Loophole Book - Worth it for perhaps April test?

lexxx745

Should I try to change the way I do LR and focus on the loophole book? Im more or less happy with the way im scoring now and Im scared changing up my strategy would hurt me. Any thoughts? I signed up for March but obviously its delayed to April, still no idea if thats even happening. If its delayed to June I should def have enough time to internalize the loophole book right?

JDream2025

I am actually on chapter two in loophole and it reinforces same ideas (so far) that JY touched on. The only thing is that she has fancy names for the strategies. CLIR is her method... it doesn’t hurt because if you went through the CC here, you already have a good grasp on things. So when she refers to something, you automatically connect it to JY. At least that’s what I do. I am doing it to see things from a different light. The end result is the same; to get the right answer, each time.

The Great White Shark

The main difference between the loophole and JY’s strategies is that Ellen wants you to read the stimulus first and come up with a loophole, inference, resolution or conflict before even looking at the question stem. I think the drills Ellen has in her book are helpful to understand logic and the structure of the different kinds of stimulus’s. But in the end I don’t think it’s efficient to read the stimulus before the question stem. Consider how some inference questions have a stimulus that is phrased as an argument instead of a premise set. And how complex the stimulus for a simple main point question stem can be.

So if you do go through the book it could be helpful to practice the drills but I don’t think changing your main strategy will help under time.

danielbrowning208

A few months ago, I was scoring pretty well in LR (-0 to -3 a section). But sometimes, I would have a bad section, and I was often unhappy with my confidence level on questions I got right. I took a couple weeks to focus on how I read the stimulus. I would take questions one by one, read the stimulus, answer the question, and then go back and see what information I missed/what information I could have ignored. This really helped me read the stimulus better after a bunch of practice.

I like to think of the stimulus as a "puzzle". While you read, you should be trying to piece the argument together in the manner in which the author has. Not only will this allow you to be able to understand what the author is trying to do, but it will also help identify flaws.

In short, I think taking some time to focus on how you read (which is the most important thing on the LSAT) will help you make the next jump in LR. Let me know if you have any questions!