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CRs that have a counter premise

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CRs that have a counter premise

by crimson2283 » Thu Feb 10, 2011 10:04 pm
Can someone please explain technique to solve CRs that have a counter premise?

Being articulate has been equated with having a large vocabulary. Actually, however, people with large vocabularies have no incentive for, and tend not to engage in, the kind of creative linguistic self-expression that is required when no available words seem adequate. Thus a large vocabulary is a hindrance to using language in a truly articulate way.
Which one of the following is an assumption made in the argument?

(A) When people are truly articulate, they have the capacity to express themselves in situations in which their vocabularies seem inadequate.
(B) People who are able to express themselves creatively in new situations have little incentive to acquire large vocabularies.
(C) The most articulate people are people who have large vocabularies but also are able to express themselves creatively when the situation demands it.
(D) In educating people' to be more articulate, it would be futile to try to increase the size of their vocabularies.
(E) In unfamiliar situations, even pe0ple with large Vocabularies often do not have specifically suitable words available.
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by HSPA » Fri Feb 11, 2011 3:55 am
IMO B... Please some one post the OA and explanations...
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by mundasingh123 » Fri Feb 11, 2011 6:36 am
HSPA wrote:IMO B... Please some one post the OA and explanations...
Has to Be A
OA is A
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by mundasingh123 » Fri Feb 11, 2011 8:28 am
David @ veritas Prep just posted an Article on how to Solve CR from a new perspective.U can go thru his article if U wish.His article talks of giving max importance to the conclusion ,Second in priority is Most important Premise .and Lastly Background Info

1)a large vocabulary is a hindrance to using language in a truly articulate way-conclusion Can be abbreviated
2)people with large vocabularies have no incentive for, and tend not to engage in, the kind of creative linguistic self-expression that is required when no available words seem adequate- MIP Can be Paraphrased
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by crimson2283 » Fri Feb 11, 2011 9:48 am
Can you please share the link to David's post?
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by mundasingh123 » Fri Feb 11, 2011 10:06 am
https://www.beatthegmat.com/mba/2011/02/ ... duncan-way
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by David@VeritasPrep » Fri Feb 11, 2011 6:14 pm
I have talked a little about this subject in an earlier posting...

https://www.beatthegmat.com/cr-brutal-q6 ... tml#321814

In that posting I go into more detail, but basically a counter premise is what can be called a "straw man" that is to be knocked down later in the argument. "Straw man" is a term used for stating your opponent's argument only so that you can contradict it and show that you are right!

So I might say, "some people will tell you that you should skim when addressing long reading comprehension passages, but really you should...

Do you see that the first portion was only stated so that I could then have something to contradict?

If you focus on the hard transitions including "but" "yet" "however" "on the other hand" "on the contrary" and other similar expressions you will know which is the straw man and which is the author's own argument.

The part before the hard transition is the "straw man" and the portion after the hard transition must include the conclusion and the evidence (or the most important premise if you have read the article mentioned above).

Can you see that an author would never put the hard transition after her own points were made? It would be strange to say "I believe you should approach data sufficiency this way, however, others think that you should ...." This leaves the opponent with the last word and contradicts the author's own argument.

So rest assured when you see a statement such as the one that we have above; "Being articulate has been equated with having a large vocabulary. Actually, however," we can see that the idea that being articulate means having a large vocabulary is about to be contradicted and therefore does not serve even as evidence for the conclusion.

You can treat a "straw man" like this statement just quoted, in two ways

1) You can treat it as part of the background information that is only there to give us the impression, for example that we are going to discuss the relationship between large vocabulary and articulateness. In that case it does not deserve much attention since the work of the argument is done elsewhere.

2) You can understand that the negation of this statement often shows us the conclusion! The conclusion to this argument is after the word "thus" - "Thus a large vocabulary is a hindrance to using language in a truly articulate way." This is in fact the negation of the first sentence (the straw man). If we negate that first sentence we would have "being articulate should not be equated with having a large vocabulary."

I hope that answers the question about a counter premise....
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by David@VeritasPrep » Fri Feb 11, 2011 6:22 pm
By the way, I found that this one is an LSAT question: From the June 1992 exam, the second logical reasoning section, #17.

The OA is A.

Notice that this is question #17. This is usually an area of very difficult questions on the LSAT and this question would be considered quite tough by GMAT standards.

Remember that with an assumption question if you take away the correct answer then you should significantly weaken the conclusion.

Choice A says "When people are truly articulate, they have the capacity to express themselves in situations in which their vocabularies seem inadequate."

If you negate the main verb (add the words "do not") then choice A would become "When people are truly articulate, they DO NOT have the capacity to express themselves in situations in which their vocabularies seem inadequate."

This would undermine the entire basis of the argument. So A is the correct answer.
Last edited by David@VeritasPrep on Sat Feb 12, 2011 5:25 am, edited 1 time in total.
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by mundasingh123 » Sat Feb 12, 2011 12:49 am
David@VeritasPrep wrote:By the way, I found that this one is an LSAT question: From the June 1992 exam, the second logical reasoning section, #17.

The OA is A.
So C is the correct answer.
You Mean A is the Correct Answer
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by David@VeritasPrep » Sat Feb 12, 2011 5:26 am
Yes, typo!

I have fixed the last sentence in my post to match the rest...A is the correct answer.

Thanks mundasingh!

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by bubbliiiiiiii » Thu Mar 10, 2011 3:05 am
Firstly, thanks crimson for posting the question, Munda singh for sharing the MIP link and last but not the least David for sharing wonderful knowledge and shedding lifht on the query.

Though I am aware that assumption answer choices can be validated by using negation test on the option that supposedly is true could you please help me understand how to actually work with the negation test strategy and implement it?

Thanks in advance and looking forward for your guidance.
Regards,

Pranay
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by vikram4689 » Thu Jun 02, 2011 2:30 am
I have read above 2 articles (MIP and link posted by David) and got the concepts clear but I could not get how A is correct :

P1: Being articulate has been equated with having a large vocabulary.

P2: Actually, however, people with large vocabularies have no incentive for, and tend not to engage in, the kind of creative linguistic self-expression that is required when no available words seem adequate.

C1: Thus a large vocabulary is a hindrance to using language in a truly articulate way.

I understood the structure that P2 is saying that people with large vocabulary do not tend to engage in activities that require use of language in articulate way.

Now i am stuck....
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