I take it in February so my opinion doesn’t matter but yes, you guys should provide this option. I drilled logical reasoning in exactly this manner and I honestly think this + timed sections is the best way to study LR.

Context: I got a 166 two years ago (screwed up two games that I shouldn’t have) but even then I was PTing anywhere from 2 to 3 points higher in the weeks before I took the real thing. Resumed studying a year ago, on and off (life got in the way) and plan to take the exam in February. Since I began taking practice tests once every few weeks, I’ve been much more consistently PTing in the 170s, and got a 177 on my most recent PT (40). Also I used to get anywhere from -6 to -4 on RC and now get around -2 to -0, so I hope this advice is helpful.

First, consider postponing or even canceling your test date. You don’t know if you’ll be ready in February, you only get a finite number of attempts at the LSAT, and you don’t want to risk wasting an attempt on a score you’re not happy with. If you cancel, don’t sign up for another date until you’re consistently hitting your desired score range (I’d say until the average of your last five practice tests is within that acceptable range). Not only are you not yet within that range, but you don’t know how long it’ll take for you to get there, so having a fixed test date that’s only a couple months away doesn’t help you. You need time to get better.

Second, for RC I would drill 1 RC passage every day, untimed. Do not rush, and do not look at the clock. You MUST take as much time as you need to read/understand the passage, answer the questions, and to review answers and explanations afterward. You should understand the passage well enough that for certain questions you should be able to make a vague prediction about the right answer before even reading the answer choices. For example, when you see the main idea question, come up with your own quick summary of the main idea before diving in. Same with questions about, say, the author’s attitude to something discussed on the passage.

Your problem is most likely not speed, but understanding. The only cure for that is to make a habit of reading for understanding and to force yourself to predict the answers to certain questions. This means forcing yourself to read carefully and to think about what you’re reading. In other words, aim for comprehension (of the passage) and accuracy (when answering questions), and ignore speed. As you keep doing this daily you’ll naturally understand things faster, which means you’ll naturally do all the questions faster while getting more of your attempted questions right.

This is the only approach that worked for me, both with passages and sections. I tried highlighting, I tried improving my reading speed, I tried strictly timing myself for each passage, and none of that worked. Only when I accepted that maybe I just didn’t understand the passages as well as I should have, and started ignoring speed and reading for understanding, did I start regularly getting -1 or -0. As I hinted, I do the same thing with whole sections: ignore the clock, read for understanding, guess on the remaining questions in the last five minutes, then continue reading for understanding and answering questions until my time’s up. This daily untimed drilling + one or two RC sections a week is what improved my score on this section well beyond what I thought was possible.

I got better at LR with the same method: I did a set of 5 LR questions every day, untimed. With each question I’d take as much time as I needed to understand the passage/argument. If it was an argument I would ask myself if the argument was valid, and if not, I’d try to identify the flaw before I even read the question. That way when I actually read the question it’s much easier to predict what the answer might be. I took my time reading the answer choices as well. During review I wouldn’t move on from a question I had trouble with until I fully understood it, or until I reached out for help. My approach to LR sections is the exact same as with RC, and just like with that section I reliably get -2 to -0 on LR now.

Finally, when reviewing RC or LR questions you had trouble with and got wrong, ask yourself:

Why is the right answer right?

Why did I not pick it?

Why is the answer I picked wrong?

Why did I pick it?

Did you run out of time? Did you fail to read carefully? Did you misunderstand any of the answer choices? Did you not understand some key aspect of the passage/argument/question? The point is to make you more aware of your own error in reasoning on that question.

I’m not sure how long this approach will take you, but that’s why I think you should postpone or cancel your scheduled exam: so you can give this approach time to work and you can build confidence via several good practice test scores before you take the real thing.

In sum:

Postpone or cancel your test date. Don’t sign up for a new one until you’re consistently PTing in a range you’re happy with.

Drill 1 RC passage a day, untimed. Take as much time as you need to read and understand the passage, to answer the questions, and to review each question. Do not gloss over a question until you fully understand it OR until you’ve reached out somewhere for help in understanding it. Do 1 or 2 timed RC sections a week in the same manner: take all the time you need to read and understand the passage and to answer the questions, guess on remaining questions at the 5 minute mark, then continue working through questions in the same manner until time is up.

