Reading Comp after CC is done

Marco Antonio

I was wondering what the best way to approach RC is following completion of CC. I usually miss between 8 and 4 consistently, but that's too wide a range. I want to get down to -2, which I believe I am capable of doing. I usually blow it and miss 2 and 2 or 3 and 2 on the harder RC sections, and miss only 1 on the easier sections. Should I review "Hard RC" sections from the CC or does anyone have any tips on something that would be more constructive? Should I go backwards from PT35 and review only the hardest RC passages per test and then BR them? I imagine that that would be best strategy, but if anyone has any thoughts I'd love to hear. Thanks for all and any feedback!

Alex

Following the CC, I did a lot of experimenting to find a strategy that worked for me. While I definitely endorse and use the 7Sage Memory Method/low resolution summary technique, I still needed to tweak the time I spent reading passages vs. answering questions and whether or not taking notes/circling underlining was helping me.

To do this I just drilled a bunch of the RC passages from 1-35 along with the drills in the CC.

Reviewing the passages in-depth was really what led me to becoming more consistent. After each passage I would painstakingly blind review and write out summaries (high and low res) for each paragraph. I would write line cites proving each answer choice, and overall just practice skimming to find the answers. Eventually I started to get a feel for what many of the correct answered looked like and the tricks the LSAC employs to make wrong answers look attractive.

I'll say the most important part of the process for me when it came to RC was very much just self awareness. It's really important to realize and take note of what you're doing wrong vs. what you're doing right. This can be much easier in other sections where the rubric for judging yourself is much more obvious. On RC, it can be hard because essentially all it can seem like we are doing is reading and answering questions. So make sure you are paying attention to how you are reading and how you approach each different question type. I'd like to think it helped me to think of RC just like I do the LR section. In essence that meant learning the proper ways to read the stims (passages) and answer the different question types. Just like there are different ways to approach a SA and a MBT question, there are different ways to approach an inference question and an author's tone question. My advice would be to really learn how to do each well.

Marco Antonio

Thank you Alex. This is incredibly useful! I have personal question if you don't mind as well. I am prepping the LSAT full-time until Dec 2. I am fool-proofing games until approx. October 22 and doing 2 timed PTs/week. How much RC should I do daily/every other day?

Thanks in advance for your response!

Alex

@"Marco Antonio" said:
Thank you Alex. This is incredibly useful! I have personal question if you don't mind as well. I am prepping the LSAT full-time until Dec 2. I am fool-proofing games until approx. October 22 and doing 2 timed PTs/week. How much RC should I do daily/every other day?

Thanks in advance for your response!

No problem, dude.

I would definitely aim to maybe do at least a passage or two a day, if not more. The important thing is to realize you can't really learn RC by osmosis or just doing a bunch of passages. Don't worry too much about sheer volume, rather focus more on quality prep. When I do RC, it isn't uncommon to take an 45 minutes mulling over each passage. If I was taking the test in December, I would feel more comfortable taking the LSAT having completed and BR'd 20 RC sections very well than 40 done in a hurry.

If you're already in your PT phase of doing 1-2 PTs a week, then I would just review the hell out of the RC passages that come from the PTs you are doing.

On an unrelated note, I truly believe 2 PTs a week may be pushing it if you are still having issues with RC. Review is much more important than just grinding out PTs, which, without a bunch of accompanying review, is a pretty big waste of time and effort. The purpose of a PT is to get a snapshot of your weaknesses, so that you can spend time working on those weaknesses and hammering out your technique. Most of your improvement will not happen while you're PTing, it will happen when you review and drill things that, in your review, you find out needs work. If you spend all your time PTing you won't see nearly as big an improvement as if you spent AT LEAST HALF of your time reviewing. So opt to do 1 PT each week, and spend the rest of your time improving where you know you need the improvement. Think of a practice test as getting an MRI after breaking your legs. You can totally keep getting MRIs, but you're not going to get better any faster. However, if you do physical therapy and work on getting your body back in shape, you'll be working towards getting better. Think of the MRI as PT'ing and the physical therapy as Br'ing + drilling weaknesses/reviewing lessons.

You may also want to just a few weeks just working on RC while you are fool proofing the games bundle. I know more than a few people who took time off from PT'ing to address weaknesses and do intensives on the sections they needed work on.

Good luck!

tringo335

I have found that reading The Economist helps me greatly with the RC section. The Economist really tests your active reading skills. The New Yorker is a good one as well.

Brazil020511

Where can you find the different RC question type? Thanks!

TheMikey

@Brazil020511 said:
Where can you find the different RC question type? Thanks!

https://7sage.com/webinar/jimmy-rc-qt/

is this what you were looking for?

Brazil020511

@TheMikey said:

@Brazil020511 said:
Where can you find the different RC question type? Thanks!

https://7sage.com/webinar/jimmy-rc-qt/

is this what you were looking for?

PERFECT! Thank you!

TheMikey

@Brazil020511 said:

@TheMikey said:

@Brazil020511 said:
Where can you find the different RC question type? Thanks!

https://7sage.com/webinar/jimmy-rc-qt/

is this what you were looking for?

PERFECT! Thank you!

oh alright, no prob!