How does one improve in LR?

fullstop

How do we implement meaningful increases in LR? I'm halfway through fool-proofing for LG & try to do Harder RCs every 2 days, but usually just look at the hardest questions for LR from the Problem Sets page under untimed conditions. It feels like this is the wrong approach; so how do I improve and cut down the errors?

Svitale14m

My personal experience and the people I've read here experiencing meaningful change seem to point toward first ensuring that the lowest hanging fruit always fall in your basket and that will make some of the harder LR questions more transparent. The core curriculum really has such great intro to logic which helps in quickly and correctly reading each Stimulus. Difficulty of LR can depend on the language used in the stimulus and/or the subtlety of the insight being sought in the by the question stem.

If your logic is sound for simpler questions you'll have more time in the section to chew on difficult questions. Additionally, you'll better be able to recognize a difficult question out of the gate so time doesn't get wasted trying to get it when there are easier questions waiting to be answered correctly, swiftly. Then returning to the hardest 1-3 questions with clear eyes is an option.

If you've got the time the earliest episodes 7sage Podcast feature 7Sagers who really crushed it on the Exam (170+) and they all break down their own detailed approaches to improvement.

Good Luck!

mmlegal1

The best part thing for me has been on focusing on the first 14 questions and usually get them all. 15 I've noticed tends to be a difficult LR so ill skip if need be and move on and try to grab the ones I know I'm confident on. if time allows, ill review 15 and whatever I might have flagged.

Ravinder

The thing that helped me the most was reading Elle Cassidy's book: Loophole in Logical Reasoning. The chapter on translation is especially helpful. Learning to translate the stimulus and pre-phrasing are the main skills that allowed me to go from -5 per LR section to -1 per LR section on test day. In addition, I found it very helpful to develop a 'checklist' of one to two items per LR question type so that I would quickly know my task for each question type before I went into the answer choices. For example, for 'role in argument' questions my 'checklist' is: "A, CR". Where A stands for Accurate description (usually the first part of each answer choice) and the CR stands for Correct Role. If the first part of the answer choice is not accurate description then you can kill that answer without reading any further. For the answer choice (s) that begin with an accurate description, keep reading the second part of and verify that the second part describes the 'Correct Role' (i.e. make sure that every word in the second part is correct). There are 17 question types in LR and you can develop a one or two step checklist for each question type. The checklist should be very simple as a complicated checklist is likely to be forgotten on test day with the anxiety and stress of test day. The goal is to have a checklist that works 85-90% of the time as a checklist that works a 100% of the time would be too long and unwieldly. Hope this helps.

BenjaminSaka

Manhattan Prep's LR book helped me a lot.

fullstop

@Ravinder said:
The thing that helped me the most was reading Elle Cassidy's book: Loophole in Logical Reasoning. The chapter on translation is especially helpful. Learning to translate the stimulus and pre-phrasing are the main skills that allowed me to go from -5 per LR section to -1 per LR section on test day. In addition, I found it very helpful to develop a 'checklist' of one to two items per LR question type so that I would quickly know my task for each question type before I went into the answer choices. For example, for 'role in argument' questions my 'checklist' is: "A, CR". Where A stands for Accurate description (usually the first part of each answer choice) and the CR stands for Correct Role. If the first part of the answer choice is not accurate description then you can kill that answer without reading any further. For the answer choice (s) that begin with an accurate description, keep reading the second part of and verify that the second part describes the 'Correct Role' (i.e. make sure that every word in the second part is correct). There are 17 question types in LR and you can develop a one or two step checklist for each question type. The checklist should be very simple as a complicated checklist is likely to be forgotten on test day with the anxiety and stress of test day. The goal is to have a checklist that works 85-90% of the time as a checklist that works a 100% of the time would be too long and unwieldly. Hope this helps.

This sounds really helpful; I think externalising the process through a checklist would help in improving recall and accuracy. If you don't mind, could you share the checklist you made?

JDream2025

@Ravinder said:
The thing that helped me the most was reading Elle Cassidy's book: Loophole in Logical Reasoning. The chapter on translation is especially helpful. Learning to translate the stimulus and pre-phrasing are the main skills that allowed me to go from -5 per LR section to -1 per LR section on test day. In addition, I found it very helpful to develop a 'checklist' of one to two items per LR question type so that I would quickly know my task for each question type before I went into the answer choices. For example, for 'role in argument' questions my 'checklist' is: "A, CR". Where A stands for Accurate description (usually the first part of each answer choice) and the CR stands for Correct Role. If the first part of the answer choice is not accurate description then you can kill that answer without reading any further. For the answer choice (s) that begin with an accurate description, keep reading the second part of and verify that the second part describes the 'Correct Role' (i.e. make sure that every word in the second part is correct). There are 17 question types in LR and you can develop a one or two step checklist for each question type. The checklist should be very simple as a complicated checklist is likely to be forgotten on test day with the anxiety and stress of test day. The goal is to have a checklist that works 85-90% of the time as a checklist that works a 100% of the time would be too long and unwieldly. Hope this helps.

I second this. Can you share the checklist you made?

Ravinder

Sorry for delay in reply but there was a death in my family recently and just saw this. My checklist is just a few shorthand letters for each question type which would not make sense to someone else reading it. I have thought about making videos of it but have not had the chance I am a 1L now and quite busy. There are two of you on this thread that asked for the checklist. If you like you both can message me directly and we can set up a zoom call and I can walk you through some of the checklist as a courtesy. I am grateful to many 7 sagers who helped me in the past, so I am happy to give back. The checklist was key for me getting -1 on LR and getting 177 on final test.

Sailor Moon LSAT

@Ravinder So sorry to hear about the death in your family and just wanted to comment it was really kind of you to offer other people help, despite being busy and dealing with that. Power to you, and hoping your family finds solace.

lilpingling

Just saw this question and wanted to throw in some additional advice. One thing that really helped me with LR was simply reading all of the 7sage user comments on every last question I got wrong (and the questions I got right, but didn't really grasp why my answer was right over my second choice). The comments on these individual breakdowns are a virtual goldmine of tips and helpful information. It was only after reading a single tip on flaw questions that my ability to get these questions right went from about 50% to 90%. Literally someone's one-sentence tip changed the entire outcome of my LR section- all because their tip resonated and helped me see what I was missing. I highly, highly recommend reading questions/comments - keep in mind of course that some of the advice is NOT great - but sometimes looking at something through a different lens is all it take takes.

StephCurryWithTheShot

@lilpingling Hey what was the piece of advice that helped you so dramatically for Flaw questions? This is my most missed question type on almost every practice test I take. I definitely would appreciate your feedback.

standarddevietion

@lilpingling ^^^

lilpingling

@StephCurryWithTheShot and @dmu3tg

This sounds so incredibly silly, but the tip was to treat a flaw question like a weakening question (which I am very good at), then the correct answer will be the one that most closely describes how you would weaken the argument.

That's it. The whole thing that changed my score by 5+ points. I might have even heard it before, but for some reason it was that tiny little suggestion that helped me master my worst question type.

PS- I really cannot emphasize how bad I was at flaw questions. Honestly, I think 50% accuracy was being too generous. I could never figure out why one answer was right over another. Now it seems weirdly obvious.

tonyahardzinski

Read and work the Loophole book!!!! I swear by it! Last summer I took a practice lsat, Not timed, and scored 136. After just 3 months of some study with that book and a few practice tests I scored a 150 on the first real lsat in Nov. I’m rereading it in prep for the Feb (or prob April) lsat and getting more details outta it this second go around. It is fab!