Reading Comprehension & ADD

plong222

I have ADD and struggling with actual reading comprehension (for all sections). I'll get halfway to 3/4 through a passage and realize I haven't retained any of it and have to reread...which is not something the LSAT gives you time to do lol. I am planning to request for time and a half but was wondering if anyone had any ADD tips for reading/retaining information? thanks!

madisont144

Have you tried highlighting as you go? Sometimes, if I focus on highlighting what is important, I can trick my brain into paying more attention to what I'm reading. Also, taking pauses here and there to process and recall what you've read helps. I've also had a hard time with RC for the same reason, and these strategies have been somewhat helpful!

HopefullyHLS

I also had the same problem at the beginning of my studies, and I think a lot of students struggle in exactly that manner, no matter whether they have ADD or not.

The root-cause of this problem is that LSAT passages are constructed for precisely this purpose, to make you feel bored and distracted: they contain topics virtually nobody cares about, and contain difficult words and convoluted sentences to make matters worse.

A game-changer for me was drawing mental pictures in my head while reading the passages. Simply because a lot of the words/sentences I read in the passage are words/sentences I rarely encounter in casual reading, and thus my brain fails to associate those with anything, thus failing to retain them.

Another useful practice I discovered is, whenever I am confused about something, to actively realize it and consciously make the decision to either flag the line & move on or try to find the root-cause of confusion, which is typically one of the following:

• I misread a word.
• I misread the referential phrasing.
• I did not link the Information up to information in earlier paragraphs.
• I did not know the meaning of a word.

SBSCTMMM

@HopefullyHLS said:
I also had the same problem at the beginning of my studies, and I think a lot of students struggle in exactly that manner, no matter whether they have ADD or not.

The root-cause of this problem is that LSAT passages are constructed for precisely this purpose, to make you feel bored and distracted: they contain topics virtually nobody cares about, and contain difficult words and convoluted sentences to make matters worse.

A game-changer for me was drawing mental pictures in my head while reading the passages. Simply because a lot of the words/sentences I read in the passage are words/sentences I rarely encounter in casual reading, and thus my brain fails to associate those with anything, thus failing to retain them.

Another useful practice I discovered is, whenever I am confused about something, to actively realize it and consciously make the decision to either flag the line & move on or try to find the root-cause of confusion, which is typically one of the following:

• I misread a word.
• I misread the referential phrasing.
• I did not link the Information up to information in earlier paragraphs.
• I did not know the meaning of a word.

Thanks for sharing!