watching all JY LR video explanations after PT?

youbbyun

Hey all

hope all is well. I heard sages like @"Jonathan Wang" advocate for watching all the JY LR video explanations for each question after doing an LR section. I think the logic is that you can always learn more from each question (sometimes you may have even gotten a question right for the wrong reason), and it also helps to reinforce the reasoning that you initially thought you knew.

For me, I've mostly watched JY's video explanations for questions I got wrong and question I wasn't sure about (like 60% confidence) but still got right. Quick question: should I watch JY's video explanations for questions I was pretty also sure about ? In other words, should I try watching all 26 LR video explanations for each LR section?

For some background: for each LR section, I am averaging a -5 timed and -2 after blind review.

Thanks!

JohnnyKarate

I think it depends on how sure you are. If you are 100% confident in the answer you've selected and can articulate your reasoning, and you get it right, then there may not be a huge need to watch the review video. That time could be spent doing other things like brushing up on areas you may need improvement in. However, to each their own, and whatever you feel works best for you is probably the best route to take.

keets993

I'd try maybe watching all the explanations for one or two sections to see if it's actually helpful for you. Sometimes people get questions right even if their reasoning is off, especially if the question wasn't particularly dificult. Watching the video expalantions would balance that and provide a checking mechanism. You seem pretty solid in LR though; so this exercise might be redundant or help give you more confidence.

Kyle....

Personally, I think that sounds like a big waste of time. After blind-reviewing a section, I'd watch the videos for the ones that I got wrong once/both times, and those that I circle on my way through the section (indicating it's a question I want to re-visit if I have enough time / I'm not 100% sure on the answer). That extra time would be better spent on stuff you know you need work on than watching an 8 minute video on an obvious "flawed assumption" question.

youbbyun

@"Jonathan Wang"

i know you commented on something like this earlier, but would love you hear if you had any advice/thoughts -- on how to really master LR and the process to get there. thanks!

Jonathan Wang

OK, you asked for it. Wall of text incoming (hide!)

I will never defend the notion that reviewing every question is always going to be the most efficient thing for you to be doing at any particular time, but I am 100% sure that it is always worthwhile to do. I absolutely, vociferously disagree with the notion that it's a "big waste of time" in any way, shape or form. As with all strategy, though, to what extent you apply the technique depends on the context of the situation and the scope of your issues overall.

It's easy to equate getting something right with understanding it, but the reality is that there isn't always 1:1 correspondence between the two. If you're saying that there isn't a single time where you got a question right, but the explanation made you say "uhhh that's not what I was thinking", then I'm pretty sure you either (1) aren't doing enough review - ironically, perhaps because you aren't reviewing questions you got right - or (2) are lying. So it's obviously facially bad advice to say that you can straight ignore questions you got right. The confidence angle is tacked on to distinguish between the "Yes, definitely A" and the "Uhhh I'm 60/40 A vs B so I'm going with A" situations, but even bringing that in doesn't solve the whole problem because it leaves a very insidious type of error - lucking into a right answer based on incomplete understanding, and then falsely REINFORCING the notion that you actually have a complete understanding due to the result.

Riddle me this - where do you think all these people come from who understand a concept perfectly - say, sufficient assumptions - until they hit 4 or 5 star questions? Does anyone actually think those people just forget how to do sufficient assumptions the moment they pass some kind of threshold, or is it probably just that they got a messed up/incomplete version of SA in their head to begin with (with unprincipled shortcuts and undisciplined thought processes galore), reinforced those bad habits through getting away with murder in easy questions, and therefore fall into every trap in the book when the LSAT finally decides to hold their feet to the fire? Where do you think they picked up those habits? More importantly, how do you think they got reinforced?

So what are people actually trying to say? When people tell you that you don't need to review a question if you got it right and you were confident, what they're essentially telling you is that questions that you got right for the wrong reasons aren't AS worth worrying about as the questions that you actually screwed up at least once. It's definitely worse to actually get a question wrong, so you should focus there first. Makes sense. And maybe they're right - after all, you did get it right, so who cares if your understanding is incomplete?

Of course, the obvious answer is that logical fundamentals build upon themselves, much like concepts of mathematics or my plate at the buffet when I get to the prime rib station. Further, often the mistakes made in harder questions can be directly traced to iffy thought processes on mid-level questions, which in turn often implicate base level fundamentals. If you never learned to do basic algebra correctly, you're going to suck at algebra 2, and you're REALLY going to suck at calculus - and not just because you don't know wtf a derivative is, but because even if you follow all the instructions for how to take a derivative, you still have no clue how it fits with the bigger picture and are still bad at the underlying algebra, so it all takes foreeeeeeever and you miss things left and right. The entire time you might be thinking that calculus is freaking hard, but you're missing another huge chunk of the bigger picture and you're never going to fix it if you continue thinking the only thing giving you trouble is the calculus part.

OK, shut up and get to the point Jonathan. The point is that if you have huge gaping holes in your theory, you need to address those first, period. Nobody's saying that you shouldn't look at the questions you got wrong, and I'd probably even agree that you should look at the ones you got wrong first. But unless you're like 173+ territory, I feel confident in saying that it's incredibly rare that the mistakes you make are isolated to just one or two question-specific or squirrely/corner-case issues. The vast majority of the time, your mistakes implicate your mastery of the fundamentals. And if you're making fundamentals mistakes in hard questions, guess where else you're probably also making them? How do you find out? I can only think of one way...

The length of a video generally corresponds to the complexity of a question. If a video is 8 minutes long but you think it was easy, you should probably pay attention anyway because the balance of probability suggests that if you (the student) thought it was cake but JY (the teacher) thought it was worth extensive explanation, you're probably the one missing something.

In an ideal world, I would absolutely watch every video from start to finish. If you ballpark the videos for an LR section at about 5 minutes a question on average, that's 125 minutes - 2 hours - and for anyone to say that you should spend less time reviewing a section than a 7+ year LSAT professional spends explaining feels kind of ridiculous to me. But in this imperfect world, I guess whether that's too onerous for you depends on how much time you have to study and how good you really want to be. (Alternately - you can usually cut good chunk of time if you use a text resource instead of watching videos for questions you feel good about).

For anyone who thinks they won't get anything out of watching the videos, here's something for you to try - write down your explanation for the question and walk through the answer choices, like JY does in his videos, and then go watch. If you can articulate (and I mean articulate, not just "uhh yeah that's what I meant)...say, 90% of the points JY talks about every single time you do this exercise, then fine. But if not (and I'm willing to bet this will be by far the more common outcome), perhaps reconsider whether it's actually a waste of time or if that's just your ego, laziness, or eagerness to do more questions talking.

TL;DR: It's not the first or most important thing you should be doing, but it's incredibly helpful and worth every second in my opinion.

beezmoof

I did it for a three PTs in the 40s and it was really helpful to have JY's mentality in my head, especially in picking up patterns on how to eliminate ACs. Do it for a couple of tests if you have the time. You definitely won't walk out of it regretting it and saying you didn't learn anything...

youbbyun

@"Jonathan Wang" thank you so much for your input! i really appreciate you taking the time to help!!