This is long, rambly story of going from about a -14 on RC to -4 on RC because I stopped being stubborn.

So a couple of days ago I had a substantial RC meltdown. Basically a whole bunch of events transpired that more or less showed me what I needed to do to help my RC. Here are the events that kind of resulted in me learning how to do RC more efficiently.

Until about four days ago, out of the practice tests I have completed, I had maybe gotten 2/4 passages completed on RC (Averaging about 12-15 minutes per passage – no joke). Even when I tried to do J.Y.’s memory method I would just sit there thinking “I just can’t do it, J.Y.! I’m just not smart enough!” (if you don’t think J.Y. is omniscient, you’re doing the course wrong).

Then, I did one passage and got ¾ passages done on a prep-test with one sneaky line reference question completed in the last passage. I heralded as a huge success thinking, okay. This means I’m getting faster at reading.

Correlation vs. Causation anyone?

After doing some R.C. drills (at my same obnoxiously slow pace), this was quickly disproved.

Then I just started experiencing dread at the myth that people can’t get higher on RC easily (or even at all, as some will tell you). And here I was, doing my drills, sometimes spending up to ten minutes just reading the darn thing.

Then things just spiraled out of control; I freaked out and asked the Internet.

In doing so, I found this article, https://lsathacks.com/email-course/reading-comprehension/. I took the reading speed test the article tells you to and I read it at the same speed I’d been reading LSAT questions. Basically the thing just confirmed I was like dial-up internet when it came to reading speed (although of course, my comprehension was super high because I was reading so darn slow).

The speed test told me I was in the "insufficient" category of readers. I thought, “Insufficient? Screw you online reading test! Your website is insufficient. I read Derrida. My Master’s thesis has 250 references -- I had to read all of those. My whole job revolves around editing and making recommendations on doctoral dissertations and master’s theses. There’s no way I’m an insufficient reader… Is there?”

But there was no way I could think to RRE this apparent paradox.

So I resigned myself to believing I had an irretrievably FMOR and gave in to crippling self-doubt, tabbed back to the article, mortified, thinking “save me from this death.” The article said I was probably “subvocalizing” (a word for pronouncing each word as you’re reading) as I was subvocalizing – super meta. It said smart people didn’t do that.

Mortified at the thought that I had been doing this very thing basically most of my life, the article said I should use Spreeder (basically an app that flashes words across the screen at a certain number of WPM and you can use it to increase your number of WPM and so that you can learn not to subvocalize).

So, I loaded some pretty dense material on Spreeder. For ten minutes I spreeded (hmmm… spred? sprud?) at different speeds. After my ten minutes were up, and before I continued with my spreeding like a time-wasting buffoon, I figured I should look in the LSAT forums and see what other people said about Spreeder.

Lo and behold, J.Y. had already chimed in on it (he’s omniscient, remember?):

If you're running out of time on RC, it's not because you can't read the passage fast enough. It's because you're waffling b/t answers. You do that because you don't read well - be it the passage, the question stem, or the answers. Focus on reading well. Focus on reading for structure. Advice on how to read faster targets casual reading. If you've done any RC at all you'll know all too well that the speed limit is not set by how quickly your eyes can move across the page, how many words your eyes can snap in one shot, or whether you're subvocalizing. Rather, the speed limit is set by lack of subject-matter familiarity and the dense grammatical structure.

I thought, “So magic doesn’t exist. Great. I still can’t read well so basically I’m just screwed.”

Then I tentatively tried to look up LSAT RC reading structures (look them up in the forums – there are some really interesting ones). They gave me some insight, but no cheat sheet in the world was going to help with my problem.

Crestfallen, I returned to my RC drills. I tried to use the highlighter method posted up here earlier by @kylereinhard, hoping that the effervescent yellow stain would incite some inner RC warrior like it had for him. Long story short, I took 8 minutes on the stimulus and 4 minutes on the questions. And I got three wrong. Well, a girl can dream. (Not bashing his method. Try this -- maybe it'll work for you).

