Self-study
Hi all.
I have some contradictory info on how to tackle RC, at least with jargon-heavy medical passages, so I need advice.
First, generally, I enjoy RC because the passages are interesting, science in particular. And I try to apply the method: being aware of the tone, structure, viewpoints and such. But medical passages with upwards of 5 unfamiliar terms are a lost cause: I can't remember what I read because I don't understand anything and even if I try to simplify it by assigning letters to each term I still can't remember it because there's too many terms that I don't understand. So the "careful reading" advice doesn't work for me here. I can read something in another language carefully but I still won't understand it because it's in a foreign language.
When I try to simply scan over the jargon and remember where stuff is so I can go back to it, and I use elimination, I get an average of 1-2 wrong answers on 7-8 questions untimed, but timed is a disaster.
Does any of you who have my problem have a strategy you have developed to score high when timed, without actually understanding anything? 😂 Do tell. 😊
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6 comments
For medical science, I'd recommend watching medical dramas for the fastest and low-maintenance way to absorb unfamiliar vocabulary! I personally love House :-)
And I second the advice to research certain passage topics because they do definitely repeat topics. You can also write down every unfamiliar word you come across and then memorize it. Even if it's something like pulmonary fibrosis, you can just remember "oh, this is some sort of disease in the lungs" without having to remember specific details about it.
@haena Wow, thank you! Awesome.
One thing that helped me tremendously with science passages was realizing that the beginning of the passage often isn't where the test writers actually want you to focus.
Most science passages spend a surprisingly long time laying out required background information. You'll get terminology, competing theories, descriptions of processes, historical context, etc. It's easy to feel like you need to understand and remember all of it, but my experience is that you just don't.
Instead, I read those early paragraphs sentence by sentence looking for something much simpler: When does the author stop giving background and start discussing the actual issue?
That transition usually doesn't happen until well past the halfway point. When I read looking for that shift, the background becomes much easier to handle because I'm no longer trying to memorize, or even really understand, every scientific detail. I'm reading it as setup.
Then, when the discussion finally begins, I make sure to increase my attention. Quite often the discussion section is only a paragraph or two, and that's where you'll find the author start focus on the main point of the passage, apply the general implications of the background info and maybe discuss what the next move within the field of study ought to be.
Ironically, I found that the less I worried about understanding every technical term, the better I understood the passage as a whole, including having better overall command of what the details were used for.
If you're already getting only 1–2 wrong untimed, that tells me your underlying comprehension is probably stronger than you think. The issue may be that you're spending too much mental energy trying to carry all of the background details forward instead of recognizing when the passage finally transitions into the discussion.
@SCOTT_LEBO Thank you. The answers here are so great I will copy and save them so I can pull them up later and incorporate them into my strategy. 🙏🏼💛
one piece of advice - the lsat tends to recycle topics, so don't let something that got you once get you twice. any passage you don't understand? research it once you're done. this passage on the earth's magnetic poles, the earth's crust, tectonic plates and lava absolutely kicked my ass once. I didn't research it & then another passage covered the same topic a week later, and it beat me again.
@Marcus91 Thank you. Yea the geology and evolutionary science can be hard but at least I enjoy them. But I will research all of them particularly medical. Medical is a beast. 😅