Tips from -5 LR scorers?

ClaudioD21

Hello everyone! Was hoping to see if those who average -5 or less on any average LR section can drop some tips that we can all learn from! What can help someone averaging minus 7-10 bridge that gap to -5 or less?

Claudia77

I think that if one is averaging minus 7-10 per section it points to some lack of understanding, in which case you need to identify areas of weakness. Go through your wrong LR answers and see if you can notice a pattern - is there a certain question type that you struggle with in particular? If yes, review your strategy for that question type and make sure you know exactly what sort of answer to look for. Being able to anticipate what the correct answer will look like is enormously helpful both in terms of timing and accuracy. Before starting a section, I would remind myself of how I was going to approach certain questions (ex: I would say to myself "for sufficient assumption questions, the correct answer will force the conclusion to be true"). I found that doing this really helped the approach become automatic.

You should also be reviewing answers that you got wrong (this is most important). You need to attack the wrong answer and articulate why it is wrong and why the correct answer is right. While you can do this in your head, I would recommend saying it out loud or putting it into writing. Do this on your own first and avoid looking up an explanation until either a) you are confident in your reasoning and want to confirm it's sufficient, or b) you have spent a decent chunk of time on the question and absolutely cannot figure it out yourself. I found that forcing myself to figure out questions aided my understanding a lot more than just reading others' explanations. Lastly, check your timing strategy. If you've been stuck on a question for more than 1-2 minutes, select an answer, flag it, and move on. You can come back to it at the end. Potentially getting that one question right isn't worth running short on time and consequently losing even more points.

I hope this helped a bit, if you have any other questions I'd be happy to try and answer.

angelaclaveygeorge

LR used to be a weak section for me (-11 to 15 per), but I've drilled so much that now the correct answers seem almost glaringly obvious to me - and when they're not obvious, the wrong answers are. It seems now I can go -3/-2 fairly easily, which has boosted my score a ton.

My best advice is to keep drilling until you know question types so well that individual questions don't matter - you'll see past whatever extraneous details/scenarios they throw your way and naturally zero in on the answer.

When I was first starting out, I found discussing questions with friends/family helped a lot because I was forced to explain why an answer was 100% right and why all other answers were 100% wrong. Articulating questions aloud also made me very mindful of word choice - the use of strongly connotative words like "always"or "never" is ~never~ an accident and almost ~always~ can help with answer selection/elimination.