Q27

[imasexybastard]

Could someone please explain this question, especially why B is correct. I am able to locate the approach taken by mainstream US historians (26-29), but I do not see why B best represents this.

[ManhattanPrepLSAT2]

This is a very difficult problem, but here are the connections that make (B) an apt analogy:

biographer / historian --> similar - one writes a history of a person, the other of a group of people (like a nation)

"Precocity apparent in early achievements" / at a very young age, the U.S. was "expanding sphere of influence" -- similar - notice the consistent continuation of the analogy of what happens with one person / a group of people

"success attributable to innate talent" / "new inevitability...nations...their destinies" -- similar (though not a perfect match) -- both about what was meant to be or inherent --

This makes (B) the most strongly related of the answers.

[jennifer]

I find this question and this question type very difficult. Can someone please take me through this step by step...thank you

[noah]

This isn't an easy question, but luckily most of the wrong answers were pretty glaring if you had a general sense of what the mainstream historians were doing at that time.

First, you have to ground yourself in what it's asking about. It wants to know what's similar to the approach taken by certain historians. You'd probably want to quickly look back to firm up what those folks believed. You can find that in lines 26-34, where we learn that those historians were glorifying the US and making it seem like it was part of the country's destiny, inner-character, etc. Basically, they were saying that the US rocks, and is supposed to rock because we're innately rocking.

(B) has this same sort of innate rocking. The novelist has "innate talent" that led her to be a success.

As for the wrong answers:

(A) is about what someone should do - not explaining why someone is great.

(C) is tempting, but there's a difference between being developed for something and having an innate ability to do that thing.

(D) has nothing to do with innate ability, glorification, etc. Out of scope.

(E) also has nothing to do with innate ability, glorification, etc.

[Acing LSAT]

I do not understand where you see the historians saw the US as innately "rocking."

I see that they saw the US as rocking and it will continue to rock but I do not see evidence that it was seen as innate.

If something is innate that implies, that unless it is stopped, it will continue. The historians viewed the US as continuing to rock. But it could continue to rock for a long time even if it is not innate. (E) also mentions something continuing.

The only other factor is that as Noah points out the US was viewed as "rocking" (E) is much more drab and would be a stretch to call it rocking.

[noah]

I do not understand where you see the historians saw the US as innately "rocking."

I see that they saw the US as rocking and it will continue to rock but I do not see evidence that it was seen as innate.

If something is innate that implies, that unless it is stopped, it will continue. The historians viewed the US as continuing to rock. But it could continue to rock for a long time even if it is not innate. (E) also mentions something continuing.

The only other factor is that as Noah points out the US was viewed as "rocking" (E) is much more drab and would be a stretch to call it rocking.

Good line of reasoning. It's always tricky when you simplify wording since you inevitably (innately ) move away from the text.

In defense, I'd say that lines 26-36 introduce "temperaments" meaning that it's part of who a nation. It's debatable about whether "innate" is the best word for that, but I'd say that we're definitely in the land of "we're rocking not because of luck, but because we actually, deep down, rock."

Reading over this discussion, I'm cringing about "rocking" - but while it may be rocky word choice, I think the underlying idea--the foundation--is rock solid.

[ttunden]

I really do not understand how B is the answer to this question.

When I am doing parallel questions I typically write on the side by the Q traits that I will be looking for.

The things I was looking for when doing this question were: Nationalism, Glorification, Colonialism, and identity.

Basically something positive or something, I guess you can say, overly exaggerated. Something magnificent.

I eliminated A because I don't think there is anything temporal about the mainstream historians approach

I eliminated D because it appeared to be very irrelevant. Also, it did not match my prephase

I eliminated E because its a different reasoning and also it didn't match my prephase

I was downt o B and C. B didn't really match so I picked C. It was very enthusastic, over exaggerated, and ultimately positive.

1.) what does B even mean? Seems like the writer wrote it incorrectly or something

also what do you mean by the power of America was innate? I saw some of the posters here arguing about it. I am not seeing the same thing Noah was seeing earlier.


Thanks.

[noah]

I really do not understand how B is the answer to this question.

When I am doing parallel questions I typically write on the side by the Q traits that I will be looking for.

The things I was looking for when doing this question were: Nationalism, Glorification, Colonialism, and identity.

Basically something positive or something, I guess you can say, overly exaggerated. Something magnificent.

