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Course: LSAT > Unit 1
Lesson 9: Reading Comprehension – Articles- Getting started with Reading Comprehension
- Catalog of question types | Reading comprehension
- Main point | Quick guide
- Recognition | Quick guide
- Clarifying meaning | Quick guide
- Purpose of reference | Quick guide
- Organizing information | Quick guide
- Inferences about views | Quick guide
- Inferences about information | Quick guide
- Inferences about attitudes | Quick guide
- Applying to new contexts | Quick guide
- Principles and analogies | Quick guide
- Additional evidence | Quick guide
- Primary purpose | Quick guide
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Principles and analogies | Quick guide
Which choice is analogous?
One way to demonstrate an understanding of an argument presented in a passage is by recognizing another argument as structurally similar. We call questions that test this ability discovering principles and analogies questions. These questions will direct you to something specific in the text and ask you to find something similar to it among the choices.
Variants
The two subtypes of this question type are principles and analogies. Analogy questions ask you to identify a situation that is analogous to the one described in the passage. Principle questions ask you to identify the principle that is at work.
Examples
Analogies
- “Which one of the following situations is most analogous to the one introduced in the second sentence of the passage?”
- “Which one of the following hypothetical situations is most analogous to the description in the passage of _____?”
Principles
- “The rationale for _____ as it is described in the passage is most consistent with which one of the following principles?”
Strategies
Put it in your own words: It’s important to sum up the plan, idea, argument or principle in question in simple, broad terms before you try to find an analogous example.
Disprove the choices: Once you feel like you have a good handle on the idea itself, then head to the choices. It’s always easier to disprove wrong choices one-by-one than to search for the correct one, and that’s especially true for principles and analogies questions.
For each choice, ask yourself: why isn’t this analogous? Or, why doesn’t this match the principle from the passage? Does it make a logical leap that isn’t found in the passage? Do the mechanics of the argument work differently? The correct choice will be the one you can’t disprove.
Common wrong choice types
Wrong choices for this question type don’t really fall into buckets—they simply won’t be analogous or won’t reflect the principle at work in the passage.
Comparative Reading variants
On paired passages, you’ll sometimes encounter a discovering principles and analogies question that asks you to identify a pair of passages with a relationship that is analogous to the relationship between passage A and B:
- The relationship between passage A and passage B is most analogous to the relationship between the two television programs described in which one of the following?
On analogy questions such as this, it can be helpful to describe the original situation in general terms before considering the choices. What is the essential nature of the relationship between the passages?
For example, let’s say passage A contrasts Eudora Welty’s life and her writing, while Passage B discusses Welty’s photography, especially as it relates to her writing. More generally, we might say that one passage compares an artist’s life with their approach to an artform, and the other discusses the artist’s approach to a second artform, especially as it relates to the first.
Use this simplified, more general version to find the most analogous pair from the choices.
Want to join the conversation?
- For analogies, what is the easiest way to find words that are alike but not a degree of the word?(3 votes)
- How can one contract between principles to analogy in a paragraph?.. Would this have anything to do with tone or how the sentence is structured, or how an author refers to an idea?(2 votes)
- How are these question types similar/different to applying new concepts question types?(1 vote)
- What is a numeric analogy(1 vote)