Help Comprehending Stimulus

LSATstudyperson

Hello everyone,

I've noticed that one of my main problems (other than timing, which I hope will come with time - pun intended) is not understanding the stimulus correctly.

I say this while referring to questions with 4/5 or 5/5 difficulty. Sometimes, however much I read the stimulus it does not make any sense. I've also noticed that the more I spend time trying to formulate what is happening and removing banter from these overly complex sentences, the more I tend to get lost. It's like my brain gives up.

I have started trying to rephrase every sentence in the stimulus on paper to try to get myself used to doing it mentally, though I am not sure how effective that will be (i'll happily report after a week or two of trying this)

But, does anyone have any tips? Should I spend sometime reading dense literature to get used to it? Is my lack of strong vocabulary the problem??

Any tips and tricks are welcome.

Thanks in advance

Scott Milam

The best thing you can do when your brain shuts down on a stimulus is to flag it and move on! This goes against a lot of people's basic instincts - it feels like "giving up." But the reality is that often difficult questions get easier on the second pass. More importantly, time you spend staring at a question often will keep you from getting to other, easier questions!

Cant Get Right

Don’t spin your wheels. The most important thing for this type of question is to identify specific work to do. If you can’t do that, it’s an easy call to move on. When you’re not doing anything specific, you’re wasting your time.

As for what that work is, it’s often helpful to break down the stimulus grammatically. Identify the skeleton structure of each sentence: Subject, verb, object. This will provide a concise statement of the sentence which you can work with more easily in developing your comprehension. A lot of people struggle with this, but it would be well worth the effort to practice.

From there, the rest of the sentence fleshes out the meaning with more specificity, but you can fill that in much more easily once you have the structure for guidance. Once you’re good at this, you can start identifying more grammatical nuance. Complex sentences with subordinate clauses, for example, have very specific logical implications which are important to recognize.

LSATstudyperson

@"Cant Get Right" said:
Don’t spin your wheels. The most important thing for this type of question is to identify specific work to do. If you can’t do that, it’s an easy call to move on. When you’re not doing anything specific, you’re wasting your time.

As for what that work is, it’s often helpful to break down the stimulus grammatically. Identify the skeleton structure of each sentence: Subject, verb, object. This will provide a concise statement of the sentence which you can work with more easily in developing your comprehension. A lot of people struggle with this, but it would be well worth the effort to practice.

From there, the rest of the sentence fleshes out the meaning with more specificity, but you can fill that in much more easily once you have the structure for guidance. Once you’re good at this, you can start identifying more grammatical nuance. Complex sentences with subordinate clauses, for example, have very specific logical implications which are important to recognize.

I will try to do that! though after spending so much time on a question it feels discouraging to skip it. Just to make sure I understand clearly: When BR these questions I should try to spend the time breaking down the grammatical structure of the stimulus? Thank you for all the advice

LSATstudyperson

@"Scott Milam" said:
The best thing you can do when your brain shuts down on a stimulus is to flag it and move on! This goes against a lot of people's basic instincts - it feels like "giving up." But the reality is that often difficult questions get easier on the second pass. More importantly, time you spend staring at a question often will keep you from getting to other, easier questions!

YESS! very much against my instincts. I will try to keep all this in mind and make sure I am not spending too much time on such questions.

Cant Get Right

@LSATstudyperson said:
I will try to do that! though after spending so much time on a question it feels discouraging to skip it. Just to make sure I understand clearly: When BR these questions I should try to spend the time breaking down the grammatical structure of the stimulus? Thank you for all the advice

Well the trick with skipping is to do it before you've spent so much time! You've got to be able to anticipate how the question is likely to play out and make your decision to skip or not before you've tanked, not after. If you're going to skip in this situation, it really shouldn't take longer than maybe about 40 seconds. For most questions, that is more than enough time to realize you're lost, and you have to make the call to skip at that moment of realization. My process on something like this typically goes: "Okay, I don't understand. What am I going to do about it? I'm not sure. SKIP." When you don't understand and you don't know how you're going to change that, it's an auto-skip every time. I can't think of a single exception to that.

And yes on the grammatical breakdown, but you should also be doing this under time as well. It is often the alternative to skipping in these situations: "Okay, I don't understand. What am I going to do about it? Well, I'm for sure going to have to parse the grammar on that one really long, confusing sentence. Get to work." When I say you've got to identify specific work, this is the kind of thing I mean.

Non-specific work is really dangerous. The most common form of this is to just start over from the beginning and re-read the stimulus without really doing anything differently. We tend to just start over and hope it goes better. But without doing anything specific to improve our read, it's very unlikely that anything will change. This is so dangerous, I don't allow myself to do it under any circumstances. Even if I think it's my best move and I'm confident it will result in a correct answer, I force myself to skip, no exceptions. There's just too many psychological pitfalls with this to allow it.