Drill a set of 5 LR questions a day, untimed. Take as much time as you need to read and understand the passage/argument. If it’s an argument, ask yourself if it’s valid and, if not, identify the flaw or shortcoming in it. I recommend doing this before you even read the question so that you can make a loose prediction about the right answer whenever possible. Do 1 or 2 times LR sections a week in the same way you’d do RC: take your time, guess on the rest at the 5 minute mark, then continue working until time’s up.

When reviewing questions you had trouble with or got wrong, ask yourself:

Why is the right answer right? Why didn’t I pick it?

Why is the answer I picked wrong, and why did I pick this answer?

I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any questions, and since I could use the practice feel free to DM me with any LR questions you ever have trouble with.

Also E is wrong because it talks about skill at adapting to new situations, when the passage only talks about skill at adapting to new rules. So as soon as you read “situations” you know instantly that E is wrong.

I haven’t yet watched the video, but I think I can explain why B is wrong.

The stimulus only says that:

1) failure to adapt to new rules may be due to insufficient development of the cortex, and

2) the cortex is slow to mature and continues to develop into adolescence.

But the stimulus does not say that full maturity of the cortex is required for the ability to adapt to new rules.

So it could be true that the cortex in children older than toddlers—say, 9 year olds—is not fully mature but has still developed enough to adapt to new rules. Therefore, since the passage doesn’t rule out the possibility that 9 year olds can to new rules, B is not supported by the passage.

—-

As for the other answer choices:

A is wrong because the passage says prefrontal cortex development is required for adapting to new rules, not for sorting objects by color.

D is wrong because the passage says cortex development is required for adapting to new rules, not that it’s sufficient or more important than other factors. Note that it’s not compared to other potential factors at all. Upbringing could be equally or even more important, and this would not contradict the passage.

E is wrong for two reasons. First, the passage talks about adapting to new rules, but this answer choice talks about adapting to new situations, which is much broader. Second, though the passage says cortex development is required for adapting to new rules (again, not situations), nothing in the passage says that development is directly proportional to this ability. It could be that cortex development relates to this ability in, say, an exponential way, where the ability is the square of the degree of development. Or it could be that the ability very slowly increases with development but then dramatically shoots up just before development is completed. Nothing in the passage tells you about the nature of the correlation.

@moscar80710 said:

Any tips for RC? Thats my worst section and it has not budged at all.

I’m not OP, but one thing that’s helped me in RC is realizing this:

The right answer must always be provable: it must logically follow (or close to it) from the text. During RC blind review try to highlight the exact sentence(s) or paragraph(s) that make your answer choice correct. If you cannot do this, then it’s most likely wrong, even if it sounds like something the author would agree with, and even if nothing in the passage contradicts that answer choice.

In that sense, every RC question is like what JY says about Most Strongly Supported questions: the right answer has tons of support and the wrong answer has zero support, even if it’s written to sound otherwise, even if the author would probably agree with it, and even if nothing in the passage directly contradicts it.

What this means is that even with questions that ask about what the author most likely thinks, you don’t really care about what the author thinks. You only care about what you can prove, using only the text, about what he thinks. And that seems true in general for RC: you only care about the answer choices you can prove directly and only from the text, anything else is a distraction.

I’ve gone from -4 in RC to consistently -1 or -2 after getting this, and occasionally -0 under timed conditions. Sometimes I might still get -4 but end up with -2 or lower on BR.

@jonathankorger285 said:

Lastly, start your time in LR by diagramming logical arguments. It gets you into the groove of recognizing and understanding them from the get go. I hope this helps!

Any tips on diagramming arguments? Whenever I do I use abbreviations and diagram them either as premises then conclusion or I’ll link them up if required. Asking to see if there’s anything I’m missing.

The stimulus’s argument goes:

A causes B (Bad teaching causes failing grades)

B stopped (Failing grades disappeared)

Therefore A must have decreased. (There must be less bad teaching)

D is right because it has the same form:

Not having enough to do (A) is the cause of complaints (B)

The workers stopped complaining (B stopped)

Therefore the workers must now have enough to do (The number of workers who don’t have enough to do as decreased; that is, A decreased)

E is wrong because it says:

Thinking of food causes weight gain (A causes B)

They stopped thinking of food (A stopped)

Therefore, the weight gain stopped (B decreased)

You shouldn’t look at this through conditional logic since it’s about causation, not necessity and sufficiency. JY illustrated this in the video. If A causesB and B is no longer present, A could still be present. Contrast this with conditional logic, where if A is sufficient forB and B is false, then A is false.

