PrepTest 107
[lcid:3527] Prep Test 107 LSAT — Logical Reasoning — S4
Logical reasoning
Question prompt
Critic: Most chorale preludes
Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right
Credited answer: C
The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.
Argument or Facts
Facts
Valid or Flawed
NA
Question Type
Cannot Be True Questions
Stimulus Summary
Chorale prelude --most--> Written for organ
Great chorale prelude for organ --most--> Bach
Master artist → ~Create to express own feelings
Bach → Master artist
Answer Anticipation
The first big thing to note here? How little of the stimulus we summarized! And, as we talk through why and what we have diagrammed, we’ll see that we’re going to narrow it down even more.
And it all starts from the question type - Cannot be True. When dealing with this question type, we need to find an answer that contradicts information in the stimulus. And it’s much easier to contradict stronger statements. Weak statements can be contradicted essentially only with a direct negation of it - the only way to contradict, “It sometimes rains,” is to say, “It never rains.” However, strong statements - conditionals, in particular - can be contradicted by counterexample, or statements that establish sufficient conditions but deny necessary ones.
With that noted, we can work through the stimulus. We start with two most statements. However, they don’t overlap - the first is about all chorale preludes, whereas the second is about only great chorale preludes written for organ. Afterwards, we get a whole bunch of some statements, and information about an individual prelude, which is unlikely to be contradicted in the correct answer.
Then, we finally get some conditionals. All master artists don’t create to express their own feelings, and Bach was a master artist. These two conditionals, put together, allow us to infer that Bach didn’t create to express his own feelings. The correct answer will likely contradict that statement, as the only strong inference we can draw.
Answer choices
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ABach believed that the Remaining source text redacted.
Why choice A is not credited
This can be a tempting answer because the stimulus establishes that Bach didn’t create to express his own feelings, and the prelude he wrote on the end of the year wasn’t optimistic. However, just because master artists didn’t write for the purpose of expressing their own feelings, that doesn’t mean they couldn’t create art that still reflected their feelings. Bach may have decided to write a prelude for a hymn that did reflect his own feelings, so this answer is possible. -
BIn composing music about Remaining source text redacted.
Why choice B is not credited
This answer is the inference we drew - that Bach didn’t write to express his own feelings. It’s the inference from the final two statements - the conditionals. -
CIn compositions other than Remaining source text redacted.
Why choice C matches the stem
This answer contradicts the conditional chain from the stimulus. The final two statements aren’t limited to chorale preludes, and they allow us to infer that Bach didn’t write to express his own feelings. So in any composition, Bach didn’t write to express his feelings, contradicting this answer and making it correct. -
DMost of Bach's chorale Remaining source text redacted.
Why choice D is not credited
There’s no statement that allows us to draw an inference about what instrument Bach wrote most of his chorale preludes for, so this is possible. All we learn is that most great chorale preludes written for the organ were by Bach, but that doesn’t tell us much about most chorale preludes written by Bach. -
EMost of the great Remaining source text redacted.
Why choice E is not credited
The stimulus establishes that most chorale preludes were written for the organ, and that most great chorale preludes written for the organ were by Bach, but neither of those statements is about most great chorale preludes generally. So it’s possible that most great chorale preludes were written for other instruments.
What this tests
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