Getting worse in LR...:(

Silver_37

Hi everyone!
I’m really having struggles with LR these days. I used to get a total -8 questions wrong in the 50s. But throughout the 60s, 70s, and 80s, I consistently got a total of 9-11 questions wrong. This plateau has started since September 2018...
I really focused on LR for the past 2 weeks and basically drilled all the question types I struggle with. (From PT 1-38) I took PT 68 a few days ago to see if I improved and got -14 questions wrong. (Sec 2:-9 sec3:-5) Why am I getting worse...:(
After blind review I was able to fix 6 answers, but it was still very discouraging to see this score. I don’t understand why I’m not improving at all. I don’t think it’s a burnout... My average is 165 right now. I also got a 165 on PT 68. I really need to get LR down to achieve my goal.
I always review the questions I got wrong and analyze why each answer choice is right/wrong.
These days I’m thinking that this is my limit and I’m just not smart enough to overcome this plateau...I studied full time for a little more than a year now.
Any advice or strategies from people with this kind of experience is welcomed!
Thank you.

BlindReviewer

You said it's probably not burnout, but I think it might be. I've also been struggling with LR for a while, and I think it can be one of the most frustrating because LG is pretty improvable/the logic is clearer so you can see when you get things wrong, and RC is known as something that's hard to improve in so you might not feel as disheartened by the speed of progress.

I feel like I've been studying LR for almost a year (part-time, and with a little gap in the middle), but even then it can be the most infuriating because you put in all this time but you end up seeing very little gains. Or, you'll have a day where you hit your target LR score, and then another day where it just swings all the way back down or even further than you'd been before.

My guess as to why this is possible for LR is because LR has the most variety not just in question types, but in language, so I do think achieving consistency in LR is probably the hardest out of the three sections. Sometimes the sections have more point at issue questions, and sometimes they have more parallel questions, etc. You aren't taking the exact same set of question types each time, and each section can expose different weaknesses. It's also the case that you can get a lot of answer correct in LR without exactly knowing why, as your "bad logic" might actually reward you in some random cases.

So moving forward, I would say really continue your BR, and do it even more deliberately than before. I know that's probably a pain to hear, as I was told the same thing, but I decided that I don't want to give up, and just sat down and started a new sheet to write down not only the breakdown of the question, but how it relates to other questions in terms of the logical flaws I've missed. This has been a lot more helpful in identifying my weaknesses than just doing BR in isolation, looking at each question as its own obstacle. Again, probably annoying to hear, as I also thought "Hey I've been BRing this whole time and it's gotten me nowhere" but at the end of the day it's our best study method, and it's up to us to do it right.

The last thing is mindset. I used to just drill lots of LR sections trying to prove to myself that I still "had it," but I think that's ultimately destructive. It's destructive in leading to burnout in general (feeling unmotivated / angry) and also for your thought process during an actual section, which moves from "I have to understand the stimulus" to "I have to get everything right / I hate this / this question is so hard I can't do it / why are all these questions so hard / etc." Try taking a section calm, and still be efficient but don't worry so much about time, and see how you score.

Hope this helps! Sorry for the wall of text haha

Cant Get Right

You need to diagnose your issues better. It's not enough to figure out the reasoning behind each answer; you need to incorporate some metacognition into this process. Once you understand the stimulus and each AC, where exactly did you go wrong? What precisely led to your misunderstanding? With time, you should be able to answer this very specifically. Maybe you missed the word "likely" in the conclusion. By establishing probability rather than certainty, the argument takes on a very different meaning. If you missed that nuance, maybe you chose an answer that would have correctly answered the question had the conclusion been more absolute. The LSAT writers love this trick, and if words like "likely" don't jump out at you as important, that's probably causing errors across multiple question types. That's just one example of the kind of thing you should be looking for, but there are a ton of things like this which you should be uncovering in this process. So just make sure you don't quit at understanding the question itself. You have to understand your understanding of the question. If you are successful in this, I promise you will break the plateau.

Silver_37

@BlindReviewer Thank you for the reply! I can’t agree with you more! That is exactly how I feel when I take an actual LR section.
It is nice to know that there is someone else who feels what I feel and at the same time trying to overcome the difficulties! It’s very encouraging.
Thank you once again!!!(:

Silver_37

@"Cant Get Right" Thank you very much! I appreciate your advice.(:
Thanks to your comment I think I kind of see what I really need to focus on. I will try to incorporate it in my next BR!