RC - reasoning structure w/o knowing what the hell is going on

lsatdiva333

I know JY and I think Mike Kim from The LSAT Trainer advocates focusing on the reasoning structure of the passage and letting it guide you through the questions, even though the content is completely foreign / hard to comprehend for you.

It's easier said than done, however, so how do you actually implement this strategy, without drowning in confusion? I find this harder for Comparative reading passages in which you cannot fathom the similarities and differences between the passages because you don't understand what is written at all (especially if the passages are about some kind of theory or law practice that I know nothing about).

Does anyone have any tips on: 1. not drowning in confusion; 2. using reasoning structure to answer the q's even though you didn't understand the content of the passages?

615Kevin

I am not doing well myself for reading comp, so I am not sure if there's any value for my feedback. However, I think that when we encounter really tough passages on the LSAT, we need to simplify things as much as possible and to do so by thinking in an abstract way. At the core of any argument or description is something like "Thing A does B" or "Thing X is caused by Y." Something like that where we don't necessarily understand what is going on, but we have some sort of a map. And then using this abstract structure to understand as much as possible from the entire passage.