Crushed, I tried to look for happy stories in the Webinar section of people who did awesome things after being not so awesome. I found Allison Gill Sanford’s webinar https://classic.7sage.com/webinar/lsat-prep-for-170-plus/ and jumped to the part where she talked about RC. In the webinar, she said, “I would spend way too much time up front on the easy passages…” Which was exactly how I felt. Then (and I’m pretty sure it was her who said this, or maybe it was something I saw in the Trainer, which I looked in after listening to her webinar), which basically said we should try to keep our reading rate more or less constant over our different stimuli and then also replicate this in the practice test (obviously with allowances for harder passages).

So I figured, ok. If I am going to succeed at RC maybe I should just try to read at a speed that will just get me there on time. So, there are maybe 440 words per RC section. If you read in 2 minutes, that means 220 words per minute. If you read in three minutes, that’s 146 words per minute. I knew what it felt like to read at both of those speeds because I had spreeded earlier that day – which showed me that I could read, comfortably, at both of those rates.

So, I decided: I’m going to ‘spreed’ the stimuli (not in the Spreeder app, just on the page but at the same rate as I would read had they been in the spreeder set to 220), using J.Y.’s memory method, for one RC section. I grabbed my analog watch and set it to zero, and-ahem-spreeded the passage until 3:30. Then did a 30 second review of structure. Then answered the question until the full 8 minutes was up. Then went onto the next one. And so on.

Results of the first try:

-4 (And this time, not -4 thanks to guesses!) -- obviously a significant difference for me.

And since I was actually able to focus on the problems (which I’ve since noticed, thanks to BRs and this method, are more so with the questions than with the actual passage itself), I’m improving on RC now just as if it was LR!

Moral:

If you’re like me and you’re doing RC like a sloth because you basically misunderstand everything everyone says because you are some sort of backwards and self-destructive over-achiever (and/or you’re just inherently defiant to omniscient authorities even when they are one hundred percent correct), then maybe just run over quickly to Spreedster, prove to yourself you can read faster than you are right now, come back, and ‘spreed’ it.

I’m not saying skim it. Just read it at a faster rate. For 3:30 or 4 minutes or less. As J.Y. pointed out earlier, don’t worry about subvocalizing or anything like that right now either. You can become a non-subvocalizing speed reader at a different time if that’s really your passion, but I’m not so sure the RC section is the time for it unless you have like ten years to prepare or something.

Anyways. I hope this is helpful to somebody so that they don’t go through the whole ridiculous situation I just went through.

Keep calm and carry on!

*P.s. Don’t mean to insinuate that the article mentioned above can’t be helpful to some folks! Maybe it is the secret way to victory and I'll just never really know.

Please note that the information below will change to reflect the information we get! Contribute if you can via the official December 2016 LSAT discussion (linked at the bottom of this thread) without going into too much detail. If you think something is wrong or should be added, please post in the thread and let me know.

Real Sections:

LG:

-Corporations Trading with Eachother / Building Trading

-Paintings on a Wall / Watercolors & Oils

-Mystery Clues / Chapters in a Book

-Students on a Research Team / Green/Red Teams

RC:

-Great Migration of African Americans from North to South

-Rawls Theory of Justice Differs from Utilitarianism

-Insider Trading

-Brain Scans

LR:

-Poison Ivy & Evolution

-Caterpillars

-Wolves Eating Moose

-Bugs Eating Things That Make Them Taste Bad

-Volunteers Showing up for an Event

-Television Station with Popular / Highly Watched Program

-Alexander the Great's Tomb

-T-Rex

-French Biology

-Winter/Summer Trout

-Water Fee on Roads Rather than Dams / Tax Dollars

-Cat Food

-Iguanas on an Island

-Birds and Their Nests

-18th-Century Church Organ

-Politician

-Leopard Magpie

-Puzzles

-Teenage Morning Driving Accidents / School Start Times

-Those Who Desire to be Kind

-Devaluing Companies

Experimental Sections:

LG:

-Pianist/Violinists Playing Duets

-Doctors Scheduling Days to Work

-Coal Mining Company

RC:

-How Humans Changed as Cooking Progresses

-Fukuyama

LR:

-Smokers, Low Body Weight, Health

-Blaming a Company for Pollution until there was Algae

-Doctors and Handwriting

UNCONFIRMED:

If you can confirm that these are real / experimental, please do so by PMing me or posting in the main thread.

