Self-study
I've been studying for a month and half now and have been able to get my LR from -10 to around -3, but my RC has consistently been around -8 (untimed) with very little improvement. Does anyone have any advice on studying more effectively? I feel like with LR the foundations I had to learn drastically helped but with RC I might just not be approaching it properly? I've heard a lot of suggestions about mindset, staying engaged, predicting the next sentence, etc. but I think my issue is less about strategy and more fundamental. I've just purchased a RC textbook so hopefully that will help :')
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7 comments
Hi! I noticed you mentioned feeling pretty confident after reading the passage, but then being surprised by your score. That’s actually a really helpful clue! If you are feeling confident and still miss questions, it often means the passage wasn’t understood in the way the LSAT wants.
Here’s a drill I’d recommend: after you finish reading a passage, write your own simple summary and a quick paragraph map before looking at any questions. Then, compare what you wrote to the 7Sage explanation. For now, don’t worry about the questions. Just check if you caught the author’s main point, their viewpoint, the structure, and the purpose of each paragraph. If your map doesn’t match the explanation, that’s a sign you’ve found a spot to work on, even before you get to the questions.
Another thing you might want to look at is which types of questions you’re missing. Are Main Point questions tricky for you? Or maybe Author Attitude or Inference questions? If you notice you’re missing a lot from one category, that usually points to a foundational skill to work on.
Your LR improvement from around -10 to -3 shows you have strong reasoning skills! That’s why I wouldn’t jump to thinking your RC issue is just about reading ability. More often, RC plateaus occur if you still treat RC as a regular reading test rather than focusing on structure and viewpoint. The details do matter, but the LSAT really wants to see if you understand why each piece of information is there and how it fits into the author’s bigger picture.
Something that really helped me was reviewing passages without looking at the questions first. After finishing a passage, I’d ask myself: What’s the author’s main point? What’s their opinion? Why did they include each paragraph? What viewpoints came up, and who holds them? If those answers aren’t super clear, the questions will usually reveal where things got fuzzy.
@Asma That definitely sounds like an exercise I would benefit from, thank you for the help! Do you also have any advice for when I should start timing myself when drilling? I've been delaying it until I get my accuracy up, but don't know when would be a good place to start, or if I should just start now?
Are you mapping the passages on paper with good translations? I'm seeing significant improvements from doing so. I was skeptical that it would cost me valuable time, but having to consciously translate/log the ideas per passage is really helping me be forced to understand the content so I'm able to get through the questions quickly and accurately.
If you're already mapping and not having luck, have you tried translating the passages and then comparing your translation to the explanations to see if what you interpreted is in fact in line with the 7sage translation? Maybe there's a blind spot there that you are missing.
@GnatTaylor I have been mapping my translations but I actually haven't really compared them to the 7sage videos and usually only focus on the questions I got wrong, so I'll definitely try that out. Thank you for the advice!
I have the same experience, since I improved my LR to about -4to -5 but my RC is stuck around -8--10. Any advice?
Not to talk my own book, but have you gone through the whole 7sage RC lesson library? When I was studying for the LSAT, that's how I got my foundational approach. I was surprised to see that I had such a significant missing foundation for RC. The wake up call for me was that I was getting a huge portion of main point questions wrong. I was so confused, since I figured these should be the simplest. Once I got to that section of the RC lesson library, I learned that I mostly need to be looking for when the author chimes in with their take on the situation. I pretty much instantly halved my errors on main point questions. If you haven't gone through it yet, I highly recommend doing that before anything else. So much of RC for me was discerning what was crucial to pay attention to and what I could move on without a complete 100% understanding of on the first read-through.
@AriVilker1 I have, yes! It definitely helped a LOT in making the reading portion feel smoother and more effective, especially the low res summaries. I feel like the issue now though is, instead of going into the questions feeling absolutely lost, I feel pretty confident and then am shocked to later see my score 🥲 Thank you for the reminder on main point questions though!