvious.
I got it wrong when I first did it.
But once you drill enough, flaws become simple.

It is okay not to understand what a choice means
because not all of them are provable or comprehensible.
Regardless, this question is fairly easy when it comes down to process of elimination.

[lsat360lsat]

Understanding the flaws and the way answer choices are typically worded really helped me make substantial leaps on Logical Reasoning.

But yeah, as others have said, this unfortunately came from a lot of practice and getting used to the weird language of the LSAT. It's something that I still even work on now, 6 months into studying.