How do I increase my speed?

itsemmarobyn

It's not that I don't understand the questions or that I can't get the correct answer; I can. I'm just really slow. For example, I find that for LR and RC sections I have to read the stimulus twice before I can select the correct answer because I don't understand what it says the first time. So, I spend at least 1min per LR question. Is there any way for me to improve my reading comp so I'm not so slow?

Alex

1 minute per LR question when you're learning the basics isn't bad at all.

That said, try to focus on reading and understanding the argument structure of both LR and RC passages especially. Try not to get bogged down in details, words you may not be able to subvocalize, and the like.

Unfortunately, the only way to improve your speed on actual RC passages is to practice, practice, and practice some more.

If you're getting the questions right but having trouble reading the passage then try 7Sage's memory method: https://7sage.com/lsat-reading-comprehension-the-memory-method/

It can take a while to properly implement, but one of the keys to doing well on RC is not getting bogged down in materials; but reading to structure. I'm sure it will make much more sense once you complete some of the lessons on RC and practice using the memory method.

jurisprudent

I try to look for premise/conclusion indicators, context indicators (other people's argument) and other structural similarities between stimuli -- once you get the structure down, you'll see that they repeat time and again. Once you start internalizing the structure, the reading and understanding become faster.

If I encounter tough words or things I can't pronounce, I just label them as the first letter of that word and keep calling it that -- I don't spend any extra time trying to understand (kind of how after a while for LG, you stop reading/processing the actual game piece names and just call it A, B, C...etc).

itsemmarobyn

@"Alex Divine" said:
try to focus on reading and understanding the argument structure of both LR and RC passages especially. Try not to get bogged down in details, words you may not be able to subvocalize, and the like.

Thanks, this is really helpful! I'll definitely take a look at the memory method too Thanks!!

Sami

@"Emma Robyn" said:
It's not that I don't understand the questions or that I can't get the correct answer; I can. I'm just really slow. For example, I find that for LR and RC sections I have to read the stimulus twice before I can select the correct answer because I don't understand what it says the first time. So, I spend at least 1min per LR question.

If you are getting questions correct and only spending 1 minute per question in LR that's really amazing. That means you should be finishing the section in 25 min and have 10 min to spend on extremely hard questions. That's pretty much the speed the 170 plus test takers have and I think the best one I have ever heard is 19 min for all questions on first round and that was after 10 years of teaching LSAT. So you do have speed and accuracy in LR at least from what you wrote above.

Is there any way for me to improve my reading comp so I'm not so slow?

I would practice reading for low-high resolution summary on the passage. But again speed on RC does not come from reading the passage faster but reading the passage well so you can go through the questions faster. Typically, you want to spend 3-4 min reading the passage and 3-5 min answering all the questions for that passage depending on how many questions they are and how difficult they are.

Mellow_Z

Short Answer : Practice.

Long Answer : The more questions you do, the more you'll be able to pick up on the patterns that the LSAT uses to "trick" students. You will start to see the same reasoning and argument structure, the same flaws, the same causation/correlation tricks, and it will just start "clicking" faster in your brain. If you can maintain a speed of 1m/question for the first 15 questions in LR (typically the easiest questions) that leaves you with 2m/question for the remaining 10 questions, which is the more difficult ones. This is a great pace because you'll still be able to knock a few of the remaining 10 out in about 1 minute, which leaves 2-2.5 minutes for the difficult curve breaker questions. I don't see any issue with this, personally.

Once you start taking PT's or drilling, you will start to notice trends in which types of questions give you the most trouble. When you identify these issues, try touching up on the curriculum for the given question type. It's also not a bad idea to try reading the section for that type from different resources (LSAT Trainer or Manhattan). They dive more into the theory and explanations of strategy, which might be able to help you bust the bubble.

Some of the above is applicable to RC, but you really just have to practice reading those dense styles of passages. Read for structure, not so much for details. Be sure to make mental (or written) notes of what each paragraph does in the overall scheme of things; whether it is a conclusion, whether it is support for a conclusion or support against the conclusion, whether this is the author's opinion, or merely a statement of facts, etc.

When doing BR, every answer can be traced back to something in the passages. So really take your time to identify where the passage supports your answer choice (it will only support 1, and this will always be the correct answer). Once you practice this exercise you will begin to be more comfortable with not checking everything back to the writing, and will have rough ideas of where in the passage to go fishing for details (you waste a ton of time searching for info if you don't have a roadmap outlined).

H.al1997

Awesome advice!

JustDoIt

As your knowledge of the test, the questions, and the general structure of arguments improves, your speed should also improve simultaneously. You'll begin recognizing the task and what you are looking for to accomplish each tasks, and that will make you much faster.