Improving comprehension of LR stimuli

itsemmarobyn

I'm finding that a lot of the time, I have to read the stimulus twice before I fully comprehend what has been written, no matter how slowly I read the first time. It's adding at least another 30 seconds to my answering time. Does anyone have any tips on how to improve my comprehension?

josie.buchwald

What has helped me has been going through every stimulus, without reading the question stem, and writing out the premises and conclusion. For example, if the stimulus looks like this: "The dress is purple. This is because it is neither yellow nor blue" I would diagram it as:

-Not Yellow
-Not Blue
-?

---

Dress is purple

This helps me impose order on even the most complex of stimuli, and helps me feel more in control. Also, intentionally leaving the gap in the diagram helps to signal to my brain that there is a gap in the argument.

I recommend that you do this without timing yourself or even looking at the question stems with a few LR sections you have already gone through. Then go through the sections again, read the stems, and then pick apart every answer choice, and write down why it is either wrong or right. It should take hours, but after doing several sections like this the form of the LR stimuli start to become second nature.

gabes900-1

For the complex stimuli—the ones with convoluted grammar and/or conditional logic, I try to map it out very quickly if I cannot capture what they are saying in my mind. This can include either mapping out the conditional logic statements or just making the hard sentences sound simple if the author is describing a situation.

Another thing that has helped me is sticking to the strategy of recognizing cookie cutter structures. For example, if the stimulus has the results from a study and then concludes causation, it is most likely a correlation/causation structure. I also look for the structures for argument by analogy and phenomenon/hypothesis as well. By shifting my focus to look for these reasoning structures, it helps me understand the material more easily.

This has helped me tremendously with the intimidating stimuli in the LR section.

Another technique I implement in my studies to parse through this grammar more easily is writing out detailed explanations during BR. I ask myself, if I had trouble understanding the stimulus the first time “What could this convoluted statement possibly mean? What are they trying to get at here?” Also, I try to write out explanations of why they worded the stimulus the way they did. Over time, this has helped me comprehend such complex language on newer material.