Tips for translating stimulus faster and not freaking out during LR?

emmorens

Lol at this discussion thread title, but I truly think my test anxiety will be the death of my score.

I am blind reviewing in LR between -3 and -5, took PT 83 S1 couldn't even finish the section and scored -11 (left 5 questions blank).

I could feel that I was really anxious because I knew I was being timed and I wasn't able to understand the stimuli/think as logically as I do when there is no pressure. I need to close my gap and kick this test anxiety before January! I really feel that it hinders my ability to think properly.

If anyone has been in my position or has any tips, I would greatly appreciate it.

I do like to take positives away from each test and all the strengthen, weaken, NA, MSS/MBT questions I answered were correct. Ironically I got the SA/justify/RRE questions wrong which are usually pretty straightforward for me. My Bernese Mountain dog was barking during my test so I'm hoping it was just a once off lol.

canihazJD

Practice paraphrasing stimuli in as simple language as possible. Like just drill sections of stimulus translations. @"Law and Yoda" and I were just discussing this - try and rewrite it like Hemingway... simple. Get rid of all the extraneous, distracting stuff. Like you were explaining it to a non-lsat friend (what are those?). We just want the bare bones argument or premise set, and any assumptions/flaws.

Check your translations and reflect on what you could do better, then fix it.

Another way to look at it is to read then cover the stimulus, and recall or write out what you are "taking with you" into the answers. A post it works great for this, but not necessary. Answer the question, then compare the stimulus to your notes. Were your notes adequate? If not what changes would have made it better?

Don't even worry about time... just drill until you can smoothly extract the bare argument/premise set from the stimulus. You have to do it slow before you can do it fast.

FindingSage

When I translate a stimulus I am not only trying to simplify the English I am also creating a picture in my head. I hold this visual "bubble" in head as a I read.
Here is a link to an example of how I break down a stimulus for a science question as an example: https://7sage.com/lesson/photons-and-rhodopsin-mss-question/#comment-164183

Most of us having been taking multiple choice tests for years and as such our automatic reflex when taking them is to read through the question as fast as we can so we can get to the answer choices and it is there where we spend all of our time. What we instead need to develop with the LSAT is to focus on the stimulus. Slow down, translate in your head and make an objection/prediction and then go hunt through the answer choices for it. This will feel uncomfortable at first because our brain is fighting to get to the answer choices because after all, that is where the "points" are. But just like with games it is better to spend more time up front, figure out inferences and then be able to be in attack mode for the questions. For me personally me I stick to this process and I know what I am looking for I am much faster when I answer questions and seldom waiver between answer choices or go back and change answer choices.

To practice teaching my brain this skill I implemented translations of ALL LR questions during my BR process for months. This is time consuming, I would average about 15 pages for a section so I would take a couple of days to do this. But gradually I started to train my brain to approach a stimulus, translate and predict. My BR template looked like this:

Translation:
Prediction?
Confidence level?
A
B
C
D
E
Did I change my answer on BR?
Cookie Cutter?

Now, I have added a wrong a wrong answer journal to really break down I got a question wrong, and that has also really helped.

Law and Yoda

I could feel that I was really anxious because I knew I was being timed and I wasn't able to understand the stimuli/think as logically as I do when there is no pressure.

Felt like someone reached into my LSAT journal and pasted this lol. Where do I even begin with this! I spent a good amount of time explaining my irrational fear to @canihazJD and really needed to hear his advice to just let go. Let go of the pressure, who cares if you miss a question, we want to miss them so we can learn from them. Its so different when someone else tells you this because you're actually hearing how ridiculous it sounds to be nervous taking a PT that's suppose to help you grow. I use to rationalize this fear but we really shouldn't carry these extreme expectations of getting a perfect score each PT we take. This is a journey of learning, failing, and making mistakes. Its all about embracing the suck. I put a sticky note next to where I study that says "Stop being afraid of what could go wrong and think of what could go right" and watched a 5 minute motivational clip before taking my last PT and felt all the difference in my concentration and attention. Its like all of the anxiety about being up against a clock left and I was just focused on reading and doing my best. I still didn't get to 4 questions but I was absolutely happy walking out of that PT because it was the first time I had ever felt so alert and not hazy. As @canihazJD mentions above, strip the stimulus down to its core and focus on the essential aspects of the argument. @FindingSage has great advice as well in taking a thorough approach during BR to really implement strategies that become second nature when up against a clock. One way I practiced this was going through PTs 1-5 and just reading the stimulus and ask myself what was the premise, conclusion, assumption/flaw, and what can I plug in to fix it or worsen it (if you want to weaken it for example). Don't even bother trying to go over the AC, our focus is just the stimulus and exposing its core. Drilling this helped me improve push the extra crap to the side and not get lost in the stimulus.