LSATstudyperson

@"Cant Get Right" said:

@LSATstudyperson said:
I will try to do that! though after spending so much time on a question it feels discouraging to skip it. Just to make sure I understand clearly: When BR these questions I should try to spend the time breaking down the grammatical structure of the stimulus? Thank you for all the advice

Well the trick with skipping is to do it before you've spent so much time! You've got to be able to anticipate how the question is likely to play out and make your decision to skip or not before you've tanked, not after. If you're going to skip in this situation, it really shouldn't take longer than maybe about 40 seconds. For most questions, that is more than enough time to realize you're lost, and you have to make the call to skip at that moment of realization. My process on something like this typically goes: "Okay, I don't understand. What am I going to do about it? I'm not sure. SKIP." When you don't understand and you don't know how you're going to change that, it's an auto-skip every time. I can't think of a single exception to that.

And yes on the grammatical breakdown, but you should also be doing this under time as well. It is often the alternative to skipping in these situations: "Okay, I don't understand. What am I going to do about it? Well, I'm for sure going to have to parse the grammar on that one really long, confusing sentence. Get to work." When I say you've got to identify specific work, this is the kind of thing I mean.

Non-specific work is really dangerous. The most common form of this is to just start over from the beginning and re-read the stimulus without really doing anything differently. We tend to just start over and hope it goes better. But without doing anything specific to improve our read, it's very unlikely that anything will change. This is so dangerous, I don't allow myself to do it under any circumstances. Even if I think it's my best move and I'm confident it will result in a correct answer, I force myself to skip, no exceptions. There's just too many psychological pitfalls with this to allow it.

"Non-specific work is really dangerous." ..... THISSS. Took me a while to start notice that I tend to panic and stop focusing on what exactly the end goal is. I need to stop worrying about not getting everything right and start ensuring I am allocating my efforts into the right things...

Thanks for all the advice. Truly appreciated.

cheyjuan.m

I recently discovered the LR Loopholes book and it discusses this at length. I HIGHLY recommend it. People who read it usually say they end up with a -1 or -2 on LR. I've only been reading it for a few days but it is very helpful. I had a similar issue and I thought it was due to my attention span or stress happening in my life, which could contribute, but after reading the first 3 chapters of the book, I realize that it's the test. The first chapter talks about chunking for sentences, then the book goes into how to identify what's important and unimportant. Later, it discusses how to ensure you are comprehending what you read and offers a few drills. She talks about skipping and knowing what to look for in a stimulus. Please consider taking a look at it. There isn't enough space here to go over 3 chapters of a book but it can be really helpful to this in particular.

LSATstudyperson

@"cheyjuan.m" said:
I recently discovered the LR Loopholes book and it discusses this at length. I HIGHLY recommend it. People who read it usually say they end up with a -1 or -2 on LR. I've only been reading it for a few days but it is very helpful. I had a similar issue and I thought it was due to my attention span or stress happening in my life, which could contribute, but after reading the first 3 chapters of the book, I realize that it's the test. The first chapter talks about chunking for sentences, then the book goes into how to identify what's important and unimportant. Later, it discusses how to ensure you are comprehending what you read and offers a few drills. She talks about skipping and knowing what to look for in a stimulus. Please consider taking a look at it. There isn't enough space here to go over 3 chapters of a book but it can be really helpful to this in particular.

Helloooo,

I actually already have the book, I also have the LSAT trainer. I got gifted them from a family member but they've been sitting on my shelf for a while. I have been worried that I will over burden myself with different sources of material. I thought it might be best to finish the CC then move into the books. Is that how you handled it?

Follow up question for the people in this thread (if you do not mind) @"Cant Get Right" @"cheyjuan.m" @"Scott Milam": do you solve all the Problems sets in the CC as you go through it? or do you just do a few?

I tried doing them all in order and it seems way too time consuming and counter productive. Any tips?

Thank you all in advance for the advice. It is really helpful and makes this test way less stressful.

Hope y'all are having wonderful days

cheyjuan.m

Hi, @LSATstudyperson!