I eliminated A because I don't think there is anything temporal about the mainstream historians approach

I eliminated D because it appeared to be very irrelevant. Also, it did not match my prephase

I eliminated E because its a different reasoning and also it didn't match my prephase

I was downt o B and C. B didn't really match so I picked C. It was very enthusastic, over exaggerated, and ultimately positive.

1.) what does B even mean? Seems like the writer wrote it incorrectly or something

also what do you mean by the power of America was innate? I saw some of the posters here arguing about it. I am not seeing the same thing Noah was seeing earlier.


Thanks.

The point of that section of the passage is that the mainstream historians were all about the glory of the nation and how the nation state was a "historical force" - meaning that history is seen as a fruition of the nation state. That's where the innate stuff comes in.

(C) is about how something is the best at X because it was designed to do X. There's no discussion of the intent of US creation.

(B) is about how early signs showed that a novelist was destined to be great. It's in her DNA, so to speak, just like the US was destined to be great.

[MayaM405]

Do you have any drills/tips/methods for distilling the text in this way? I read the same lines and prephased this question with a focus on expansion I ended up picking E just because the "expanding spheres of influence" seemed to suggest that something was happening over and over again, any other connections to the text felt like grasping at straws.

Of course I literally see glorification in the text, and upon review I understand how B can be correct. But for pretty much every analogy question I can't imagine myself undergoing a step by step process where I am prephasing and looking for the actual correct answer. Any ideas to hone this skill so I know what to look for would be amazing.

Thank you!

I do not understand where you see the historians saw the US as innately "rocking."

I see that they saw the US as rocking and it will continue to rock but I do not see evidence that it was seen as innate.

If something is innate that implies, that unless it is stopped, it will continue. The historians viewed the US as continuing to rock. But it could continue to rock for a long time even if it is not innate. (E) also mentions something continuing.

The only other factor is that as Noah points out the US was viewed as "rocking" (E) is much more drab and would be a stretch to call it rocking.

Good line of reasoning. It's always tricky when you simplify wording since you inevitably (innately ) move away from the text.

In defense, I'd say that lines 26-36 introduce "temperaments" meaning that it's part of who a nation. It's debatable about whether "innate" is the best word for that, but I'd say that we're definitely in the land of "we're rocking not because of luck, but because we actually, deep down, rock."

Reading over this discussion, I'm cringing about "rocking" - but while it may be rocky word choice, I think the underlying idea--the foundation--is rock solid.

[ohthatpatrick]

Honestly, you're asking one of the hardest questions there is. I'm not sure how to teach people abstraction.

It's easier to work on dealing with abstract language in LR answer choices and trying to match them to the specifics of the argument.

It's harder when the student needs to go from specific text and extract something abstract.

TIP 1: If it's not obvious already, you have to avoid using any nouns that directly reference the topic.

Since the answers are going to use completely different topics, the commonality they test would have to be something general, like
- a trait
- a relationship
- a type of argument
- a causal sequence
- a problem/solution


TIP 2: Practice your ability to extract abstract stuff by doing Match Reasoning / Match Flaw / Match Principle questions in LR and write down what salient qualities you pulled out of the specific argument


The reality is, even when you're good at abstracting, as I will immodestly claim that I am, you can still misfire when you do one of these analogy questions. I can think of quite a few for which I extracted something totally valid, but once I started reading the answer choices, I could see that LSAT was fishing for a different aspect of the situation.

So be prepared to adapt what you're looking for once you see some answers.

This question stem gives keywords like "the APPROACH taken by mainstream US historians", so I would find where those keywords appeared in the passage.

Lines 26-34 look like our 'Proof Window'. The salient qualities I would lean on are:
- be very flattering of your subject (US history writers glorified the nation)
- describe your subject matter as a dominant, spreading, inevitable force.

As it turns out, those aren't great things to have on your mind, when the keywords in (B) are "precocious accomplishments" and "innate talent".

That doesn't mean we did anything wrong on the front-end. This is just a tough answer choice!

One way you can practice getting better at abstract language is to use the answer choices and think about what THEIR general form is:

(A) "If it worked in the past, we should keep doing it"

(B) "The impressiveness of the early works is a sign of inherent good"

(C) "Since this was specially designed for this situation, it's the best option for this situation"

(D) "Some watchdog warns people about someone else's bad practices"

(E) "If you keep getting the same result, assume that you'd always get the same result from the same action"


Hope this helps

[MayaM405]

Thank you so much!!!