Missing a key detail in the stimulus or AC

Forever Addicted to Coffee

Hi guys,

I just thoroughly analyzed my June 2007 timed PT (my first timed full PT). I went -3 in one section and -4 in other LR section.

It looks like for maybe about 5 of the 7 questions I got wrong, I got them wrong timed because I missed a key word or distinction from the stimulus or the answer choice.

How would I go about addressing this? I'm already planning on taking the 5 top priority question types and drilling them and doing a confidence drill to see if I can shave off some time in the questions that I was underconfident on. I ended up circling around 14 questions per section for BR and probably about 5 questions per section did not need to be BRed (lack of confidence),where I got those right the first and during BR. If I don't go back to these 5 questions per section, perhaps that will give me more time to focus and look for the missed key word or distinction for the 5 out of 7 questions I got wrong.

Thoughts? Thanks!

Cant Get Right

Confidence drills sound productive, so for sure do that. Question type drills seem to be missing the point. Were any of your errors a result of misunderstanding the question? Doesn’t sound like it.

Why did you miss the questions you missed? Details and subtle distinctions. Any specific patterns?

Forever Addicted to Coffee

@"Cant Get Right" said:
Confidence drills sound productive, so for sure do that. Question type drills seem to be missing the point. Were any of your errors a result of misunderstanding the question? Doesn’t sound like it.

Why did you miss the questions you missed? Details and subtle distinctions. Any specific patterns?

Thanks for your post! I feel like the questions I got wrong are not because I have an inherent weakness in the question type...

The specific pattern that I see is that the questions I got wrong are those that with BR and enough time, I got right. After finishing the PT (timed: 160 BR: 174), I BRed and with fresh eyes, I saw that "if I didn't miss this key word or difference between this and that" in the stimulus or answer choice, that I would have gotten the question right when timed. Example would be questions like PT J07 S2 Q9 (missed something in the stimulus), where "historically" in the stimulus was something that I missed and would have really helped eliminating the wrong AC C and choose E. But under time constraint, I chose C and moved on. Or questions like PT J07 S2 Q19 (missed something in the answer choice), where I missed the "urban" on AC A, which I would have immediately known to be the correct answer. Or questions like PT J07 S3 Q10 (missed a key distinction), where the link between the product that people know and positive attitude is something that is taken advantage of in advertising, which is shown in the correct answer E and C seems to get this link wrong.

I wonder if this is something that will just improve over time or if there is something else I should do about it?

So here is my new plan:
Fool proof games in this PT
Fool proof games from 36 -41 (I think this intensive will really help me get close to -0 in LG)
Memory method passages in this PT
Memory method law and art passages from 36 - 41
Do confidence drills for LR sections in 36 - 41
Archive important LR questions in PT J07 to retake, untimed next week

For confidence drills,

My analysis shows that I circle too many questions for BR. Most of the questions I circle end up being right, so I should try to cut down the number of questions I circle to about 10 from 14. The reason why that may help me focus more of my time on other questions and end up getting those right is that the circled questions get a 2nd pass during the timed section and this takes up time that would otherwise go to other questions. And maybe by doing this, I spend more time on questions that I can get right, as as those that I missed a key detail previously.

Also, for easy questions, I'm going to try and just find the closest answer to my pre-phrase, select it, and move on without reading the other answer choices.

Anything else I should consider? Thanks!

Cant Get Right

@"Forever Addicted to Coffee" said:
Anything else I should consider? Thanks!

I think you mostly have a good plan. A couple additions.

1. The errors in LR will improve over time if you’re studying them. Don’t write them off as just careless reading mistakes or one-offs, though, and expect them just to eventually stop happening on their own. They’re not there by accident, they are there by design. So you have to treat them that way and respond with careful deconstruction. It’s language and grammar rather than logic, but just like logical flaws can be classified, so can the grammatical turns which set the flaws up. Check out the CC lesson “19 (or however many it is) most common flaws.” Study that list and you’ll see a lot of things that turn on language and grammar more than on any larger logical structuring. For these errors, figure out how the test writer built the language that led to you astray. Figure out what you thought it said, how they got you to think that, why it was wrong, and exactly how it’s different from the correct reading. Define it as specifically as possible. With time and effective study, these subtleties become as conspicuous as something like a mistaken reversal or any other basic flaw derived from logical structure.

2. With your confidence drills, make sure you have dynamic markings rather than just a single indicator for all questions you want to go back to. You need to prioritize questions you’re confident you can get that, for whatever reason, just weren’t clicking on your first effort. Lower priority questions are ones where you recognize it’s just a really hard question where you may not know exactly what to do to ensure a correct answer. Make sure you have markings which make the distinction so that you can prioritize appropriately.

And a quick third thing I just can’t resist: You will not know which questions are the easy ones. So you cannot devise any strategic planning based on that! Many a question has been missed simply because students inexplicably treat a moderately difficult question as an “easy one.”

Forever Addicted to Coffee

Thank you very much!