What type of readings are the best for long-term RC training?

April Li

Hello everyone, I just finsihed my first LSAT today, and the RC gave me a really hard time as usual. I officially started my course with 7sage on May 1st (2019), and according to the 7-8 PrepTest I completed, my RC can hardly reach more than 60%. I'm thinking about taking a second and probably my final LSAT in November. In the meantime, I really want to improve my RC score by being well-read. Since I'm already familiar with the skills provided in the core curriculum, it really is my level of vocabulary and grammar that is limiting my comprehension.

I'm an international student studying in Canada, and I didn't speak English four years ago. Therefore I took a year off and learned the language before I enrolled in regular university courses (3 years ago). Now as a political science major student, I have no problem getting A or A+ in senior level courses, but the RC section contains a lot of non-academic but still formal vocabularies and expression. My situation is that becaue I didn't have the time to learn English step by step (from daily conversation to professional), now I can master many convoluted political theories with excessively abstract terms, but I'm lacking some every-day vocabularies and figure of speech. However, since now I have four more months to prepare my next battle, I want to read some passages that resembles RC section every day to improve my reading speed and refine my ability to summarize and retain information. My study buddies have recommanded me to read newspapers and novels, but I also want to hear everyone's suggestion here. Thank you all very much in advance!

April Li

Alex

I personally found that doing real reading comp passages was most helpful. There is nothing better than practicing with the real thing, and luckily there are so many tests that it's highly unlikely you'll run out anytime soon.

MIT_2017

I tend to agree with what @Alex has said. But if I had to make another suggestion, it would be The Economist, as it covers a wide array of topics, has many somewhat short articles, and assumes an educated audience. If that's inaccessible, there is also the Wall Street Journal, or perhaps FiveThirtyEight (though their coverage is much more quantitative than you'd find on the LSAC).

April Li

@Alex said:
I personally found that doing real reading comp passages was most helpful. There is nothing better than practicing with the real thing, and luckily there are so many tests that it's highly unlikely you'll run out anytime soon.

Thank you Alex. Yeah that was what I was thinking too, but on the other hand, I don't want to waste the RC sections and thus waste the entire PrepTest. I know that I can practice my reading skills by analyzing the RC passages I already completed during a mock LSAT, but I'm kinda looking for improving my abilities to read fast and accurate when facing brand new information. Anyway, thank you for your suggestion!

April Li

@MIT_2017 said:
I tend to agree with what @Alex has said. But if I had to make another suggestion, it would be The Economist, as it covers a wide array of topics, has many somewhat short articles, and assumes an educated audience. If that's inaccessible, there is also the Wall Street Journal, or perhaps FiveThirtyEight (though their coverage is much more quantitative than you'd find on the LSAC).

Thank you soooo much! These recommendations are extremely helpful!

Cant Get Right

Yeah, there's nothing like the real thing.

I do think Economist does a good job of conforming to the average RC passage reading level. It's very consistent though, which the LSAT, of course, is not. I'd recommend grabbing some harder scholarly nonfiction in order to work with some denser material. Get something you'd be interested in so that you can get absorbed in it. You might consider books and journal articles by law professors you'd be interested in working with. You get a lot of benefits with this. 1) You get reading material that will likely be more challenging than the Economist. 2) You learn something new about an interesting legal subject of relevance to your future career. 3) You get to know a potential professor's work. 4) You provide a great line for your Why X essay for each profs' school.

April Li

@"Cant Get Right" said:
Yeah, there's nothing like the real thing.

I do think Economist does a good job of conforming to the average RC passage reading level. It's very consistent though, which the LSAT, of course, is not. I'd recommend grabbing some harder scholarly nonfiction in order to work with some denser material. Get something you'd be interested in so that you can get absorbed in it. You might consider books and journal articles by law professors you'd be interested in working with. You get a lot of benefits with this. 1) You get reading material that will likely be more challenging than the Economist. 2) You learn something new about an interesting legal subject of relevance to your future career. 3) You get to know a potential professor's work. 4) You provide a great line for your Why X essay for each profs' school.

Thank you! How do you think about the Wall Street Journal and FiveThirtyEight then?

MIT_2017

@"xiaonuan.li1 April" said:
Thank you! How do you think about the Wall Street Journal and FiveThirtyEight then?

This question wasn't directed to me but since they were my suggestions I figured I might as well elaborate....

FiveThirtyEight doesn't exactly resemble the LSAT passages in style, and I haven't really recommended it for this purpose before. But it's likely that you'll find their articles somewhat challenging to read quickly if you aren't familiar with the subject material (the site has 5 main sections: Politics, Sports, Science & Health, Economics, & Culture, so you can follow whichever section seems most helpful) since they tend to cover a good amount of information quickly and make frequent quantitative references. I think when I made this recommendation I was specifically thinking about how I have heard many students say the science/economics passages trip them up the most. I have always found those passages to be the easiest for me -- could be because of my quantitative background, but who knows, maybe it's because I read 538 daily

I suppose WSJ is similar in that it often covers a decent amount of information quickly (I have found that it "dumbs down" information less than NYT/WaPo do). But really I was kind of reaching for a third example -- The Economist is the canonical answer given in response to your question. Other than that, anything that covers somewhat complex topics that is aimed at a slightly more targeted audience than the general public will do. (But of course it bears repeating that this would just be something to do in your free time -- as @"Cant Get Right" said, there's nothing quite like the real thing).

