How Do I Beat A Score Plateau?

amy_sjcs

Hello fellow 7sagers!

I’ve been taking PTs and my scores have been around 169-171 with BRs of 176-178, but I can’t seem to break this score plateau.

I find that I have the most trouble with LG and RC sections (where I usually make 4-5 mistakes). I think that timing is an issue for me because I always feel rushed when doing these 2 sections, and I suspect that’s where my accuracy suffers. In-Out games are my weakest games in LG, but in RC I am not missing any specific question type.

Can you please give me some advice on how to tackle this plateau?

Thank you in advance!

keets993

Have you drilled in/out games? What particularly about them give you trouble? Is it struggling to determine whether it's in/out or is it that you're missing inferences? If the latter then it might be prudent for you to go back to the lesson on flashcards for "or" and "not both" and do it every day until it's drilled in your head.

Have you tried filming yourself? Try to film a timed section of RC and LG to determine if you really are rushing. Especially with LG since JY puts a target time for each game. I found that earlier on in my prep I felt like I had to finish a game in x amount of time (when I had no clue how long the game was supposed to take) and I ended up rushing and sacrificing accuracy for speed.

For RC...do you miss -1/-2 per passage or do most of your misses come from one particular passage? If it's the latter then it might be helpful to see what those passages you make most mistakes on have in common (could be superficial like subject matter or something like passages with more explicitly stated q's, inference q's, multiple POVs). Try (slightly) slowing down for RC as well and see if that makes any difference to your accuracy. Seems like you've found your sweet spot for LR but not yet for RC and LG.

Hope that helps!

amy_sjcs

@keets993

With the In/Out games, I do struggle with making inferences at the beginning and usually end up relying on doing so many hypotheticals when I hit the questions (it eats up so much time). I'll definitely try your advice to go back and review my basics for In/Out games.

For RC, I usually miss a question or two per passage, and while it's not a specific passage type that I struggle with, I think you brought up a good point about whether the question address something for specific or more general/broad. I do miss more broad questions such as "based on what can be inferred from the passage..., the passage provides the most support for inferring..., the author would most likely agree with...". When doing BR for RC, I have more time to re-read the passage and carefully ponder each answer choice (definitely a luxury) which allows me to figure out the right answer, so I'll try out your suggestion to slow down a bit and see if that helps.

Thank you for your advice!

keets993

I do miss more broad questions such as "based on what can be inferred from the passage..., the passage provides the most support for inferring..., the author would most likely agree with...".

So, based off of that I'd say you're struggling with inference questions. Try to mark up any adjectives or key words that may indicate the author's tone or opinion of an idea. Especially during BR because that's where you'll get more time to drill it into your head. A practice I've found helpful is, try selecting random statements from the passage and see if you can infer something from it. The 70s and 80s have more... Subtle inference questions where you're not necessarily pushing out new information, per se. Rather you're just... Stating what the other half of a statement could mean. For example, if our passage stated "7sage is best known for their logic games approach" then the other side, or half, of that would be "7sage is lesser known for their RC explanations." While this may seem really obvious when the statements are side by side together, it's much more difficult during the actual thing.

Also, something that was told me was that if you're struggling between two answer choices for inference type questions then pick the less strong one. I haven't actually tried this but it makes sense considering they are similar to MSS questions in LR.

Hope that helps!