Struggling with LR...HELP

RJmazo14

So in the debate between LR v LG...I'm one of those LG people. I'm averaging about -2/-3 on LG, but a brutal -9/-10 on LR. Specifically, I'm struggling with NA, SA, and Flaw questions.

Any advice/pointers/tips on how to tackle this hurdle? I just finished PT38 and am seeing a very consistent (aka through my past 3 PTs) pattern, namely that I STINK at NA/SA/Flaw. Any advice would be much appreciated.

TheMikey

Drill NA/SA/Flaw questions in bulks. You'll see the patterns for these question types, namely, the focus you have to have on the premise and conclusion for these Q types.

For all 3 of these Q types, what you have to look for is a gap.
Flaw: what is the argument doing wrong?
SA: connect the premise with the conclusion. IF premise, THEN conclusion.
NA: use the negation strategy. reverse an AC and if the P-->C connection is destroyed then you've found your answer.

Freddy_D

Yup, you should drill all 3 ad nauseum. You should also go back through the CC lessons as a refresher prior to drilling.

Alex

Great advice already. I just wanted to add that NA/SA/Flaw are all very closely related so you may have an underlying weakness when it comes to being able to find the gaps or flaws in an argument. Do practice this you may want to consider doing a few of the problem sets untimed. Really get good at finding the support/conclusion and try to pre-phrase what you think might be wrong with the argument. Especially practice this with SA and Flaw questions.

I found that after I drilled a good amount of these assumption family questions untimed they became like second nature.

Best of luck

RJmazo14

@TheMikey @Freddy_D @"Alex Divine" thank you for the advice! Because I have the starter pack, I dont think I have as much access to a greater QBank...is there anywhere else I can go to get more questions (besides just simply upgrading)?

Alex

@RJmazo14 said:
@TheMikey @Freddy_D @"Alex Divine" thank you for the advice! Because I have the starter pack, I dont think I have as much access to a greater QBank...is there anywhere else I can go to get more questions (besides just simply upgrading)?

Upgrading is what I'd recommend, because this way you'll have all the tests, question banks, and tons of problem sets/ drill bundles + explanations. But you can also get drill by type books on Amazon that will give you additional drill material.

TheMikey

yeah if you upgrade you will literally have everything with U+

but you can look for Cambridge LR by question type books or similar ones that Powerscore sells!

LSATcantwin

This is going to be long so just...sorry...lol

NA

NA questions use to be one of my worst types of questions. I use to really struggle with these. This is how I improved on them.

1.) Bought a notebook.
2.) Wrote out the conclusion
3.) Wrote out the support
4.) Made a guess at an assumption/hole
5.) Negated EVERY answer choice.
6.) Wrote out how the correct AC destroyed the argument (how it wiped away the support)

I repeated this process for about 30 NA questions. It became habit and I'm far more efficient at doing this on a test now. It also forced me to engage with incorrect answer choices. I learned what trap answers looked like. I noticed that a lot of AC pretend to be a part of the argument (same words/phrases) but when negated did ABSOLUTELY nothing to impact the support/conclusion.

SA

These I learned to spot the gap. I became hyper aware of jumps in the stimulus. A then B therefore A -> C. What? You better give me B -> C first fool. I would look for the conclusion and identify new ideas that were just showing up.

Example:

7Sage user's are awesome. They give advice and help people who are having issues with studying.

Well, then I need to find something that says "giving advice and helping people who have issues makes someone awesome." That's the only way I can get to that conclusion. Sometimes having a solid understanding of conditionals can really help with SA questions.

Fun fact - Principle questions are just SA questions with more abstract AC.

Flaw

Time to learn how to make smart English sound dumb. This was the single my most valuable tool to learning flaw questions for me.

Example;

• D.) Mistakes the observation that one thing happens after another for proof that the second thing is the result of the first

• Dumb English: Saw that one thing happened followed by another and then said the first thing caused the second.

What the hell does that even say? I'd insert the subject of the stimulus into it. Lets say the stim talks about frogs and rain.

He saw frogs came out happen before rain and then assumed the frogs coming out caused the rain.

Then I would compare that back to the conclusion to see if that is actually what the author did. This one takes practice, as it is extremely time consuming at first. I am still working on it.

Hope some of these help you.

spitzy11

I will tell you right now, UPGRADE! Upgrade to Ultimate+. I should've done this from the get go. I literally am in the same boat as you with going -2ish on LG but -9ish on LR. I feel your pain knowing how much we could improve with NA/SA/Flaw being more manageable. I am currently drilling these as well. I already have seen an improvement in my Strengthen ?s, which was previously an issue for me. You should 100000000% do the upgrade (in my opinion).