E is wrong because it is too broad to be a necessary assumption. For the species of wildflower to be rescued from the threat of extinction it doesn’t have to be true that the daisy will cross-pollinate with any daisylike plant. It only has to be true that the daisy will cross-pollinate with the wildflower.

Negating E gives you: The domesticated daisy will not cross-pollinate with all daisylike plants. In other words, there are some daisylike plants that the daisy will not cross-pollinate with. But the wildflower doesn’t have to be one of those plants. It could be the exception. So negating E doesn’t preclude the argument from being valid.

No, organicism is supported by the theory of internal relations (first sentence of second paragraph) but they’re not the same thing. Organicism says the whole determines the nature of its parts. Internal relations says relations between entities are possible only within some while that embraces them.

So organicism requires a belief in IR, but not the other way around.

Even assuming the analytic method does A, it does not mean that IR does not do A.

The question is: How does the author argue against IR? For A to be right, the author would have to say that IR does not do A—that IR does not define entities—not just that the analytic method does define entities. Nowhere in the passage does the author claim that IR does not define entities. So A is not supported by the passage.

I think spelling out the argument each answer attributes to the author, with premises and conclusion, would help. In each answer below, the hidden premise that the author would have to argue in order for the answer to be correct is in bold.

A.

An adequate theory must define the entities of which a system is composed.

IR does not define the entities of which a system is composed. (author never argues this)

So IR is an inadequate theory.

B.

An acceptable theory cannot have consequences that contradict its purpose

IR makes the acquisition of knowledge impossible, which contradicts the theory’s purpose of acquiring knowledge about the entities of complex systems. (author argues the first part of this in the fourth paragraph)

So IR is an unacceptable theory.

For this one I just tried to read it as fast as I could without compromising understanding and then I kept referring back to the passage for each question. This one was way too dense with information to not look back for nearly every question.

No, it’s not supported, and A and B are saying different things.

A is saying that IR is wrong because it leaves the entities of a system undefined. B is saying that IR is wrong because if IR is true then it is impossible to acquire knowledge about the things it was meant to explain.

Regarding A: The author says in paragraph 2 that IR is wrong because it assumes all “relational” properties of an entity (properties that describe how one entity relates to another in a whole) are defining characteristics, even though some of them may not be. In other words, IR treats defining and accompanying characteristics as the same thing. The author is not saying that IR fails to define entities, but that its failure to distinguish between those two characteristics would necessarily lead to faulty definitions of those entities that include too much. Thus A is wrong.

To draw an example, let’s say I defined “cat” as “animal of the species Felis catus that likes to play with humans, drink milk, catch mice, etc.” The “Felis catus” part is a defining characteristic; it’s what makes a cat a cat. The “play with humans, drink milk...” part is a list of accompanying characteristics; it’s true of some cats but not all; it’s not what makes a cat a cat. So my definition of cat is faulty because it treats accompanying characteristics as defining characteristics, much in the same way the author believes IR does when it assumes that all of an entity’s relationships are defining characteristics of that entity. Note, however, that the problem with my definition is NOT that it leaves “cat” undefined (which is what A says), but that my definition is “cat” is too broad (which is what the author says).

Regarding B: IR is a theory that was made to truly “know” the nature of entities. So IR assumes these entities can be truly known. But the author starting at line 34 says if IR is true, knowledge of the character of these entities is impossible, and this fact makes IR a bad theory. In other words, the author assumes that, for a theory to be adequate, its consequences cannot exclude the possibility of explaining what it was meant to explain. So B is correct.

Does this make sense?

The passsage says Davis would have musicians improvise and then piece the improvisations together into a finished piece. That’s like making a collage out of individual parts.

A is wrong because the individuals do improvise, but they also write the script. This is wrong because writing a script isn’t the same as piecing together a script based on individual contributions, and because the individuals, not the producer, is writing the script. A would be correct if it said something like “the actors improvise and the producer organizes the improvisations into a finished script.”

B is wrong because it has the improvisation part but not the piecing together part. Also only one person improvises in this example, whereas in the passage a group of musicians improvised the separate parts that Davis then put together into a coherent whole.

C is wrong because it doesn’t say that the individual musicians are improvising, just that the practice their parts separately (which may not be improvised).

E is wrong because it lacks both the ideas of improvising and organizing those improvisations into a new piece. If E were correct it would say something like “a teacher has people write separate stories and then uses those parts to create an entirely new story.”

That’s how I first interpreted it, haha