Self-study
I've heard that reading nonfiction or scholarly articles can be helpful when preparing for RC since it gets you used to comprehending dense (and sometimes boring) material quickly. Does anyone have recommendations of books/articles/websites that really helped with RC?
8
5 comments
Reading nonfiction or scholarly material does help to some degree simply because it exposes you to denser writing and more unfamiliar subject matter.
But I think that kind of reading helps much more when you pair it with the proper reading technique.
A lot of students read difficult material for months but never really improve at RC because they’re still trying to absorb everything equally instead of reading with a very narrow objective.
I always teach my students that the primary objective should be to read for the Big Picture:
the thesis/main point of the passage, and
the general supporting reasons that directly develop that thesis.
If you use outside reading to practice locking onto the Big Picture while learning how to navigate through the details, then those dense articles become excellent RC training.
As for materials themselves, publications like The Economist, Scientific American, law review articles, and higher-level history/philosophy writing are probably the closest stylistically to what shows up on the LSAT.
Scott
I found The Economist to be quite useful
I like these:
https://www.quantamagazine.org/
https://aeon.co/
https://nautil.us/
https://www.aldaily.com/
@Kevin_Lin Thank you!
@Kevin_Lin Thank you!! I have been reading physics books and some novels to be better at RC (+ it's interesting),