Lucas Carter

I recommend this site: https://aldaily.com/. It aggregates articles on philosophy, art, book reviews, and culture. The articles all contain arguments of some form and are considerably longer and generally as tough if not tougher than RC passages.

I found another 7sager to work with on these (@Bumblebee) and we would read an article paragraph by paragraph, taking turns creating high res summaries. We also would read closely for tone, structure, and mined inferences where we could. Additionally, we would try to make LSAT style questions for each other to think about as we read.

This helped me to improve because I found most of these articles to be dense and difficult, so struggling through them gave me more confidence when I returned to RC sections.

April Li

@MIT_2017 said:

@"xiaonuan.li1 April" said:
Thank you! How do you think about the Wall Street Journal and FiveThirtyEight then?

This question wasn't directed to me but since they were my suggestions I figured I might as well elaborate....

FiveThirtyEight doesn't exactly resemble the LSAT passages in style, and I haven't really recommended it for this purpose before. But it's likely that you'll find their articles somewhat challenging to read quickly if you aren't familiar with the subject material (the site has 5 main sections: Politics, Sports, Science & Health, Economics, & Culture, so you can follow whichever section seems most helpful) since they tend to cover a good amount of information quickly and make frequent quantitative references. I think when I made this recommendation I was specifically thinking about how I have heard many students say the science/economics passages trip them up the most. I have always found those passages to be the easiest for me -- could be because of my quantitative background, but who knows, maybe it's because I read 538 daily

I suppose WSJ is similar in that it often covers a decent amount of information quickly (I have found that it "dumbs down" information less than NYT/WaPo do). But really I was kind of reaching for a third example -- The Economist is the canonical answer given in response to your question. Other than that, anything that covers somewhat complex topics that is aimed at a slightly more targeted audience than the general public will do. (But of course it bears repeating that this would just be something to do in your free time -- as @"Cant Get Right" said, there's nothing quite like the real thing).

Thank you so much! These are all extremely useful information. I’ve also heard that The Atlantic Monthly, The Journal of American History, and Scientific American are pretty helpful as well

April Li

@"Lucas Carter" said:
I recommend this site: https://aldaily.com/. It aggregates articles on philosophy, art, book reviews, and culture. The articles all contain arguments of some form and are considerably longer and generally as tough if not tougher than RC passages.

I found another 7sager to work with on these (@Bumblebee) and we would read an article paragraph by paragraph, taking turns creating high res summaries. We also would read closely for tone, structure, and mined inferences where we could. Additionally, we would try to make LSAT style questions for each other to think about as we read.

This helped me to improve because I found most of these articles to be dense and difficult, so struggling through them gave me more confidence when I returned to RC sections.

Thank you! The articles in that website really resemble RC passages relating to humanity and fine arts. Do you and the other 7 sager belongs to a RC study group where you guys just write questions for each other? If yes, may I join that group? Thank you in advance!

parkeuny

I agree with the Economist. Another friend of mine recommended Oxford’s website of Very Short Introductions as a way of exposing yourself to other subject matters. This might help you navigate unfamiliar concepts
more easily by training your brain to understand things relationally/abstractly more quickly.

Sometimes I look at the bibliography page that tells you where the excerpts in the RC section are from — academic journals, etc. — so you could look at those or similar sources for additional reading material (with the attitude that they are RC passages, thinking about MP and stuff like that). You’d be surprised, there have been excerpts pulled from some books I’d read independently of LSAT studying and very much enjoyed. It’s not always difficult and dry! Hope that helps.

Lucas Carter

@"xiaonuan.li1 April" said:

Thank you! The articles in that website really resemble RC passages relating to humanity and fine arts. Do you and the other 7 sager belongs to a RC study group where you guys just write questions for each other? If yes, may I join that group? Thank you in advance!

Hey, we no longer have the RC study group going but I am sure you could find a partner or start one if you made a post. I found it useful to read the articles and discuss with someone because we each caught different nuances and worked together to build a more complete understanding of the article than we would have alone.

April Li

@"Lucas Carter" said:

@"xiaonuan.li1 April" said:

Thank you! The articles in that website really resemble RC passages relating to humanity and fine arts. Do you and the other 7 sager belongs to a RC study group where you guys just write questions for each other? If yes, may I join that group? Thank you in advance!

Hey, we no longer have the RC study group going but I am sure you could find a partner or start one if you made a post. I found it useful to read the articles and discuss with someone because we each caught different nuances and worked together to build a more complete understanding of the article than we would have alone.

I see. Yeah I’ll try to organize a study group myself then. Thank you for your advice!

April Li

@parkeuny said:
I agree with the Economist. Another friend of mine recommended Oxford’s website of Very Short Introductions as a way of exposing yourself to other subject matters. This might help you navigate unfamiliar concepts
more easily by training your brain to understand things relationally/abstractly more quickly.

Sometimes I look at the bibliography page that tells you where the excerpts in the RC section are from — academic journals, etc. — so you could look at those or similar sources for additional reading material (with the attitude that they are RC passages, thinking about MP and stuff like that). You’d be surprised, there have been excerpts pulled from some books I’d read independently of LSAT studying and very much enjoyed. It’s not always difficult and dry! Hope that helps.

Thank you so much! These information does help! Could you please send me a link to that website you mentioned? Also, is there a bibliography page of RC’s author attached to each PrepTest? Or where else could you find the bibliographies?