Reading Comprehension

LETS DO THIS-1

Any ideas on how to get quicker on Reading Comprehension? What techniques have you used that may be helpful for me?

ebalde1234

When I started doing rc with focus on timing my section avg went down ; try to practice with untimed sections in between as a buffer and also anticipate what they might ask while you read . You can annotate / underline but don’t make it the sole focus . I think more exposure to any type of question is going to give a feeling of familiarity. And the more familiar you are with it the faster you will go . In short - don’t just keep doing timed sections with the hope of picking up speed .

Paul Caint

Read slower.

That might seem counterintuitive, but on RC people have a tendency to try to read the passage too fast to "save time." However, if you read the passage too fast then you won't retain any of it, and then you end up wasting time re-reading parts of the passage to answer specific questions. If you read slower, you can retain more and then won't have to keep going back, saving you a lot more time and frustration.

Reading slower helped me get from -6/-5 on RC to -0/-2.

ebalde1234

@"Paul Caint" said:
Read slower.

That might seem counterintuitive, but on RC people have a tendency to try to read the passage too fast to "save time." However, if you read the passage too fast then you won't retain any of it, and then you end up wasting time re-reading parts of the passage to answer specific questions. If you read slower, you can retain more and then won't have to keep going back, saving you a lot more time and frustration.

Reading slower helped me get from -6/-5 on RC to -0/-2.

I second this

LETS DO THIS-1

Hey Paul,
I for sure agree with you. The slower I read, the better I retain the information. Do you have specific techniques when marking the passage? I tend, when reading the passage, to write a lot of the info out, which can take a lot of time.

@"Paul Caint" said:
Read slower.

That might seem counterintuitive, but on RC people have a tendency to try to read the passage too fast to "save time." However, if you read the passage too fast then you won't retain any of it, and then you end up wasting time re-reading parts of the passage to answer specific questions. If you read slower, you can retain more and then won't have to keep going back, saving you a lot more time and frustration.

Reading slower helped me get from -6/-5 on RC to -0/-2.

Paul Caint

@Mzilberstein So as I progressed through my LSAT studying, I gradually marked less and less, to the point where I was just basically underlining main points and conclusions of author's arguments.

For example, if the passage said something like:

"At the end of the experiment, there were seventeen more koalas with insomnia in the control group than in the experimental group. Additionally, the koalas in the control group had far larger bags under their eyes than those that received Ambien. From this, Jonathan concluded that Ambien would help humans sleep, but he was wrong."

In that passage, I would have just underlined the bolded part - it's the conclusion of the past few sentences. It would also be important to mark the "BUT" to indicate a shift in the conclusion; I would circle it so that IF you go back to the passage, you don't mistakenly think that "Jonathan concluded that Ambien would help humans sleep" was the point of that paragraph.

Also, I would strongly advocate "reading like a robot." Oftentimes I catch myself not really retaining sentences I just read. When this happened, I "read like a robot," in that I read a sentence putting a slight, mili-second pause between each word, and over-annunciated each syllable in each word (as if I was a 2-year-old just learning how to read). So instead of reading quickly and fluidly like "I read like-a-robot," I would read like, "I. READ. LIKE. A. RO. BOT." I would do this for as long as I needed to make sure I was retaining all the info. I know it's a bit strange, but its what worked for me

I hope these tips help!

paulmv.benthem

@Mzilberstein said:
Any ideas on how to get quicker on Reading Comprehension? What techniques have you used that may be helpful for me?

I totally agree with the advice that @"Paul Caint" provided above! I actually saw a dip in my RC scores when I tried to get my passage time down to the 3:30ish mark. Since returning to the area of 4:15ish, I've found my scores have gotten far better.

Likewise, I began trying to employ some of the more comprehensive annotation strategies that I found on the forums, and I think they had one very significant negative effect for me: they caused me too lose interest in the passage. Unlike LR and LG, RC doesn't contain a lot of BS. Some LR stimuli are simply ridiculous in the ideas being expressed, but what's important in LR is to have a strong sense of argumentative form. RC, on the other hand, has some returns for the curious. The first prep book that I used when beginning my LSAT journey recommended approaching RC passages as mini lectures, and if you enjoy learning, this should be something to get excited about! Of course, some passages can be pretty useless. But, because of RC, I have at least a mediocre understanding (better than nothing) of what a fractal is, the difference between representational and non-representational art forms, and some general principals of political economics. Honestly, I'm not a terrific multitasker, and so if I focus too much on trying to employ a comprehensive annotation strategy, I lose my interest in the content of the passage. I think it was @akistotle who had posted on a past thread about doing a little research on the topics that were covered in the RC passages as a way of cultivating this style of interest/curiosity.

Hope you find some nugget in these ramblings!

ebalde1234

@"paulmv.benthem" said:

@Mzilberstein said:
Any ideas on how to get quicker on Reading Comprehension? What techniques have you used that may be helpful for me?

I totally agree with the advice that @"Paul Caint" provided above! I actually saw a dip in my RC scores when I tried to get my passage time down to the 3:30ish mark. Since returning to the area of 4:15ish, I've found my scores have gotten far better.

Likewise, I began trying to employ some of the more comprehensive annotation strategies that I found on the forums, and I think they had one very significant negative effect for me: they caused me too lose interest in the passage. Unlike LR and LG, RC doesn't contain a lot of BS. Some LR stimuli are simply ridiculous in the ideas being expressed, but what's important in LR is to have a strong sense of argumentative form. RC, on the other hand, has some returns for the curious. The first prep book that I used when beginning my LSAT journey recommended approaching RC passages as mini lectures, and if you enjoy learning, this should be something to get excited about! Of course, some passages can be pretty useless. But, because of RC, I have at least a mediocre understanding (better than nothing) of what a fractal is, the difference between representational and non-representational art forms, and some general principals of political economics. Honestly, I'm not a terrific multitasker, and so if I focus too much on trying to employ a comprehensive annotation strategy, I lose my interest in the content of the passage. I think it was @akistotle who had posted on a past thread about doing a little research on the topics that were covered in the RC passages as a way of cultivating this style of interest/curiosity.

Hope you find some nugget in these ramblings!

Was just browsing and came across the timings you listed for reading the passages I’m definitely reading them too fast. But if it takes you 4 minutes to read that doesn’t leave that much time on questions ; or am I taking too long to eliminate the choices ?