by ohthatpatrick Thu Jun 19, 2014 1:55 pm
- First of all, you should NOT expect a correct answer to an Inference question to test a general understanding of the passage. You should ABSOLUTELY expect it to test a small detail.
I'm not saying it always happens the latter way, but it is UNUSUAL when you see a correct answer to an Inference question that feels more like a broad, main point.
When English teachers used the term Inference, they normally wanted us to extrapolate some broad moral to the story. When LSAT uses Inference, they mean "which of these facts must be true". It's a completely different game.
- Secondly, (with rare exceptions), you should NEVER pick an answer to an Inference question without knowing exactly what line reference you're using to prove your answer.
You're thinking (A) makes sense? I agree it does. Time to find a proof sentence. If you don't currently have that as part of your process for Inference questions, you're going to fall for a lot of tempting wrong answer choices. Where would we prove (A)?
Well, it's easy to see that 1870s is only mentioned in line 8, so our proof would have to be there. We know that beginning in the 1870s, increasingly large numbers of women were forming women's foreign mission societies.
From that, can does it have to be true that prior to 1870, there were very few women who were involved in foreign missionary work?
Yikes, that's a stretch on both counts. Just because I have increasingly LARGE numbers now doesn't mean that I had VERY FEW before. The former is a relative comparison, the latter is an absolute number.
Is "forming mission societies" a good match for "involved in foreign missionary work"? Not really. You could easily be involved in missionary work without necessarily having formed the mission society yourself.
Is there any chance I would remember these language tweaks if I had NOT looked back at the passage? No! That's why you have to find your proof sentence. It is often only then that you will notice the gaps between your proof and your answer choice.
- Thirdly, distinctions definitely DO get tested a ton! I will say that the detail sentence tested in many Inference questions is a needle in a haystack and really doesn't factor in to any larger point. But the distinction being tested here was actually the main point that Paragraph 1 offered (other than the first two sentences, which are the main point of the passage). Everything from line 11-30 is discussing the phenomenon of more SINGLE women being missionaries. So while I agree it's easy to miss that we're focused on single ladies, this isn't exactly a needle in a haystack. This is what the majority of paragraph 1 was about.
When I look at these open ended Inference questions I do two things:
1. First pass - I'm very attuned to strength of language, because I don't want to waste time researching proof sentences for all five answer choices. Typically, a few of the choices are more strongly worded than the others (and hence way more likely to be wrong).
Here, I would see
(A) very few
(B) most
(C) most
(D) the majority
(E) most
Yikes! Well if I'm forced to pick something extreme, then there's going to be something in the passage to justify that extreme language.
2. As you read the answer choice, you have to ask yourself, "Do I remember us talking about anything like that?" If you're not sure but you have some idea where to look based on your Passage map, look it up!
(A) We already discussed where we would look, but lines 7-11 fail to tightly support this idea.
(B) Hmmm, financed by women's groups .. again before the 1870s. Well, the only proof sentence I have for what changed in the 1870s is lines 7-11. That sentence doesn't allow me to prove that MOST women prior to 1870 were financed by one group vs. another.
(C) Hmmm, nurse vs. physician ... again before the 1870s. Well, that only proof sentence is hopeless for a nurse vs. physician distinction.
(D) Before the 1870s again! Wow, good thing I read that sentence when I evaluated (A). It's allowing me to get rid of all these fake details. I don't know if most missionaries were located in Canton (that kinda offends common sense, too)
(E) Did we talk about being married? Kind of .. we talked a lot about single. It would be very typical for an Inference answer choice to flip from "my hair is wet" to "my hair is not dry". We know that the gist of lines 11-30 was that more single women were getting to do missionary work. I guess that means that women BEFORE that time were more likely to be married. But I need proof ... THERE it is .. line 15-16 ... "as opposed to the more typical husband-wife team".
A female missionary has to be married or unmarried, so if married was "more typical", then MOST female missionaries were married.
(E) must be true.
Hope this helps.
- but I am going to ask anyway. This question got me (I selected A when the credited response is E) and because I am working on my fundamentals I am trying to really understand my weaknesses. 