THE LAW SCHOOL INSIDER / READING PRACTICE
Read the claim. Check the evidence.
A short exercise in explaining what a passage supports—and where your own assumptions begin.
Read this original passage
The following fictional example is written for practice. It is not a news report or an official LSAT question.
A university library extended its evening opening hours during the spring term. Visits after 7 p.m. increased compared with the previous term. The library director concluded that the longer hours caused more students to use the library. A student committee noted that the spring term also included a temporary closure of another study space.
Commit to three answers before reading on
What observation does the director use as evidence?
What causal claim does the director make?
What does the committee’s information change about the argument?
Write your answers in your own words. Do not try to recall a label for the argument before explaining what happened.
Compare your reasoning
The evidence
Visits after 7 p.m. increased relative to the previous term. The passage does not say that the number of unique students increased, that total visits across all hours increased, or that students studied more effectively. Those would be additional claims.
The conclusion
The director attributes greater student use to the longer opening hours. That moves beyond observing a change to explaining its cause. A before-and-after comparison can suggest a hypothesis without isolating the cause.
The competing explanation
The closure of another study space offers a possible reason students might have used this library more. It makes the director’s explanation less secure. It does not prove that the longer hours had no effect; both changes could matter.
Change one fact
Suppose the other study space remained open throughout both terms. Would that prove the director’s claim? No. It would remove this particular alternative explanation, but other differences might remain. The strength of an argument depends on the relevant evidence, not simply on defeating one objection.
Transfer the habit to a fresh passage
Choose a new analytical article. Write its main claim, the evidence offered, and one assumption needed to connect them. Underline the words in the source that support your summary. If your summary is stronger than those words, revise it.
Keep observation, inference, and uncertainty separate. The goal is not to invent an objection to everything you read. It is to explain why the evidence supports a conclusion to a particular extent.