LR:

-Touching Something Blue and Red

-What Year a Book was Written based on it Asking Where He Was

RC:

LG:

This thread is closed for discussion. Official post December LSAT discussion here:

https://classic.7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/9665/official-december-lsat-discussion-thread

Hello!

Would love to get a chat going for Asia test takers to figure out what the experimental sections are after the test tomorrow! I'm planning on signing on right after taking and would be psyched if others join.

So I decided to look on the discussion board to see what the December takers are doing the night before & I stumbled onto a different discussion about the December exam. It's REALLY screwed up how some people on here are writing negative things about the December exam just days before the exam. The people who are taking the December exam are nervous enough, with millions of thoughts going through their heads. How about being a little more suppportive & having more positive vibes for those taking the LSAT on Saturday.

Having trouble ruling out C.

I have tried many different approaches for RC. I am averaging only 65/70% correct and it is taking me overage of 14 min. to finish passages.

Can you please give me some pointers. I am starting to panic!

P.S. I have reviewed RC videos and have completed the first set of RC passages. I do not want to go further in RC without correcting what am doing wrong. VERY UPSET!

Hi Guys,

Are there any live question takers recordings that we can see?

I was on LG Problem set 1 question 1 and saw Leia doing her questions, it will greatly help if there is a chance to see someone who does RC live.

Thanks,

Panda

So I feel so stupid, but here is the deal, I've been scoring -6ish on LR, -3-6 on LG and -10ish on RC, generally scoring around a 157 on PTs. So I haven't been using a highlighter on RC and for the first time tonight I did and my score improved drastically (-5). I am planning on taking the LSAT this Saturday, my question is, is using a highlighter for RC a game changer? I honestly feel confident now that I can score in the 160s by using a highlighter on the RC section. Did using a highlighter on RC change anyone else's scores big time? Whooo!!! Good luck 7sagers!!!

Hi guys,

In the video, JY recommends re do questions, but what exactly does it mean?

Does it entail recalling everything by memory from the game?

or do you get to look at the questions and just plainly re do them while looking at the questions?

Thanks,

Panda

What type of question is this? The stem says, "the argument above most closely conforms to which of the following principles"

Is this a PSA question?

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-74-section-1-question-03/

Hi guys, I am taking the december LSAT, and I just tried practising this game. @"J.Y. Ping" doesn't explain this part of the game. Please somebody help.

Why does P HAVE to precede T?

From Rule 5 we know P precedes T, if F has left any message.

If F has not left any message the rule should fail, Thus P doesn’t have to precede T.

Thus in Q2 option E should also be right and we will be left with 2 right answers.

P.S. Sorry for not posting the entire game here, too much to type and not sure if it may constitute a violation of LSAT's rules.

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-30-section-1-game-2

Please explain why C and not B is correct. Thanks

Taking the LSAT Saturday, while reviewing some LR questions today I came across something that sucks up a bunch of my time. It's the silly word "generalization" !

This is a labeling question where we need to figure out the role played by the statement "for music is merely sound". Two of the answer choices begin with "it is a generalization..." and I struggled to quickly eliminate them. After about a minute on the question I was able to eliminate those answer choices and choose the correct answer, but I got stuck got longer than I'd like. Has anyone come up with a quick way to eliminate the "generalization" answer choice? I believe I've come across this option in previous prep tests and I can't recall any instances where this was the correct answer... anyone have an example of that?

Thanks and good luck everyone!

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-77-section-4-question-22/

Please explain to me how in the world can D be the correct answer. The colloquial word 'buff' is the only thing in its favor. How could an article containing words such as apoptosis, nuclei, atrophy be meant for a general audience? I found all answers horrible, but B was the only neutral one without anything ridiculous in it, and so I chose it.

