PrepTest 113, Section 2, Question 16
Media consultant: Electronic media are bound to bring(75 more words not shown)
The reasoning in the consultant's(5 more words not shown)
- Apresupposes as a(7 more words not shown)
- Brelies inappropriately on(2 more words not shown)
- Cpresupposes that just(7 more words not shown)
- Dmistakes something that(11 more words not shown)
- Econfuses the value(10 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Why can't a classroom use electronic books?
At first, I want to know what counts as a traditional school. The consultant supplies a definition: students and a teacher together in a classroom. Nothing about that definition requires printed books. Replace a stack of heavy textbooks with electronic versions, and the students and teacher can still gather in the same room.
What we’re looking for
Cheap printed books helped this institution arise. That doesn't establish that it must keep using them to survive. The question asks for the flaw, and that's the gap I'd look for: the consultant treats help getting started as something the school will always need.
Working the answers
- A
The conclusion appears at both the beginning and the end, but repeating a conclusion doesn't automatically make the reasoning circular. The consultant offers a separate reason about printed books and the school's origins. That reason is inadequate; it isn't simply the conclusion being used to support itself.
- B
The speaker is called a media consultant, but the argument doesn't ask us to accept the conclusion because an expert says so. It offers a historical explanation. The problem lies in what the consultant infers from that history.
- C
The consultant does make an unjustified prediction, but not merely by saying the outcome is possible. The offered reason is that electronic media are replacing something that helped the institution begin. We need an answer that identifies why that particular reason doesn't establish the prediction.
- DCorrect
Inexpensive books facilitated the school's emergence: they helped it arise. The consultant then treats their continuing role as necessary for the school's survival. Our electronic-textbook classroom shows why those claims differ. A school might change the medium it uses while remaining a group of students learning with a teacher in a classroom.
- E
The argument concerns whether traditional schools will continue to exist, not whether they are valuable. Their value isn't being confused with the medium they use. The unsupported step is from the medium's role in their beginnings to its necessity for their continuation.
More Flaw questions
Learn the LSAT our way
Our platform drills Flaw questions at your level and adjusts as you improve.