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Hello!
Was recently diagnosed with ADHD in December of this year and I am currently studying for the LSAT using 7Sage, Loophole by Ellen Cassidy, The LSAT Trainer by Mike Kim, and The 10 Actuals LSAT PrepTests Volume V.
Would love to connect with others who have ADHD and are navigating the LSAT/7Sage material and brainstorm different study strategies + organizational strategies that are most effective for those of us with ADHD and provide mutual support.
Please let me know if you are interested!
I struggled a bit with identifying a referential and a referent from the information provided in this lecture, so I did a separate exercise to better understand how to bridge the gap between comprehending what a referential and referent is in theory and identifying them in sentences/paragraphs in practice (without just recognizing which is which to explain the definition). Posting it here in case it helps someone else or if anyone has feedback for me!
My goal in this exercise was how to:
1. Identify a referential and a referent in a set of claims.
2. Correctly identify their relationship to one another and understand why/how they correlate.
3. Learn how to keep track of them on dense passages on various topics that encompass cluster sentences.
I utilized the example in this lecture: Botanists at the Ben Gurion University recently discovered plants that can extract phosphorus from the sand covering its leaves. They are conducting experiments to better understand the mechanism which enables such extractions.
First, I identified repetitive variables. (if referentials are similar in makeup to pronouns, you can think of these variables as the noun). The repetitive variables I came across were 1. BOTANISTS AT THE BEN GURION UNIVERSITY (the lecture on modifiers helped me on this, the entire subset is BOTANISTS AT THE BEN GURION UNIVERSITY, not just BOTANISTS), 2. PLANTS, 3. EXTRACTIONS (At first, “plants that extract phosphorus from the sand covering its leaves” seemed like an entire variable, especially following the train of thought of modifiers, but by reading “the mechanism which enables such extractions”, I could tell from the information provided that EXTRACTIONS was its own separate entity. (That could potentially come up on longer passages on the test)
Next, I focused on identifying which is the referential and its correlating referent by identifying their relationship and separating the two in chronological order. I got curious about words that had no definitive referent. [THEY are conducting - who is they?] [ITS leaves - whose leaves?] [SUCH extraction - what kind of extraction are we talking about?] I read the sentence emphasizing chronological order (remembering that many referents are mentioned first and the referential follows). It helped me to identify subject, predicate, nouns, verbs, and modified subsets. I asked myself, what’s “ITS” leaves? In remembering that many referents are mentioned prior to its referential, I knew that ITS referred to plants.
Lastly, I utilized contextual information. I recalled the definition of “pointing towards” something else, and utilized the contextual information based on chronological order to see if it made sense (aka if those referentials correctly correlated to their referents) if they were to be swapped. I kept in mind the identifiable variables of 1. BOTANISTS AT THE BEN GURION UNIVERSITY, 2. PLANTS, 3. EXTRACTIONS. In this example, I asked myself who are “THEY”? There were 3 variables that were previously mentioned in the first sentence alone. I know that on the actual test, that one sentence could be preceded by multiple paragraphs with multiple variables and modifiers. So I swapped out “THEY” with the different variables. If “THEY” are conducting experiments, it does not make sense for PLANTS to conduct experiments or for EXTRACTIONS to conduct experiments, so it was clear to me that THEY referred to BOTANISTS AT THE BEN GURION UNIVERSITY (Again, the entire modified subset)
By applying previous lessons (Nouns, Verbs, Subject, Predicate, Modifiers/Subset) and identifying them in this sentence, I was able to come up with this 3-step process of identifying the relationship between referential and referent, and therefore, identifying which is which.
I hope this helps someone! I’m also happy to receive any feedback if my own thought process is flawed or just further discuss referentials.