Q18

[tobyna]

I had trouble deciding between E and D, and wound up with E, because of the author's criticism of Pocock's views as limited (or "simple" perhaps). I felt only E captured the author's nuanced view of his work.

Help would be very much appreciated. Thank you!

[bbirdwell]

Well, for one thing, the word "simply" in line 44 isn't used to describe Pocock's work in the first place -- it's Pocock's description of Jefferson's language. And "importance," as used in line 55, is used in regards to ranking different political vocabularies.

Contrast this to the words from (D): "fertile" (line 40, where the author tells us that Pocock's ideas were fertile), and "applaud" (line 60, where the author says we should applaud Pocock).

I'd say this one is as simple as choosing words that are relevantly used in the passage (in this case to describe Pocock), rather than trying to interpret their meaning ourselves (for example, I never found the word "limited" in the passage - perhaps i missed it).

[olaizola.mariana]

General question -

For this question type, is it more important for the words themselves to be accurate/representative or for the context in which those words came up to be relevant?

[tommywallach]

For all questions on the LSAT, the words have to be accurate/representative.

-t

[olaizola.mariana]

Yes, but if the context in which those words are cited in the passage is not relevant to the question (as is the case with answer choice E), is it more important for the context to be relevant (as is the case with D)? Otherwise, I might have chosen E for the same reason that tobyna (above) did.

Thanks.