Reading Comprehension struggles

jhanco10

Good evening 7SAGE family,

I have been studying for the LSAT for around six months. Although I've finished all CC for reading comprehension I continue to struggle in this area. My gains have been great in LG and LR, but I have only improved minimally in RC. My scores range from 155-158 with a raw score of 16-20 on RC. This has come to me as no surprise as RC is the hardest to improve, but it's still discouraging to do so poorly. Even a small gain in the raw score of reading comprehension would be huge. I am scheduled to take the June LSAT. What advice can you give to help me with this reading stagnation?

Thank you in advance

Cant Get Right

There's so many things that could be costing you points that it's really hard to say without more detail. How's your timing? What type of questions do you seem to be missing? How do you do in BR?

jhanco10

I almost always have 7 minutes remaining when I get to the last passage and it causes me to rush through. I get around half of BR questions I originally missed correct. Local questions really bog me down. Going back the passage and searching messes me up.

Sami

@benhancock68 said:
I almost always have 7 minutes remaining when I get to the last passage and it causes me to rush through.

The timing is problematic because it indicates either you are spending too long on the passage or getting caught up on questions that you should be skipping. For each passage, you are really in a danger zone if you are spending an upwards of four minutes or more just reading it. For questions you really want to answer them around 30 seconds each.

If you are spending too long on a passage, it indicates you are trying to remember everything. One way I helped myself overcome that was by focusing on low resolution summaries after reading each paragraph and connecting each paragraph afterwards to the previous ones. JY does a really good job of explaining low resolution summaries. If you havn't already incorporated this strategy, I highly recommend trying it out. If you are taking too long on the questions it indicates you need to skip and thus the focus needs to be on a good question strategy. For most people, I have found its a combination of both of these issues.

I get around half of BR questions I originally missed correct. Local questions really bog me down. Going back the passage and searching messes me up.

With local questions, I like to not lose a grip on time when I go back. If it's a line reference, I read a few lines above and a few lines back and try answering the question. If I still have trouble, my best bet is to circle this question and skip it. The worst thing you can do is to keep re-reading things -time will fly and before you know it a minute or more would have gone by.

jhanco10

I genuinely appreciate your input Sami. In the coming days, I will try to be implement these strategies. Rereading and rereading is a mistake I’m guilty of.

Sami

@benhancock68 said:
I genuinely appreciate your input Sami. In the coming days, I will try to be implement these strategies. Rereading and rereading is a mistake I’m guilty of.

Oh yaaay!

Have you tried to video record yourself? I found it’s the best way to catch myself in the act of re-reading things. Before that, I used to think it wasn’t as big of a problem.

Cant Get Right

In addition to what @Sami said, it’s important to feel comfortable with less than 100% confidence. We just don’t have the luxury of confirming everything. In the real world, this is good practice, but on the LSAT it’s going to cost us more points than it saves. You may miss a few questions here and there that you would definitely have corrected had you worked to confirm, and that’s fine. Timed strategy is a very specific task, and you have to be comfortable taking some risks. Learn from your errors in BR and try to build on those lessons to avoid the same mistakes in the future.

PearsonSpecterLittUp

I have a close friend who purchased the LSAT trainer after completing the CC and used it primarily for RC. She ended up doing -1 on test day on RC!
Have you thought about trying out the book?

Hope this helps!