What am I doing wrong?

mellomel

I finished the CC a while ago, foolproofed all the games from PT's 16 - 35 and then started taking PT's. Seeing how low my LG scores were, I've incorporated more LG work into my schedule by drilling games from PT 1-15, and foolproofing newer games from the PT's I'm taking. I'm still working on the 1-15 batch, but it is really discouraging to see that I sometimes score as low as -4 on a new game from these old PT's. Also, among the 4 PT's that I took to this day, my LG average is -8.

I should add that even though I am putting in regular practice into it, I haven't focused entirely to LG because I also need to improve in LR and RC, and I felt like I could improve by incorporating some regular LG work into my schedule without devoting all my time to it. Because honestly, BR'ing games is a breeze to me and I always manage to get a perfect score in a short amount of time in BR. So I'm really upset that I'm not seeing results when doing the games timed. I feel too rushed and stressed even when I'm using a stopwatch instead of a count-down, and I make stupid mistakes that I can see right through in BR.

I would really really appreciate any help that you guys can provide.

PS. I'm registered for the June international exam on the 28th, and if I don't sit this one I will miss this cycle since the next exam is in November, so I'm looking to improve until then (hopefully).

jeff.wongkachi

I think part of it is understanding why we foolproof games. I'm not saying you're failing to do this, but I will say this is what initially made me not want to Foolproof:

I felt like Foolproofing would just make me good at that specific game, not better at LG in general.

And that's a big misconception that I had to overcome. When I get a question wrong, I don't just ask myself why it's wrong, I ask if there's something I can learn from a wrong question or a wrong choice that can be applied to other parts of LG or the LSAT in general.

There are different categories of mistakes.

1) 'Dumb'
ie. You mistake your game pieces (V for Y because my writing is too ugly). But the takeaway from this isn't just "Man, I need to be more careful next time". It should be "HOW can I be more careful next time". This turns it into a learning experience that I can start taking practical steps to say. Even if it's 'writing a little neater' or 'take extra care to carefully write your Vs and Ys', that has actually saved me from a dumb mistake or two in another game.

2) Conception
You thought a grouping game was a chart game, or you had no idea how to build your board. I have a problem right now with IDing when I should apply charts vs grouping games, so I've sought out answers on figuring this out. I've realized for some of the weirder games where there is no real board, you figure out what you can and play around with the rules to figure out how the mechanics (learning the controls so to speak) then you go into it. Once again, I work on discovering patterns or techniques that I can apply to other games.

3) Mechanics
You're taking too long to take a contrapositve or see how something chains up or you screw up your in/out game a little because you take too long to see a not both relationship. Maybe you can make sequencing chains but it's taking you too long to infer certain ideas (ie when game pieces have relationships vs not). This is the easiest, conditional logic only works in so many ways and for this it's just a matter of grinding it out and seeing where you fudge up (took me a while to internalize not both) but now I can read pretty fluently compared to when I first started.

TL;DR: Work on discovering patterns of errors and thinking about practical things you can do about said patterns. That's a big part of what makes Foolproofing and BR worth it.

lexxx745

Its literally just practice haha. A lot of people say games is just a measure of how hard you can work. i agree to a pretty large extent

mellomel

@lexxx745 Huh, interesting cause I heard so many things like 'LG is easiest section to improve', so I started to feel hopeless (and stupid). So work harder you say, I could try that

mellomel

Hey @"jeff.wongkachi", thanks a lot for your elaborate response! I think previously I thought I'd be ok just by foolproofing games many times. Clearly that's not enough. I really like your simple classification of mistakes and I will definitely work on coming up with practical solutions for the mistakes I'm making.