First -0 on an LR section!

canihazJD

Did 49.2 as the advanced translation drill at the end of Loophole. Timed but counting up without watching the clock (just wanted to see if I could apply the Loophole strategies in real time), and was able to come in just under time.

Set the camo review (first time trying it) at 8 minimum, and it shot back 8 sequential Q's. No answers changed. -0!

Now I wish I'd done it as a full PT! Not the biggest accomplishment, but feels nice after being maxed out at -2/-1 in LR for so long. I see concerns about compatibility come up from time to time... for me Loophole was a great companion to 7sage CC.

kelly_9876

Congrats, that is great to hear! Thank you for the post, I am currently working through Loophole, so success stories are encouraging. Best of luck moving forward!

Chloeeee

Congrats!! How much do you recommend Loophole? LR is my weakness 😢 by the way, I've already read the Bible and studied the 7sage tutorials.

canihazJD

Thanks!

@Chloeeee I recommend it highly. I found the system very intuitive, and the presentation more easily digestible than most prep out there. I used Powerscore and the CC, and Loophole fit in nicely... honed my stimulus translation and gave me some effective new tools. Ellen's powerful/provable is great for eliminating answer choices in ACs with tougher language.

caffeine powered human

That's amazing news!

I'm a little confused by what you mean with:
"Did 49.2 as the advanced translation drill at the end of Loophole. Timed but counting up without watching the clock (just wanted to see if I could apply the Loophole strategies in real time), and was able to come in just under time."

Did you do the advanced translation drill for an LR section under 35 minutes? If so that is crazy!!!

canihazJD

Yes 34:58... minus a the second or two it took me to stop the timer. I suppose with the caveat that I didn't say the translations out loud. I wanted to see if I could follow the steps under timed conditions, and if not, how much over I would go (thereby allowing me to estimate how many questions I could do that way). I didn't expect to be able to get through them all under time, but it just happened that way.

Read
Internal monologue translation
CLIR
Stem/Qtype ID - powerful/provable
"what I'm looking for is..."
AC eval
select

A few other things:

• For AC evaluation, I didn't assign numbers to every AC unless my selection happened to be last. Once I found an answer, I just skimmed the rest to make sure I didn't miss anything.

• I didn't have any Qs marked for a second pass, but I would not have had time to eve if I had marked some. I typically have a at least a few minutes left over. On the May flex (the last timed section I did before this) I had 6 minutes remaining after one pass with no skips (not having skipped any Qs was unusual).

• I had the steps written on a post it next to me as well as an acronym for powerful QTs:

translate
CLIR
Stem/QT - pow/pro
what I'm looking for
trans AC and rate
select and move

SWSMER

be smooth

That last line wasnt from the book... I'm a big believer in slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

I also changed her SW SCCER (southwest soccer) as I like the 7sage Qtypes better (combined counter with weaken and changed contradiction to MBF) and got SW SMER (southwest summer).

I think doing translations in your head (as opposed to writing for basic translation and saying it out loud as prescribed) speeds things up a lot, and powerful/provable lets you just bulldoze through ACs on many questions. Like as fast as you can spot key words... at I actually went back and did a few second looks at ACs because I was sure I'd messed something up. Haven't tried to replicate it yet with another section. I'm kind of scared to now lol. But even if this was a one off good day or set that I just clicked with, I saw a noticeable improvement implementing Ellen's strategies.

caffeine powered human

I will definitely be timing my advanced translation drill! Thank you for the reply.
Did you say your CLIR or "what i'm looking for is" out loud or was the entire process in your head?

canihazJD

I might have mumbled a bit of the process here and there, but made a conscious effort to try to do all the steps and do them internally due to the no talking rule for flex.

I forgot to add, this wasn't my first advanced translation. I also did J07 (which is used extensively throughout the book) slow and untimed. Unscored as I've already seen this PT many times. Felt pretty good which is what led me to try this.

Hopeful9812

Congrats!!

caffeine powered human

I've never attempted to do the advanced translation drill timed. I will be trying that soon. Thanks for the post!

Jay Tee

Awesome!! I just did the ATD on an LR section from PT80 and went -0 (it was my second ATD) — I did say everything out loud so even though it was untimed, I’m sure I went well past 35 min. Still, I’m super excited to hear you made it work under time! 🎉 It gives the rest of us hope. 🙏 Also like your version of the acronym! 👌

To save time, do you think it would help to look at the stem first before reading the stimulus? Maybe it’s from having used 7Sage mostly, but the habit of reading the stem first is pretty ingrained for me; I also think it puts me in the right frame of mind to approach the question & come up with my CLIR quicker vs. waiting to read the stem until after translating.

canihazJD

@"Jay Tee" I'm not solid on the sequence of the stem, mostly because there is so much well reasoned yet conflicting advice out there. Powerscore and Ellen both recommend stimulus first but take different (but both effective) approaches. After the CC I tried to always hit the stem first, but found I was often losing time by catching myself on the stimulus and switching to the stem, then going back to the stimulus. I kept track and realized I was doing this like 80% of the time. Oddly enough when I relax about it and just do whatever comes naturally, I'll catch myself doing both interchangeably. Where I'm at now is that it really doesn't matter as long as you have a solid conceptual understanding of what you gain and lose through each approach.

For the ATD, I stuck to the prescribed sequence, and having that structure allowed me to be more consistent. I might have ID'ed a Qtype first here and there, but I don't recall that happening. I think part of Ellen's approach is that CLIR gives you the tools to attack any type of question regardless of what the stem ends up saying, and similar to Powerscore's reasoning, you can evaluate the stimulus without bias. One may not tend to look for a loophole if you already know its a strengthen Q despite the fact that having that loophole would help. That said, I think that part of proficiency is the agility to switch between strategies on the fly.

So I guess I'd say it may save time (I've been able to do sections much faster), but accuracy always trumps speed. My former careers involved a lot of shooting, and a good firearms analogy is that you "can't miss fast enough". If you approach a section as an ATD, timed or not (note: nothing is said about trying to time yourself doing this. It's just something I wanted to try), I think one is best served by sticking to the sequence. For a timed take, this is where you try to apply the totality of your prep - 7sage, PS, Loophole, stem first but add a CLIR, eval ACs against speaker 1 only then speaker 2, that trick your tutor taught you, something you heard on a podcast, skipping, stem/stim, etc. as one cohesive battle plan. Then you review, and decide what weapons to bring with you next time, and what to leave behind.

As far as the acronym, I just couldn't get used to the slightly different Qtypes, and the repeating C's in both powerful and provable. I found the new one more efficient... glad you like it!

Jay Tee

@canihazJD good deal, I really appreciate the thorough explanation!

Chloeeee

@canihazJD said:
Thanks!

@Chloeeee I recommend it highly. I found the system very intuitive, and the presentation more easily digestible than most prep out there. I used Powerscore and the CC, and Loophole fit in nicely... honed my stimulus translation and gave me some effective new tools. Ellen's powerful/provable is great for eliminating answer choices in ACs with tougher language.

Thank you!! Good luck with your study

jcho1234

This. I am going to try this today. I have a hard time applying the loophole ATD when I'm doing LRs. The post it is a great idea. I need to stop lying to myself that my intuition will guide me. haha. I also found that it's been easy for me to dismiss the ATD because the stem doesn't seem to fit a perfect mold so I shrug off most of what I learned to do in Loophole. Don't know why my brain is so stubborn. Thanks for your tips!!