RC line references

cpeaks13

When its referred in RC to a certain part of the passage should you always return to it and read the line they indicate?

help

Ashley2018-1

I personally would. And read around it as well.

LOWERCASE EVERYTHING

@cpeaks13 said:
When its referred in RC to a certain part of the passage should you always return to it and read the line they indicate?

help

not "always" for me.
it very much depends on my confidence level for the question.
there are times when i do a better job with active reading that i feel pretty confident answering these questions even without referring back to the passage; or there are times when i'm down to 2 answer choices and i only need a few seconds to go back to the passage and quickly confirm/disconfirm my answer; other times, i just need a few seconds to refresh my memory of the referenced idea (without actually re-reading the lines)

and of course, there are times when i do less well with my reading, and realize that i need to actually spend some time re-reading and understanding the surrounding sentences; there are times when i answer it with some degree of uncertainty and flag it and move on.

i personally do better when i spend more time upfront on the passage; this means i have less time on the questions. so i let my confidence level and trust guide my decisions, rather than have a strict rule to follow.

cpeaks13

@"LOWERCASE EVERYTHING" thanks for your input. The reason i ask is i never seem to have enough time to finish RC and the last 2 PTS i felt confident so tried to save time by going with my gut. I got them wrong and when going over the questions after it appears it would have been quite obvious if i had just gone back quickly and scanned it. I just cant seem to have enough time. With the Jan lsat days away, freaking out a bit!

FindingSage

How to approach line reference questions was one of the easiest to implement strategies that was recommended to me. In RC it is important to keep momentum. I personally spend more time on the passage ( I average around 4 minutes) so need to work through questions efficiently. I skip line cite questions on the first pass and then complete them before I finish the passage and move onto the next one. I will give you an example of how this helps. This helps because the typical first question is the main point ( this typically takes 30 seconds to a minute) but last thing I want to do is spend close to 2 minutes on question 2 because it is a line cite question and asking about obscure line. I would much rather go onto question 3 which is an author attitude question and I know I can also get that in maybe 30 seconds. I keep this momentum up and now I have 6 of 8 questions answered ( these last two are line cite) my brain is happy because it feels like it has answered almost everything from the passage and even if somehow I were to run low on time I would have the vast majority of questions answered. Like @"LOWERCASE EVERYTHING" I don’t always read the line- depends on if it was something I remembered specifically or a more obscure line.

cpeaks13

@FindingSage thank you for that! I am going to implement this on my next PT, definitely makes sense to do it this way i think

FindingSage

@cpeaks13, I am glad to hear it really helped me! How we approach a section and on a more micro level, each question can really make a large impact on our performance.

cpeaks13

@FindingSage got another question for ya....do you not ever scan the questions first in RC? I know it seems to be a no-no but ive done it a couple times and found that ive performed better. Wondering what others opinions are???

FindingSage

@cpeaks13 I don't scan the scan questions first because I am always reading for the same things- main point, tone, purpose and structure. I can answer the majority of questions have a solid idea of these. As I read I highlight around the structure of the passage/ argument ( if there is one) and also highlight any conditionals I see throughout the passage. This way I know where to come back to for inference/detail questions.