Thanks for your help!

Anybody have a list of the hardest logic games in history of the LSAT? Preferably from PTs 52 and on.

I got it right. But I don't know why J.Y said we can can make "some" statement by contrapositive. The relationship is about "all" statement.

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-34-section-2-question-23/

Any idea？

I know that LSAT PT 69 has live commentary - are there any other PT sections with this? I seem to remember seeing some live commentary in the 70's but can't find it now

Hi guys,

So here is what I have written down in my notebook as a problem I am having. If you have any good solutions please let me know.

So this is what I have written down today in my notebook:

1. When the question asks to refer back to specific passages, correctly identifying the referencing passage is key.

2. After the referential passage is correctly identified, the section of the paragraph should be read in sizeable amount as to capture the underlying meaning in a complete or sufficient manner. Even if there is a passage break in between, the beginning of the next passage should be read as well to identify for any hints.

3. A question can be made difficult by the author through applying referential phrasing in the sentence which it directly is referring. Under such circumstance, patience and care should apply and the main intended topic needs to be draw-out through back solving.

4. A question can be selected wrong for this set of questions when there is a answer choice that directly points out the main point of the passage. Under referencing questions, this reference only applies to the sentence which it is pointing instead of the main point. The brain has a tendency to go with the familiar without actually drawing a constraint for the task at hand.

Please let me know how you deal with this situation.

I'm totally lost with this question. So when the Hvirus inserts itself into a chromosome of an animal, fragments of the virus are passed onto the descendants. The zebra finch and junco both have the hvirus fragments in the same location. They diverged 25 millions years ago, so therefore the hvirus is 25 million years old.

I just can't see any assumptions the argument is making. In my opinion, C might weaken the argument if the insertion occurs at a random spot. Doesn't this contradict that the fragments are in the same location?

Thanks!

The correct answer is B. However, I originally selected A because this answer seems to be linked to the premise following the conclusion. Answer A incorporated the information that came after since, which is a premise indicator.

Can someone please explain why A is wrong?

Can someone explain what may be the best method to avoid choosing the incorrect answer again with similar stems?

I always have looked for premise indicators because they are very important when selecting the correct answers. I do not want to be fooled again.

Please assist.

https://classic.7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-june-2007-section-3-question-17

I chose B without a second thought, also on the BR. I get why A, C, D do not work. I do understand that E is descriptively correct, but I still consider the claim in question to be a conclusion, therefore making B acceptable. Could you please persuade me that the claim is in fact not a conclusion?

This is my reasoning for its being a conclusion:

Willingness to pay is not proportional to need, since in the real world, some people simply cannot pay as much as others. As a result (of the fact that 'in the real world, some people simply...), a price increase will allocate goods to the people with the most money, not to those with the most need.

Hi everyone. One theme I've noticed in JY's videos, is that he'll identify a bunch of not both or either or rules, and then chose one to put on the chart. LSAT 36/Sec4/Game1 is an example. He puts the either or, but not the not both rule on the chart. How do we know when/which to put on? Thanks!

Near the start of this video lesson in the Causation and Phenomenon-Hypothesis Questions group, JY points out that a stem which says, "Which of the following, if true, most strongly supports the ... argument?" is actually a strengthening question and admonishes us not to confuse it with a MSS stem!

Yes, he gives a persuasive reason -- the direction of support is here consistent with strengthening and not with MSS -- but what the hell? If the stem isn't going to indicate the type of the question, why are we reading it first and using it to guide reading of the stimulus?

The subject step is mentioned once in Logical Reasoning General Approach as the first step after identifying that the stimulus does not contain an argument;

And it is mentioned twice in Logical Reasoning Flow Chart: once as above, but then again, for all question types, just before scanning answer choices for ones to be eliminated.

What does it mean?

What is the first sentence?

I thought this is the conclusion because it says "undeniably"...

and all the rest are premise :(