Okay, is the issue reading faster, working more efficiently, drilling more LR or all three?

BlbbrNggt

LR is absolutely smacking me. I have done aprox. 30 PT with the most recent one being Being PT46. On the early PT i was scoring 165-172. But as the pretests started to become more recent, I noted the games seemed to get easier, the reading comp stayed the same but LR got significantly harder. I went from -3 or -4 per LR section to -5 to -9 despite my RC being -3 to -4 and games being no more than -3. Like I find myself struggling to read and understand the arguments on LR fast enough. My blind reviews are consistently above 176. The problem for me is that I can not seem to read the LR stem and understand it fast enough (the hard ones that is), and if If i take the extra time i need to get the right answer, I will usually not be able to finish. Is this a matter of me just reading too slowly? I still finish Reading comp just fine, and with about a minute to spare, or is this a matter of needing more practice with LR? By drilling old LR sections will this potentially increase my speed? Anyone else have ideas how to shore up LR? I mean I still have like 34 more prep tests to go through and blind review, but for the past 4 pretest this issues seems to be the most significant. I take two pretests a week and during the rest of the week blind review and drill old games and reading comp. I have never really went back and drilled LR. Does anyone else have advice?

tanes256

Hey, @BlbbrNggt! Have you noticed that you're missing the same question types? Or, does it seem to be scattered? If you see a pattern in the question types missed I would say it's worth going back through the curriculum and drilling to make sure you've got it down. Also, are you implementing the skip method? If the stimulus is too convoluted and you're not fully understanding it just skip and save for last. Sorry, but I can't really tell which of the three you mentioned is your issue but if I had to choose one it would be drilling more LR.

acsimon

More information is needed here. But I would say that speed IS pretty important--and that you shouldn't necessarily be comfortable with even your RC performance on that front, even though your PTs are good (there is also a good variety in the difficulty of RC after 46 of reading). You don't want to start having some of the these dilemmas (between care and timing) happening for another section.

In any case, @tanes256 is on point about the skip method for LR. However, it sounds like you have general issue for which skipping might not solve your problem.--Skipping is not going to be of much help if there are more than 6 stimuli that you're having trouble processing.

Question: At which point in the test do you start experiencing the issue?--one small thing to help would be to become appreciably faster at answering the questions before that point.

But that won't solve the general problem of the failure to apprehend the argument structure (in a timely manner) presented to you in the question. My thought is that, given your BR score, you do have an appreciation for argument structure of stimuli but that your apprehension is not fluid enough. One thing that you could try is timing yourself on stimuli from your previously completed PTs (presumably, many of them you will have forgotten by now), but only discerning the arguments structure. This means not reading the question, and not looking to pick one of the answer choices. Only scanning the stimuli and identifying premises and conclusion (sub-conclusions, etc.). This doesn't only mean marking mentally marking these elements as you go, but also trying to see how the premises are supposed to provide support for the conclusion (so it would involve some grasp of the contents of the individual sentences). See if you can noticeably cut down the time it takes you with these as you move along in the drill; I'd say that you still should be able to get to a point where you consistently shave off 7 or more seconds doing this even on LR sections from PTs that you've done well at. After this is done, I would move to setting aside a few of the remaining PTs (maybe 5) for section practice and do the same thing with the LR sections there--tracking your timing as you move through different stimuli and noting any problems (i.e., slowdowns) that arise. As you move, you should start to see improvements in your ability to perform the isolated task of discerning argument structure. Of course, sometime you'll want to add the other elements of answering an LR question to--identifying the question type at a glance, finding the structure and discerning the content of the argument, hunting down the correct answer choice. But after doing the earlier task, it will be less likely that the stimulus component is unduly f'ing you up and remaining lapses are more likely to arise from the question type, trap answer choices, etc.

I hope this is of some help. Also remember that you want to get to the point with LRs to where you can consistently complete all 25-26 questions in around 30 mins to allow time for review of those curve breakers. Difficult, I know, but definitely doable.