I've been scoring between high 160s and low 170s. Any tips on how to get 170s more consistently? I've been going through wrong answers slower and using a wrong answer journal but am having a hard time maintaining the mid 170s.
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I've been scoring between high 160s and low 170s. Any tips on how to get 170s more consistently? I've been going through wrong answers slower and using a wrong answer journal but am having a hard time maintaining the mid 170s.
2 comments
There may be a lot of little things you could be doing to help make that transition, but I'll share a few ideas for your consideration.
First, when you review your practice questions, don't just settle for "I understand now why the right answer is right." Ask more questions, like "what made each wrong answer wrong?" and "what made some of the wrong answers attractive?" and especially "why did I reject the right answer?" That last one is extremely important, because that's where you really start to learn about the kinds of mistakes you've been making. If you get a question wrong, then you rejected the right answer for a bad reason, and you need to make sure you never use that bad reason as justification again.
Here's another: imagine it was up to you to explain every question on the test to a room full of people who just don't get it. Take on the mindset of a teacher, and think about how you would break it down. Show your imaginary class how the stimulus was structured, how the passage was organized, what the clues were regarding the premises and conclusions and the main point and purpose. Before you even say a thing about the questions, explain the source material that those questions are about.
BTW, doing this allows you to reuse material that you've already used, so you don't need to waste a PT!
Finally, here's another way to reuse old material to improve your own understanding: ask yourself new questions about old stimuli. Maybe the question was about the flaw in the argument. Move past that, and ask yourself how you would strengthen that same argument, and what the author assumed, and what the method of reasoning was, and what you would look for in a parallel reasoning answer, etc. In RC, if they asked you about the purpose of the second paragraph, go further and ask yourself the purpose of each of the other paragraphs. If they asked you to strengthen the argument made by the opponents, follow up and ask yourself how to weaken their argument, and how to strengthen and weaken the other arguments in the passage, including the author's arguments.
Just a few ideas to juice up your approach and get you more confident about what you're doing so that you can be more consistently accurate and push that score a little higher. I hope those help!
This is super helpful thanks so much!!