Hi Claire! I also really struggle with those questions, often because I panic and struggle to digest the sentence, if that makes sense (kind of like zoning out, but caused by panic rather than boredom).
When this is happening, I start with something really simple. I identify the logical strength of the stimulus and responses. So for example, if the conclusion in the stimulus is "So, John will go to the basketball game" and one of the answer choices concludes "So, Bridget is likely to fail her test," I know I can eliminate that one because the logical strength of the conclusions don't match. This helps me really quickly eliminate options without having to understand their structure, just their strength.
This usually lets me eliminate one or two answer options. At this point, if I feel like I'm still getting bogged down in the structure of each argument, I go back to the stimulus and try to translate it into plain English (or a diagram, but diagramming is kind of hit-or-miss for me personally). Like "This argument proceeds by putting forth a rule (like, an if then statement), presenting evidence that doesn't align with that rule, and then rejecting the rule because the evidence doesn't match up."
If going plain-English doesn't help, just take a breath and reread the stimulus and answers carefully. I was really shooting myself in the foot on parallel reasoning questions by panicking. Once I stepped back and stopped panicking, I improved a lot.
Sorry if this all stuff you've heard before. Good luck on the November LSAT! I'm taking that one too lol.
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Hi Claire! I also really struggle with those questions, often because I panic and struggle to digest the sentence, if that makes sense (kind of like zoning out, but caused by panic rather than boredom).
When this is happening, I start with something really simple. I identify the logical strength of the stimulus and responses. So for example, if the conclusion in the stimulus is "So, John will go to the basketball game" and one of the answer choices concludes "So, Bridget is likely to fail her test," I know I can eliminate that one because the logical strength of the conclusions don't match. This helps me really quickly eliminate options without having to understand their structure, just their strength.
This usually lets me eliminate one or two answer options. At this point, if I feel like I'm still getting bogged down in the structure of each argument, I go back to the stimulus and try to translate it into plain English (or a diagram, but diagramming is kind of hit-or-miss for me personally). Like "This argument proceeds by putting forth a rule (like, an if then statement), presenting evidence that doesn't align with that rule, and then rejecting the rule because the evidence doesn't match up."
If going plain-English doesn't help, just take a breath and reread the stimulus and answers carefully. I was really shooting myself in the foot on parallel reasoning questions by panicking. Once I stepped back and stopped panicking, I improved a lot.
Sorry if this all stuff you've heard before. Good luck on the November LSAT! I'm taking that one too lol.