I second reading slowly and attentively! I am also a non-native English speaker. My diagnostic was around -10 for RC. After actually taking time to read and understand the passages, my RC greatly improved--I averaged -2 RC on practice tests before taking the LSAT and ended up with 175+.
The only additional "techniques" I used were highlighting keywords/sentences and occasionally briefly scanning through a passage after a thorough read to identify passage structure. For the most part I just made sure to read carefully and understand each sentence before moving on.
I usually took more time than the "target time" reading the passages, but spent less time answering the questions. A thorough read allowed me to answer most questions without having to refer back to the passage. One thing I noticed with this strategy was I had to trust my memory and instinct when answering questions. I didn't have time to cross-check each answer choice and actually found that spending too much time dwelling on answer choices after I'd already identified one that I was fairly certain was correct messed with my memory (repeatedly reading some of the random terms they threw into the incorrect answer choices created self-doubt). On a side note, I do not have an impressive memory and frankly do not remember much from the passages now. A good "memory" in the traditional sense is not required. Taking time to fully understand a passage will naturally build a robust short term memory sufficient for answering questions.
For questions that I couldn't answer from memory and seemed difficult even after I referred back to the passage, I would flag and skip. The correct answer would often pop up after I went back to it later. I limited myself to max 1:30 in the first round for these questions. Spending a chunk of time on these questions the first round never worked for me--my brain simply refused to break out of its incorrect neural circuit.
As someone who also struggled with RC, hopefully this helps a bit! Don't be discouraged by people saying it's not possible to improve RC. Keep on practicing/blind-reviewing and it will get better. Good luck!
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I second reading slowly and attentively! I am also a non-native English speaker. My diagnostic was around -10 for RC. After actually taking time to read and understand the passages, my RC greatly improved--I averaged -2 RC on practice tests before taking the LSAT and ended up with 175+.
The only additional "techniques" I used were highlighting keywords/sentences and occasionally briefly scanning through a passage after a thorough read to identify passage structure. For the most part I just made sure to read carefully and understand each sentence before moving on.
I usually took more time than the "target time" reading the passages, but spent less time answering the questions. A thorough read allowed me to answer most questions without having to refer back to the passage. One thing I noticed with this strategy was I had to trust my memory and instinct when answering questions. I didn't have time to cross-check each answer choice and actually found that spending too much time dwelling on answer choices after I'd already identified one that I was fairly certain was correct messed with my memory (repeatedly reading some of the random terms they threw into the incorrect answer choices created self-doubt). On a side note, I do not have an impressive memory and frankly do not remember much from the passages now. A good "memory" in the traditional sense is not required. Taking time to fully understand a passage will naturally build a robust short term memory sufficient for answering questions.
For questions that I couldn't answer from memory and seemed difficult even after I referred back to the passage, I would flag and skip. The correct answer would often pop up after I went back to it later. I limited myself to max 1:30 in the first round for these questions. Spending a chunk of time on these questions the first round never worked for me--my brain simply refused to break out of its incorrect neural circuit.
As someone who also struggled with RC, hopefully this helps a bit! Don't be discouraged by people saying it's not possible to improve RC. Keep on practicing/blind-reviewing and it will get better. Good luck!