Self-study
My difficulty setting is now 4-5. I keep getting stuck between two answers (usually the most popular answers) and keep choosing the wrong one. What is going onnnnnnn?!!!!! Anyone struggling with this right now? What does it mean and how can I work on fixing it? It’s very discouraging and incredibly frustrating
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2 comments
The key is understanding that there is no "best" answer. There's a right answer and a wrong answer. The right answer isn't right because it's "better" than the wrong answer; it's right because of something specific in the question or the answer. The wrong answer isn't wrong because it's "worse" than the right answer; it's wrong because of something specific in the question or the answer.
But don't get me wrong. The wrong answer may certainly -feel- like it might be right for some reason. Indeed, LSAC is really good at making a wrong answer feel right, even though it's wrong. @jbucholz below is spot on when he says that you need to try to find a difference between the two answers. There has to be a difference that means one's right and one's wrong, and people often get so caught up in the similarities, they don't considered the differences.
If two answers really were identical, then neither of them could be right, because there's only one right answer.
So, when you're reviewing your mistakes, you really want to be able to say, "Oh, this answer felt right because of <blah>, but it's wrong because of <whatever>." Knowing it's wrong doesn't teach you anything or prepare you for the future. Knowing -why- it's wrong--being able to articulate it to yourself--that's the important thing to review, so that in the future, when you're forced with a similar choice, you have the knowledge to make the choice correctly.
the advice I got from a tutor on this exact question was that when stuck between the two best answers. Don't try to compare each answer back to the stim, try to compare the answers to each other and really figure out the difference between the two. Once you can firmly understand the difference between the two answers, the correct one that matches the stim and question should be more apparent. That process helps me at least.