What are the "fundamentals"?

Redentore3337

This might be the dumbest question of all time, and I think I know the answer. But I just want to make sure I'm not missing anything. Can someone outline what the fundamentals for LR are?

NotMyName

(Not an exhaustive list)

lawgic fluency
common reasoning flaws on the lsat
identifying argument parts
understanding how to weaken/strengthen an argument

Redentore3337

@NotMyName said:
(Not an exhaustive list)

lawgic fluency
common reasoning flaws on the lsat
identifying argument parts
understanding how to weaken/strengthen an argument

Thank you kind sir!

ChaimtheGreat

Another big one would be identifying and translating what the question stem is asking you to do. I would consider that a fundamental aspect of both LR and RC.

Ohnoeshalpme

It's hard to decide what counts as a fundamental skill, and what counts as a necessary skill. I think there are a lot of skills that are necessary for high scores that fall outside of the realm of the fundamentals. These would be things like skipping strategies, question type strategies and timing strategies to name a few.

Leah M B

@Ohnoeshalpme Very true. I think the question here is along the lines of when a person on the board asks for help breaking a plateau and we all ask about BR to see if you have "fundamentals" down. I think of issues like timing, skipping, etc to be more high level skills. First you have to know how to do the problems. Hence, fundamentals.

Agreed with all of the ones listed above. I generally think of it as: you understand all the question types and how to do them. Recognize common question stems. Can easily break down a stimulus into premises/conclusion. Have common flaws memorized. Very comfortable and quick with lawgic. Someone with a 170+ BR score has the fundamentals down in my book, regardless of what their timed score is.

Ohnoeshalpme

@"Leah M B" I generally agree with your last comment regarding BR score. The only exception I think is for those who manage to score 170+ on their first PT. In my case, I got a 149 timed diagnostic but a 170 BR score. Despite my BR score, there were a lot of things I didn’t know about the test that I’d consider to be fundamentals. I had strong logical reasoning and intuition to begin with, which I suppose are “fundamental” to the test. But the test fundamentals, in my opinion, are a combination of timed and untimed skills. You need both to do well, not just one or the other. It’s like a push-pull between BR and timed strategy where you push your BR and then you pull your score up to your BR through strategy.

studyingandrestudying

To add to this, the question of did I get the stimulus correct when watching video later.