LR skimming?

kdionwilliams

I recently posted this question on Reddit, however, I am not sure that the people who responded have enough experience with the test to get exactly what I am asking. So,

Would you guys recommend AGAINST (in questions which require that I analyze an argument)… First, quickly skimming/hunting for the conclusion, then quickly searching for the supporting premise or premises. As opposed to reading the stim from top to bottom?

I know that in order to anticipate the answer correctly all I need are these to things, the rest (background) just serves to slow me down or set me up for trap answers. Also, I am able to shave of a few seconds per question. However, I just started doing this and not sure if it’s a smart idea to make habit.

I am able to do this for most question types including;
strengthen
weaken
required and basic assumptions
SA/PSA
Flaw
Match flaw

What do you guys think? Do you already do this?

Thanks in advance 🙏🏽

Legality

I think you should do what works best for you. I'll do this if I know it's a NA or SA question, but otherwise I tend not to consciously break up the stim into its component parts (although I often do this unconsciously while reading). The trick is just finding whatever method helps you answer the questions as quickly and accurately as possible.

kdionwilliams

Makes sense 🙃🙏🏽

omwtls22

Only downfall is that if you do not grasp the stim all they way you will be forced to re-read and at that point you might be doing double the work in which case it will not save time.

BlueRiceCake

It depends. If you have 5 mins left and 8 questions to go through, skimming might be useful, if you can do it properly. Though it is a risk since the answer choices often punish skimming, especially the deeper you get into the LR section. If you asked me a week ago I would have said "you can skim when you know for sure you got the correct answer" but Preptest C section 3 questions 18 happened and I immediately thought I got the right answer and skimmed and moved on. Turned out I was missing a key inference in the question that I would have gotten right had I just read all the answers.

Tl;dr: Skimming is a high risk high reward technique, I'm not the biggest fan of it but it has its benefits

majilat

I would also add that you are less likely to be punished for skimming LR stimuli in the first 10 questions and more likely to be punished in the last 10 questions. I find that the first 10 questions are typically cookie cutter, and if they pose any difficulty, it is typically in the ACs not the stimulus. For example, you will have a cookie cutter necessity-sufficiency confusion for a flaw question, and the ACs all look so similar that you have to read each one carefully and find the one that correctly identifies the conditions in the stimulus in the correct order. So, if you are going to use this method, definitely consider switching gears in the last half of the questions.

Cant Get Right

I’d expect this kind of approach to plateau, for most people, around the upper-mid 150’s. To go much further, you need to understand the stimulus. It’s as simple as that. The context is not unimportant and is, more often than not, absolutely critical. Even if it were unimportant, you’d still have to read it properly before you could ever make that determination. Quickly skimming the conclusion and premises is going to lead to so many misunderstandings. Identifying argument parts is useless if you don’t understand any of the nuance and subtlety of what they say.

This is fundamentally a test about understanding, and any strategy that dismisses that is not going to position you for success. You don’t have to crack every curve-breaker BR style, but you do have to, at a minimum, read.