Trouble with level 5 LR problems

justinhayes722

Anything, based on 7Sage's difficulty measure, between level 1-3 I do with ease, I can spot the conclusion, the support, and prephrase an answer almost verbatim. Not quite the same mastery with level 4's, but I can still spot the flaw easily and prephrase a good answer. These level 5 problems are a completely different story. Sometimes I have difficulty even spotting the conclusion, I cannot spot the flaw, and definitely not prephrase a good answer. It is like everything falls apart with these questions, and sometimes when I think I got it down, I am stunned to find out what the right answer actually was. I do these problems with maybe 20-40% accuracy, 20% on a bad day and 40% on a good day. I would like some advice on how to get better at these tough LR problems. Any help appreciated.

GSU Hopeful

How does your BR look on the same sets of questions that are giving you trouble?

justinhayes722

I rarely do blind review. As I am beginning to take full practice tests in one sitting in preparation for November I may start using that method. To be honest, I am so eager to know whether the answer is right or wrong and to see my score I have a hard time blind reviewing.

I am very hard headed, and sometimes I know what I need to do but think there is an easy method, or that things will just come to me eventually.

I’ll start by creating a wrong answer journal, and start blind reviewing

GSU Hopeful

BR is so important in this process. The reason being that BR shows your true understanding of the argument, why the 4 incorrect answer choices are wrong and why the correct answer choice is indeed correct. By not blind reviewing, you are wasting precious opportunities to learn your thought process, shatter it if you need to or reinforce it if it is correct. Lastly, as JY and multiple other people have pointed out, your BR score will always be higher than your timed score because the time element has been removed. By not engaging in a BR, you are limiting yourself and your understanding of this test. If you can't understand all the elements of a question when there is no time constraint and correctly answer the question, then you'll never be able to under the time constraint. If it were me, I would suppress the need for instant, self gratification and delay looking at the answers until you have BR EVERY question that you were not able to articulate the 3 elements above with 100% clarity. But thats just me. Good luck to you!!

vhumenyuk-1

Totally agree with GSU Hopeful in regards to the importance of BR. Several weeks ago, before discovering BR method, I was averaging 15-17 correct asnwers per LR section with and without timing conditions. After I started doing BR on consistent basis, within only 2 weeks I started getting anywhere between 20 and up to 23 questions right per section.
BR does miracles! I just wish I found & watched JY's Youtube video on BR method much earlier.

Louislepauvre

If your issue is spotting the conclusion or the flaw, it sounds like a reading problem. Are you reading them closely enough? Often though, in a level 5 question, the language is fine and normal. It’s just the answer choices are really freakin tricky. When I was questions 15-23, my guard would always be up, thinking this q could be ridiculously hard. My thing was to always be very careful in the answers. I would keep my prediction loose. Something like, “It should address X and Y.” Then, in the answers, I would only eliminate the ones at first that were blatantly wrong. The others, I would examine and scrutinize, and see how they could get me to the answer. Good luck!