Logical Reasoning Breakthrough Tips

dlstudy1

Hello all,

I've been attacking logical reasoning pretty intensely lately and blind reviewing most, if not all of my timed sections. On my good days I am scoring about 17 correct. Today I scored 20/26, which I am very happy with. However this +20 isn't consistent for me. I would say I'm usually scoring ~17/~18 more often than +20. I'd like to make the +20 consistent. Aside from BR, which I am doing, do any of you have any other suggestions to break through LR? In an ideal world I would be getting them all right but I'll settle for +20 on exam day.

Recently I started reviewing my old wrong answers more regularly. To do this, I print out a fresh copy of the test, cut out all of the questions I circled, which indicates the questions I struggled with while the clock was running. I also cut out all of the questions I got wrong. After I have my stack of issue questions, I review them again and try to answer them on my own and write down the explanation or something that I missed initially, on the back. Then, I put them all in a zip lock bag. Before I go to work and before I get home, I select a handful and review them leisurely for 10-15 minutes. I have only been doing this for a few days but I am hoping that I will find it helpful over the next couple of weeks.

I also started a "wrong answers" journal. Here I will usually write down my reasoning for picking certain answers that ultimately end up being wrong, and then I write the explanation and try to identify patterns in my poor decision making. In doing so I have found some trends. For instance, in the past I used to pick the answer choice that strengthened the argument for necessary assumption questions or MSS, for some reason. Now I don't. But this method combined with cutting out my issue questions has only made a tiny dent in my progress.

Something I have noticed is, when I am scoring 17-20 right, I get 9-10 correct of the first 10. However, I'm only getting to 21-22/25-26 questions and I'm blind guessing on the 3-4 that I do not have time for. Of these 3-4 that I do not have time for, I usually get 2-3 correct during my blind review. I will say that I am slow when answering the first 10 questions. I spend about 13-15 minutes on the first 10. I'm trying to shave this down to 10-12 minutes but I'm struggling to do so. I have found that I get hung up on 1-2 during the first 10, either because I am misreading something or because the language and wording is convoluted and trips me up mid way and then causes my delay. This seems inevitable but perhaps there is a way around this? I have tried skipping these in the past but it only gives me anxiety later on because I'm worried I skipped an easy question.

Lastly, my blind review scores are usually between 20-23 ish.

Anyone know of any additional resources or advice that really helped push them over the edge on their LR success? I'm very desperate to keep improving on LR since it has been my biggest weakness on the exam and my journey to improve on this section has been a very slow and painful one.

Thanks in advance for any advice you may have.

Logician

Let me preface this by saying that I have in no way mastered the timing yet. However, I have a descent foundation (-0/-1 BR usually) and i'm beginning to see improvements in my timing. So I completely resonate with the position you're in, I use to think the 15 questions in 15 mins was absurd, until I did it yesterday. Much like you, I was spending too much time in the first 10 questions which if you're aiming for a high score, isn't going to get you there. Timing will improve with accuracy and familiarity with the questions. Have you heard that before? well its true. However, it may not be the whole truth depending on the individual. Personally, i'm a bit OCD in that I really struggle with moving on from a question until iv'e completely understood it and am near 100% certain I got the correct answer. Yeah... that's like a formula for failure on the LSAT. You have to be able to skip questions, get to AC's by process of elimination and sometimes pick answer choices without having 100% confidence (if you've listened to @"Cant Get Right" he talks a lot about confidence intervals- a great way of looking at it). So for me, I realized that I had to trust myself (and my intuition) more so in the first 10 questions, seeing as most of these are easier questions. This allowed me to get faster moving through the easier questions. Of course you probably will make some silly mistakes initially, but that's what practice and BR are for; to mitigate these errors. Anyways, I hope that helps and happy studying!

TheresaAnn

I think you have some great habits and it is only a matter of time. I had the same issues with the first ten questions, all I had in my head was that those are the easiest ones and I would get stressed when I got hung up on one. I encourage you to forget about which ones people say are "easy". Do yourself a favor and expect to be thrown a curveball in the first 10 or 15. Easy differs for all of us depending on which question types we struggle with. Identify your struggles and review/drill them. It is important to stay calm and thorough to do your best. Continue to do what you're doing and take note of what you think is helping and what is not. Last week was the first time I had time to get back to all the questions I skipped and it was such a good feeling, my timing needed work for sure. For me that "work" was doing timed sections during the week, as many as I could with still having time to go back over them and write out explanations to each answer choice. I work a full time job so I did three last week and went from -7 to -4 on my PT LR sections in a week. When I started doing this a few weeks ago (I didn't see timing improvement in the first couple weeks) I made sure to time my sections but not worry about the time while taking it. It is important to identify the question types you struggle with and be weary of them, make an honest effort to understand them but if you are not confident after reading through it, skip it. I also skipped the long PMR questions. Stop after the 35m and take note of how many you left unanswered and aim for less the next time. Afterwards, I encourage you to go through allll of the questions, it was important for me to see the ones I got right, but still had to go through all the answer choices to pick it. My goal was to see the answer and move on, if I had a tick through all but the one I picked, it meant I was not confident enough but should have been. Gaining this confident helped me speed up the first ten questions. Go through and answer the ones you didn't get to. I knew I was skipping the right ones when I still didn't get these right afterwards, it also directed me where to go back to in the CC for practice. Like you, timing was definitely my issue and I will continue to do what works for me until I plateau and need to step it up. Keep grinding, you're out here doing this hard-ass test! Once you see those improvements (whether its a couple days or a couple weeks from now) it is infectious and the best motivator. Keep your head up regardless of how long it takes and celebrate the small victories.

lexxx745

Should read @"Michael.Cinco" exit strategy post. Seems like it could really help here.
Continue to improve your foundations and make sure -2 on BR max.

dlstudy1

@lexxx745 Found it, thanks!

Thanks!

Logician

https://7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/22449/road-to-170-exit-strategy-long-read-on-a-strategy-to-help-you-attain-a-170-score