Preferred Technique

SufficientCondition

Curious whether people on here tend to read the stimulus first and then the the question stem or the scan the question stem for type of question, then read the stimulus. The people I've studied with tend to feel strongly about their particular approach. If you switched over, what led you to make the switch?

kkole444

I would read the question stem first so you know what/how to attack the argument. I have different approaches to different types of questions, or I will give more weight to different parts of the stimulus in different question types. Plus if you know the question type you are dealing with you can more easily predict the correct answer. If I just read the stimulus first I would not know if I should strengthen it, weaken it, find the NA or SA, flaw? When I do not read the question stem first I have many things that can go on in my head I am strengthening certain parts, or identifying assumptions, or a possible flaw, all this is in my head along with the argument itself, then the question tells me to strengthen the argument and now I have to filter through all the other analysis I did. But if I know right away I needed to strengthen the question I do not have to worry about all the other questions types(different analyses) the stimulus could be asking for because i know exactly what it wants. There are less mental hoops to jump through when you know exactly what the question wants.
Many of the LR questions are interchangeable, yes that is true, however, you should still know what they want before you try and attack the argument. If you spot a hole in the argument your mind might go to strengthening the argument when you should have been thinking of weakening it or trying to think of the flaw the argument committed. But your mind is thinking of ways to strengthen the argument and now you have to stop and reverse the momentum in your brain. This is like doing an 'except' style question but for every question. Your mind (at least mine) starts to analyze the argument right away when doing the questions and if I do not know how the questions wants me to attack the stimulus it will (for me at least) find the easiest way to strengthen or weaken the argument because those questions are the easiest for me. We get maybe 6 at the absolute max of strengthen/weaken questions per section and what about the other 19-20 questions where I would be strengthening it when I should be trying to spot the flaw?
I am not sure where I heard this.
"You need to move the ladder before you start to climb if not where are you climbing to?"

zoomzoom

I've had experience with both preferred techniques, Question Stem first or Stimulus first, and had overwhelming greater success with the Question Stem first approach.

FYI, I was doing Stimulus first for OVER a year simply because other tutors told me this was the best technique to follow. The only issue was that I always had trouble finishing the section on time.

It wasn't until a new tutor suggested I try the Question Stem first approach that everything opened up and I started finishing sections with time to spare with higher accuracy.

In some ways, this change made a great deal of sense because with the old approach, I would spend so much time making sure I had such a good understanding of the stimulus, the conclusion, why it's flawed.... only to realize it's just a Main Conclusion or Role question. It just wasted unnecessary time.

With the Question Stem first approach, my mission now was to "get in and get out" as fast as I can.

As with everything, you should experiment with both approaches and figure out what works for you but this was my experience.

sarakimmel

Agreed with the other posters. I read Loophole prior to finding 7Sage and she advocates reading the Stimulus first. It wasn't until my tutor convinced me to try reading the Question Stem first that I switched. It took some getting used to, but this leads you into the stimulus with much more direction and focus as to what you are looking for while reading/analyzing.

120_or_bust

@sarakimmel said:
Agreed with the other posters. I read Loophole prior to finding 7Sage and she advocates reading the Stimulus first. It wasn't until my tutor convinced me to try reading the Question Stem first that I switched. It took some getting used to, but this leads you into the stimulus with much more direction and focus as to what you are looking for while reading/analyzing.

It makes sense and I'm surprised Ellen from Loophole advocates reading the stim first. I did the CC and read through Loophole, but when I do PTs I can't seem to follow her style (CLIR, etc). I will say that the Powerful/Provable as well as Red Flags answers help though, but I'm still getting like -9 on LR.

Sigh.

sarakimmel

@120_or_bust Yeah, it takes a while to improve at LR. It wasn't until I took a 6 week break from the LSAT and started working with study buddies and my tutor when I came back to it that I saw real improvement. When I'm doing untimed LR sections, I am only missing curve-breakers and an occasional "oops, I didn't read that correctly". Under timed conditions I went from an unpredictable -7 to -11 down to -3 to -5. Once you get your untimed accuracy up, the timed accuracy will come!