Balancing Speed and Accuracy

danielbrowning208

Hi, I wanted to get some advice from people with a bit more experience in LG on how to balance speed and accuracy on the actual test. I have been foolproofing the games from PTs1-35, and my confidence and speed have increased. However, I also feel the need to go at a rapid pace through each game in order to meet the target time were a very difficult game to arise.

In practice, this is what messes me up the most. I fly through the rules and "passage" and often find myself either misreading questions or missing them entirely. I tend to do this both on PTs and, to a lesser extent, on games that I foolproof. If I do not misread rules, I am confident that I can do well on almost any game. I think nerves also play into my inclination to go at warp speed. Does anyone have any advice for methods I can practice to bring a more balanced approach to my LG sections?

AudaciousRed

I ran into this on the actual test in July and was able to catch it not too far into the game. Still, it ate time and I'm not sure I caught it all. I was kicking myself sooo hard over that. It's a dumb mistake.
From now on, I am checking all my rules and inferences over again, every time, to make sure I didn't miss or misread them. 30 seconds is a lot better than minutes wasted in mistakes. "Measure twice, cut once" sort of thing.

danielbrowning208

For me, it has become more of a pattern than a dumb mistake at this point. It sounds like you just ran into that problem on one take @AudaciousRed

CoffeeEnthusiast

I had a similar issue and I found that JY's new approach to the first question of each game really helped. If you don't know what I'm referring to, his approach is to eliminate an answer choice from the first question of each game every time you write down a rule. If by the time you wrote down all the rules you either have two possible answers or none, often times you misread something.

AudaciousRed

@danielbrowning208 said:
For me, it has become more of a pattern than a dumb mistake at this point. It sounds like you just ran into that problem on one take @AudaciousRed

Had I firmly established the habit of going over my rules twice, it would have never happened, though. Start making that a habit while practicing.

Cant Get Right

Games don’t happen in the questions. Your success or failure will be determined in the setup. Adjust your understanding of LG to that, and adapt your approach accordingly. @Sami and I will be discussing a lot of things related to this at her free tutoring session on Saturday, so be sure to check that out!

Jonathan Wang

To me, you don't 'balance' accuracy in your reading - it is non-negotiable. Without a full and clear understanding of the text on the page, you are at the mercy of every trick in the book. This is especially true in LG and RC, where the questions are networked and therefore mistakes have a high likelihood of snowballing.

I had this exact same issue when I studied for the LSAT; really, the issue goes all the way back to elementary school, and I'd argue it's still not really 'fixed' in totality. But at some point, I had to tell myself that if the LSAC manages to get me with a hard question, that's fine - no problem, they win, life goes on. But I refuse to be the victim of self-inflicted wounds. So for me personally, I go over my rules no less than four times. I read the whole set from top to bottom once without writing anything, then transcribe the rules and start a setup, then work with them in my inference phase, and then double check the result against the initial set of rules again to make sure it all jives. It's five times if you also count the process of elimination that happens in the acceptability question.

No, JY doesn't do five passes. I doubt anyone else does, really. I'm not even sure I'd recommend that for the average student. But I do it to this day, because I have to in order to get my stupid brain to cooperate consistently. And I wrapped my entire approach around this fundamental ethos that I would not shoot myself in the foot. I had to get good enough and efficient enough at the actual logic game mechanics to compensate for the extra time I spent making sure I was reading everything properly. And eventually, as I got better at reading and started implicitly trusting my ability to read properly, the whole process ended up not taking much more time, if any at all. This is the type of improvement you're seeking - one where you don't have to sacrifice anything and can therefore get your desired result more consistently. High scorers don't typically rob Peter to pay Paul, because they get to a point where they don't have to - they can make enough to pay both with no issue.

Prioritize the issue (it's just as serious a problem as, say, not being able to take contrapositives - I would argue even more serious, since it's so fundamental to everything else you do), figure out what it takes for you to not misread (slow the f down!), and form good habits. Then, you bring the good habits you developed up to proper pace. Once the reading issue is out of the way, if you can't finish the section then you work on your mechanics. If they're already good, things should clean up pretty nicely at that point. But at least you ought to be able to trust that you can work on a given game without fear of doing something stupid and spending 4 minutes trying to squeeze inferences out of an entirely different situation than the one you're supposed to be working on.

danielbrowning208

@"Cant Get Right" @"Jonathan Wang" Thank you both for your advice. I hope I am able to attend the next two lesson sections, because, ironically enough, flaw questions are currently my weak point in LR. I am also still in the Foolproofing phase, so I am going to foolproof a few PTs as full 35 minute sections, while working on some of the strategies you all have recommended. Thanks again!

fycw2068

On the digital test, I highlight the key characteristics of the game in the prompt as I read (e.g seven students, five spaces, once). When I move onto rules, I highlight something in each rule AFTER I address it. If a rule has trigger words like “before” “unless” “only” etc I usually highlight that word, otherwise I just highlight the first word or so. It’s my way of making sure I didn’t skip any rules and also picked up on any nuances that could have been missed.

danielbrowning208

@"Cant Get Right" @Sami Is there any way the LG and Flaw lessons on Saturday and Sunday could be recorded? Please let me know; it would be extremely helpful.

studyingandrestudying

They can probably address this more than me, but I think I remember that they said these sessions were designed to not be recorded. However, there are many webinars and other resources which have been recorded--for example, the 7Sage podcast. Hope this helps.