Reader's Digest version:
- Choose ONE resource to get a foundational understanding and techniques from
- After you do this and notice gaps, pick up a resource that is best known for covering the given gaps. Say you have trouble with flaws for LR and numeric inferences for games. LT helps with both in the beginning of the book (as you know). If that isn't good enough, go to LH for flaws...then keep going until you understand. Always ask yourself what you're missing. Have that goal in mind when picking up another resource
- Don't skip through resources because you might not understand the language when they get to what you're looking for. This is why you get a good understanding 1st so you can breeze through foundational chapters of new materials (saving time).
-Try the drills in the books (if you have it in you) just for practice- you may walk away surprised you need to revisit something and if not, there's still nothing wrong with practicing
-Try to learn how to understand what in the stimulus is important first, if you can (LH does this)

What I did (Vox explainer version):
I know exactly what you mean about overburdening yourself with materials. I am still trying to figure out how to ensure I'm not doing that, which is why I haven't tried 7Sage just yet, though I have a feeling I should. What I did was I got a good grasp of all of the question types first. It was important to just get straight-forward techniques without overcomplicating the process. The less I leaned on intuition, the better. Once I drilled and mastered both easy and midlevel questions for each question type using the techniques, I made and studied flashcards of the techniques, language used for specific questions, etc. Each week, I went through probably 2-3 question types, each with both easy and mid-level. I did 12-24 of each level within each type and kept my wrong answers. I went over them and didn't move on until I understood what was wrong and why. Some things come with time so you just have to know yourself enough to be able to discern which things you should stick with vs moving on. I wouldn't move to the next level of a qt unless I got -3 or less. Every Friday (or at the end of the week), I would go over all of the incorrect questions from that week and try them again. As I went along through each qt (question type), I kept 3-5 of the tougher questions from each and revisited them at the end of each week so I wouldn't forget what I'd learned. After I got through half of the QTs, I started taking sections (untimed) once per week and only did the QTs I'd covered. The main thing here was accuracy. Same 3 or less rule applied. If I missed more than 3, I studied the questions, did another section only doing qts I'd covered. I took note of any trends I saw for incorrect answers (I didn't have any but some people do, which is actually good because you know you need to go back and focus on a specific qt). Once I got through all of the QTs and my accuracy was good with 3 or less, I started taking timed practice tests just for the LR section while I began picking up games. That's when I noticed that I was all over the map with results. Camo review in Loopholes is great for saving time for reviewing pts.

At this point, I went through LSAT Trainer (I got halfway through and I'm still going). The reason I did it this way was so that I could see where my gaps in understanding were using the practice tests. I knew from trying LSATMax and getting through 1/2 of their program that contrapositives, sufficient and necessary, and numeric inferences got me. I also knew being able to say specifically WHY something didn't work was difficult, which is important for flaw questions etc.

I didn't skip around within a given book/material because each lesson builds upon the previous one. It took time and patience to start LSAT Trainer. I mean, who wants to keep starting from scratch and learning all of these different ways of doing something? The thing is, I knew the techniques I used worked but there were certain concepts that required clarity. My mom used to say, "if it doesn't apply, let it fly." If I knew the techniques I've been using came easier to me and were better, I kept them. If not, I replaced them with what was in LSAT Trainer (LT). I found that LT filled in some gaps in understanding for a few question types. I will continue to go through it for LG/RC but for now, I'm going to stick with Loopholes (LH) for LR.

I moved on to LH because it focuses on LR and I had enough experience to know I still needed help. Sometimes, I didn't even know why I got some things wrong (even with my tutor.) It's hard to ask for help when you don't understand...well, what you don't understand. With LH, my goal was to get more clarity on what each stimuli was actually saying. I was doing well, but I realized after going over things and hearing how my tutor understood answers/stimuli to mean one thing, and I saw something different, I needed drills on comprehension. I also still lacked understanding of the aforementioned concepts, and needed to improve my speed. What bothered me was that I knew I wasn't doing my best. Sometimes I would get -3 and get to each question, others -9 and also miss out on doing 3-4 questions. When I would go over the questions, I realized I needed something that would make up for my gaps in understanding since techniques without a deep understanding will only get you so far. I think I also got tired of LR since I'd been focusing on that exclusively for 2-3 months. I'm happy I did things this way because it helped me with the other sections tremendously. However, I needed to switch things up, including my approach to studying. I needed a fresh perspective and to revisit the basics. Needless to say the chapters I've read thus far in LH have helped me with comprehension, discerning what is important vs unimportant in a stimulus, understanding sufficient/necessary and contrapositives, and as I mentioned, the camo-review technique is so cool! It's a real time and energy saver.

It comes down to your learning type. I'm the type of learner who needs to know why-always, which is why I needed to use different materials to explain concepts differently. As LH explains, the LSAT is all about understanding what's important, THEN applying techniques to those important variables. You can't have one without the other. Either way you slice it, just try to be sure you tackle both of those components and maybe focus on one at a time. Sounds like LH would be a good place to start since she breaks down what is important and how to read stimuli. That will come in handy with all of the sections.s

With that said, the way some people explained one thing often didn't account for something else crucial to understanding the concept as a whole. With each material, program, tutor, etc, I've gotten puzzle pieces; some lessons cover majority of a given concept, others help me to understand really small but extremely important details of that given concept.

After a while, I was able to breeze through some chapters and drills because I understood the lessons already, but really hone in on others that helped me see something from a different point of view.

I hope this helps
-C