POE on RC?

allison.gill.sanford

Hi fellow 7-Sagers,
Looking for some advice here; is process of elimination the best strategy for answering all types of RC questions? It seems like reading through all answer choices can be a real time sink, but I have been under the impression that POE is best most of the time on the test (apart from certain LG questions where you can hunt for the correct answer and/or move on right after you find it). Thoughts?

nicole.hopkins

@allison.gill.sanford said:
Looking for some advice here; is process of elimination the best strategy for answering all types of RC questions?

Yes. Always POE. Folks who don't run out of time and go 0-2 use POE religiously. It's a great way to catch your mistakes as/before you make them. You're introducing unnecessary risk into your process by skipping POE and gain nothing thereby. If you are having timing issues, then those issues must be addressed by means other than looking for shortcuts (such as skipping POE).

So ... do POE and trust the process

c.janson35

POE on RC FTW

harrismegan

If you read through the LSAT Trainer, he breaks it down based on question type a bit when it's best effective to use process of elimination. Although it's time consuming, I've found it's personally easier to use this approach. ESPECIALLY because RC questions introduce, especially for the harder ones, incorrect details into the answer choices. They'll do even just the slightest change in detail, so reading through each answer choice is essential.

allison.gill.sanford

Thanks all! Very helpful.

jyang72

@harrismegan, what if you've already spotted the right answer choice, do you still go through the POE and make sure your answer is 100 percent correct? Thank you

harrismegan

Absolutely. You won't know you're 100% correct until you've seen all your options. Most of the time, and especially for reading comp, I find that they place a really really really attractive answer choice as A/B. This I find is most often the case for Main Point questions. I think they do that so that you immediately read it, pick it, and move on.

If you're struggling with the speed aspect of it, I would def pick up the LSAT trainer and read through the reading comprehension section. Reading for structure and not details changed my speed immeasurably!

jyang72

@harrismegan, does reading for structure mean getting to know the purpose of this paragraph such as if this paragraph provides support to the main point or introduces opposite views? I mean I have hard time referring back to the passage and it wastes lots of my time wandering around passages, what could this problem be? Thank you dude!

c.janson35

@jyang72 that's exactly what you should do, and it will help you with detail-specific recall/reference location also. Win win.

jyang72

@c.janson35, thanks man. I have serious trouble with most strongly supported question and inference questions in RC because I got stuck in 2 or 3 answer choices all the time.

c.janson35

@jyang72 yea on RC especially the test writers often combine two concepts from different parts of the passage to formulate a wrong answer choice, making your brain feel like it's a good answer because it recognizes a couple key words. When you're down to 2 or 3, note the subtle differences between the answer choices and how the meaning of each choice relates to your understanding of the passage as a whole.

Another thing to focus on: just as in LR, maintain a high standard of proof/verifiability when selecting a correct answer choice. Don't be sucked into an answer because it talks about some concepts you recognize from the passage if it is making some unwarranted assumptions about these concepts.

Understanding passage structure and having a mental map of the passage will definitely help you with these questions. You'll be surprised how fast you can refer back when cross-referencing it with your understanding of the layout.

Pacifico

This is great advice here and I think if you need an example of this at work, take a look at a handful of main point RC questions. You'll usually get a good mix of true and false statements, the former of which will often be the main point of a single paragraph and makes for a great trap answer. In the latter case they might take the main point and twist it around to either say the opposite or imply a consequence of either the main point or its opposite. These are great questions to train yourself on what LSAC does to mess with you on RC.

jyang72

@c.janson35 , dude, thank you for your advice. But what is mental map according to your opinion? like each paragraph's purpose and how they are related to the MP? Then, when I do MSS question and inference questions, do I refer answer choices to the pertinent paragraph and compare? Thank you again!!!!

jyang72

@Pacifico , you are right, I sometimes got stuck in MP questions too even if I had a paraphrased answer in my mind. By the way, do you predict answers when you do some of RC questions, such as weakening or strengthening questions? Thank you man!!

Pacifico

I don't know that you can really pre-phrase those types of questions as uniformly as you might be able to during LR. Aside from MP and Word Meaning questions I generally don't pre-phrase during RC because I don't feel like most of the question types (not just the ones you mentioned) lend themselves to it. Maybe that's just because I've done a lot of "author most likely to agree/disagree with which of the following" questions in passages lately. If you know the real main point, you shouldn't be thrown off by the trap answers since they are always either wrong in scope or completely irrelevant. Don't get hung up on how long it takes to read, it's always much faster than you think, it's the worrying about it while you decide whether or not to do it that is a time sink, just get on with it and you'll be fine.

jyang72

@Pacifico, thank you for pointing out my issue---- i worry too much. it happens a lot even in my logic games that i got the right answer but I always try to prove other choices wrong in order to move on without worry. It seems that i need to be more affirmative!

Pacifico

Definitely be careful of doing that too much in LG, especially if your game board is on point or it's an easy game. You're just wasting time eliminating wrong answers if you know the answer 100% in advance.

jyang72

@Pacifico, same in LR too. haha, I gotta be more affirmative!!

petitigre

For the RC section, I ALWAYS read through all of the answers, and I still have 5-10 minutes left, so it's not a time sink. Think of it as an investment. You might feel like you're going slowly through the question, but you're really just upping your chances of getting the right answer. Learn to speed read. If you think an answer looks good off the bat, hold on to it, but keep reading through the rest.

gs556

POE for LR and RC is the optimal strategy. No doubt about it.

c.janson35

@gs556 said:
POE for LR and RC is the optimal strategy. No doubt about it.

Definitely; it is the fastest and most efficient way to achieve a high accuracy rate. Still pre-phrase when you can because this speeds you up a great deal and lends to a better understanding of the passage/stimulus, but you shouldn't go through an RC or LR section without using POE.