What was your biggest hurdle in studying RC, and any advice?

JohnnyKarate

So I’m about to finish LG CC and have put time in doing FP and what not, about to transition into studying RC. I spent a good amount of time in LR and I feel like a fair amount of LR will translate to RC in some capacity, however, I understand that for many people timing is their biggest issue with RC. What were your hurdles/shortcomings for RC? Anything I should look out for? And super-secret tips/tricks? Thanks!

btate87

Remember to treat it similarly to LR and LG: return to passages you've already done a lot. It seems simple, but it took me way too long to realize. You can't get everything out of a LG after doing it two or three times over two or three days. Go over passages, at least those that gave you trouble, until you've learned them as intimately as you learned the hardest LG's.

TexAgAaron

Reading for structure instead of details (still improving on this). Its so easy to get caught up in the details but the majority of the questions are about structure. What role does paragraph X play in the authors's reasoning? What is the purpose of this sentence in relation to the paragraph it is found in?

While there are detail questions, usually they will point out where and you just have to read it and figure out what they want. Focus on the forest and not the trees!!!

KeepCalm

@JohnnyKarate -- I second your latter questions: "What were your hurdles/shortcomings for RC? Anything I should look out for? And super-secret tips/tricks? Thanks!" I am struggling with RC as well.

Habeas Porpoise

I wrote the main strategies that helped me get my RC timing down in this discussion thread:
https://7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/16198

But mostly it was being okay with not understanding every detail and instead focusing on the big-picture (reading for structure like @akeegs92 said). Doing this helped me use the time I spent up-front on the passage more effectively.

Leah M B

Different notation styles work for different people. I started off underlining or bracketing a pretty decent amount of stuff. I always had timing issues then. I decided to try notating a lot less, and my speed vastly improved without any drop in score. Improved the scoring a bit because I wasn’t running out of time. Be willing to play around with different styles to see what works best for you. My current method is writing short (like 1-2 words) summaries besides each paragraph, but otherwise little to no notation. Relying more on memory and like others above said, big picture things like structure.

TexAgAaron

@"Leah M B" said:
Different notation styles work for different people. I started off underlining or bracketing a pretty decent amount of stuff. I always had timing issues then. I decided to try notating a lot less, and my speed vastly improved without any drop in score. Improved the scoring a bit because I wasn’t running out of time. Be willing to play around with different styles to see what works best for you. My current method is writing short (like 1-2 words) summaries besides each paragraph, but otherwise little to no notation. Relying more on memory and like others above said, big picture things like structure.

See this is where I run into trouble since I like to underline important things. I'm consistently running out of time for the last passage. I underline and notate on the side like you do, but I'm afraid if I don't underline I'll miss some of the details necessary to do certain questions. This is especially a concern on passages where they list out multiple things (characteristics, conditions in a statute, etc.).

I'm laughing at myself because I say above to focus on structure but I'm always concerned about those stupid inference questions haha.

Did it take you a bit to adjust to just notating?

Habeas Porpoise

@akeegs92

I used to be in the exact same position! I got stuck on the details and it was killing my time as well. It didn't help that inference questions were some of my worst (along with analogy questions).

I pretty much stopped notating while reading and it took a bit of getting used to (my scores fluctuated like crazy for a couple exams), but I stuck with it and I've found it's actually super relaxing to limit notating or just not notate. My worry about inference questions used to make me stress about details but I decided that I'd worry about it only if the question asked me to.
With a structural understanding I know where the details are. I might not know exactly what the detail is, but since I know where to find it I can when I need to so. No reason to worry about it now while reading. If I'm not asked then great, I haven't wasted precious time memorizing/understanding those details. This helped me tamp down my anxiety at not fully comprehending or remembering the details.

If you're taking the June exam then I'm not sure it's the best time to change strategies so close to the test, but if you're taking later on then it doesn't hurt to try with some of the old pre-PT 35 RC sections. I highly, highly recommend it if you feel like underlining/notating details is ruining your time.

september

I second all of the wonderful advice in this thread.

One thing that helped me in RC is to remember that the answers will always be supported by the passage, which means that you can easily eliminate everything that goes against it. For those tough questions where you can’t choose between two convincing answers, refer back to the passage for help.

TexAgAaron

@"Habeas Porpoise" Yeah I take in July so I have time. I was -9 on my last one and I missed 5 on the final passage simply because I ran out of time and I threw down a bunch of skip/guesses. I'm turning to RC here to focus on it and I feel like if I simply just give myself a chance to attempt the final set of questions, my score will improve dramatically.

I'm definitely going to try to limit my notations further and relax a bit on the details more. I think that will keep my reading times down better and allow me to allocate proper time to the questions.

I appreciate the help!!!

_oshun1_

watch JY's live commentary video. I think it's for PT 79 so it's towards the end of the CC.