Q8

[samantha.b233]

This question is about lines 32-33 quote "Tell me who you run with and I'll tell you who you are." Maybe everyone thinks this is an easy question? Nonetheless I want to make sure I understand it right...

I chose C because lines 38 mentions "traditional wisdom," which makes C seem compatible with the passage. I understand the author's purpose of using this quote is to illustrate how Mexican people usually proverbs (i.e., in what circumstances).

But in retrospect, it seems this quote is following from the previous sentence lines 28-30 "...in areas ranging from [...] to the regulation of peer-group relationships. The latter area is a particularly frequent focus of proverb use..."

Is that why A is correct?

[rinagoldfield]

Hey Samantha,

Great job going back to the text and figuring out where you went wrong!

On ID questions like this one, always check with the text BEFORE jumping into the answer choices. This can make tempting wrong answer choices (like C) seem a little less seductive.

(A) is supported by the lines you gave"”the author offers this proverb as an example of the way Mexican American proverbs often concern "the regulation of peer-group relationships" (lines 28).

(B) is unsupported"”nothing about tone here.

(C) is unsupported. The passage as a whole describes the way proverbs connect back to traditional culture and wisdom, but that’s not what these particular lines are for.

(D) is unsupported, too. The point isn’t translation.

(E) is unsupported; the passage offers no support of whether or not proverbs are pedagogically "effective."

[schmid215]

Ok, so it was pretty clear they were going for (A) here, but I'm not sure it at all describes the author's purpose in quoting that proverb. "Illustrate" the relation btw proverbs and peer group ed? No way. It's just an example of a proverb used to inculcate good peer-group manners. In no way does it speak to the larger relationship between proverbs and peer group ed.

[coco.wu1993]

On ID questions like this one, always check with the text BEFORE jumping into the answer choices.

Why BEFORE?

[christine.defenbaugh]

Ok, so it was pretty clear they were going for (A) here, but I'm not sure it at all describes the author's purpose in quoting that proverb. "Illustrate" the relation btw proverbs and peer group ed? No way. It's just an example of a proverb used to inculcate good peer-group manners. In no way does it speak to the larger relationship between proverbs and peer group ed.

I hear what you're saying schmid215! I don't looooove the wording of (A) either, and if I were writing my world-changing thesis on Mexican American proverbs (stay tuned!), I would probably use different phrasing.

However, be careful not to overdefine words like 'illustrate'. We don't have to use the word 'illustrate' to refer specifically to the larger issue. Often times 'illustrate' is simply used to mean 'give an example of'. In fact, the online Merriam-Webster defines it as "to give examples in order to make (something) easier to understand".

So, all (A) is really saying is that the proverb is translated in order to give an example of the connection between proverbs and peer-group education (i.e., a proverb ABOUT peer-groups).

The real moral of the story, here, though is that it is not in your best interest on test day to over-focus on the nuance of words like "illustrate" - eliminate the things that are categorically incorrect. If your last remaining answer seems to be on target, but the nuanced connotations of one word are bothering you, just take it and move on!

I hope this helps clear things up a bit!

On ID questions like this one, always check with the text BEFORE jumping into the answer choices.

Why BEFORE?

Excellent question, coco.wu1993!

Incorrect answers on RC questions are written to be seductive. They are venus fly traps, laying in wait for us to wander too close to them and get sucked in. Why are they like that? Because the LSAT writers made them that way on purpose!

A number of these answers are designed to be particularly attractive if we only have a general sense of what the paragraph or passage is about. Those sneaky test-writers know what memories we walk away from the passage with, and you can bet they are going to seed the wrong answers with some of those attractive bits that they are pretty sure you're still thinking about.

If you do your homework FIRST, and hop back to the line reference called out in the question immediately, you'll be able to zero in on exactly what the question is looking for. It may be a detail that you didn't even remember until you narrowed your focus down to the line in question. Now, armed with this much more specific target in mind for the answer, those venus fly traps aren't nearly so dangerous - since most of them won't remotely match your new, more specific target.

You could do this work after working through the answer choices, of course, but that's just wasting precious seconds. You know where the answer to the question is - it's in the passage, at the line reference they give you!! Why would you wait?

But even more important than that, if you work through the answer choices first, you might get caught in one of those well-designed traps and not even realize that you should have checked the passage. You'll then blithely go on to the next question, not knowing that you were fooled.

Or perhaps you'll double check the passage, for safety's sake - but now, you already like a certain answer (a trap!). Now, instead of investigating the passage honestly, you'll be hunting for anything that supports the answer that you already like. And the worst part is, you won't even realize that you're doing it.

It's a nasty set of traps they lay for us, but we can avoid most of them by doing our homework FIRST, and using that to knock off trap answers efficiently!

Does that help clear that up?