RC Main Point Q's

benjoffe6

Main point questions are pretty much the only questions I really struggle with on RC, and can be really frustrating and time consuming since they seem pretty subjective. Does anyone have a trick to deal with these questions specifically? Thanks

offy0c-1-1

I tend to have trouble with these questions types as well. One thing that I have notice is that you are able to distinguish the right answer choice from the wrong one as the the wrong ones tend to have factually inaccurate information. So the wrong ones may be tempting to select because they match some of the description of the passage but when looked at closely it has certain info that totally conflicts with the passage. I would suggest to keep an eye out for certain text that does not conform with the passage as wrong question types usually make this mistake.

pnwrunner

I would be curious of an example that you find to be a subjective main point, just for clarity. As far as a general recommendation, ensuring that you are able to comprehensively breakdown the passage as a whole into argument parts and each paragraph into argument parts will help ensure that you're aware of what is being presented in the passage that the author wants you know.

Matt Sorr

I have a couple of recommendations, but first I'll echo what @pnwrunner said about the idea of main point questions being subjective. Simply put, main point questions are not subjective. The sooner you come to terms with that, the quicker you'll get better at them. I don't say that to be harsh, but rather because I've seen numerous people improve after accepting that the correct AC isn't just "subjectively" better than the incorrect choice they selected. Trust me, there have been a ton of times I've gotten a question wrong, gotten frustrated by it, and told myself, "whatever, this question is dumb and the correct AC is dumb." That reaction, though it may make you feel better in the moment, is terrible for your improvement. Your AC was wrong and the correct AC was correct for verifiable reasons. It's that simple.

With that out of the way, I'd recommend a few things that I've found really useful for improving on main point questions. First, after I finish reading a passage and before I attempt any of the questions, I briefly scroll back through the entire passage, skimming it and getting a sense of the general structure, the main point being argued, and where the author stands on the issue. This has helped me tremendously because, often, after having read a dense final paragraph, I would kind of forget the big picture of the passage. Then, if I'd go straight into the questions, I'd frequently miss main point questions that I easily could've gotten if I would've briefly reviewed the passage (and by brief I mean only five to ten seconds). Second, when attempting MP questions, I pre-phrase what I'm looking for. The correct AC is seldom the exact same as my pre-phrase, but it gives me a good idea of what to look for. Wrong ACs will often start to confuse you and make you second guess yourself, and pre-phrasing can help to mitigate this issue. Lastly, before I select an AC, I ask myself, "given the author's opinion, is this why they wrote this passage?" Think about it: if the passage is arguing that an old scientific theory is outdated and a new one is better, why did they write the passage? Well, they wanted to argue that an old theory sucked and a new one should take its place. If you confidently figure this out before selecting an AC, then most wrong ACs, no matter how tricky they are, start to seem far less attractive. I hope this helps some!

julia.greve

Hey there,

Excellent question! Main point questions are ones I struggled with even toward the event of my LSAT journey. One tip I give my students is to experiment with the order you're approaching RC questions. If you save the main point question for last, that often does a great job of providing you with more time to read the passage before interpreting these difficult questions.

Hope this helps!

benjoffe6

@"julia.greve" said:
Hey there,

Excellent question! Main point questions are ones I struggled with even toward the event of my LSAT journey. One tip I give my students is to experiment with the order you're approaching RC questions. If you save the main point question for last, that often does a great job of providing you with more time to read the passage before interpreting these difficult questions.

Hope this helps!

Saving main point for last is a really great tip, I’ll give it a try! Thank you!

laiscamus

I was struggling with MP questions and have recently gotten better. Here's how:

1) I drilled MP questions specifically. I took ~40 passages and only read the first paragraph then tried to answer the MP question. The MP is (generally) found in one sentence in the first paragraph, and if you can find this question - you can take a guess at the main point. It was helpful for me to realize that I can actually drill MP questions specifically without having to read the entire passage and answer all of the questions.

2) I try to find the MP in the first paragraph as I said, then use that to guide my understanding of the remainder of the passage. After I've read the passage, I go into the MP question looking for something that does two things: (a) it aligns with the main point stated in the first paragraph ("why did the author write this?") and then look for an AC that fills in the remaining gap from the other paragraphs. So I identify what I think is the MP then I make sure the AC is descriptively accurate and sufficiently addresses all parts of the passage.

offy0c-1-1

The only issue with that recommendation is that there are times in which the mp will not be in the first paragraph. As other people above have mentioned, being able to see the mp of each paragraph will help you either reinforce the identified mp or overall mp of the author (if it is found in the first paragraph) or see whether the author is taking a shift from the mp in the paragraphs that follow.

laiscamus

@"offy0c-1-1" said:
The only issue with that recommendation is that there are times in which the mp will not be in the first paragraph. As other people above have mentioned, being able to see the mp of each paragraph will help you either reinforce the identified mp or overall mp of the author (if it is found in the first paragraph) or see whether the author is taking a shift from the mp in the paragraphs that follow.

This is true and I agree with you.

My suggestion for the MP drilling strategy weighs time spent per passage vs. exposure to MP questions. Given that each passage only has 1 MP question (if at all), I found that to practice MP questions it was important to cut down on time spent per passage as a tradeoff to answer more MP questions.

I think trying to identify the MP in the first paragraph (when it's there) and answering the MP question with 80% confidence -- rather than reading the entire passage and answering the MP question with 95% confidence -- can be useful for rapid-fire drilling MP.

I would not recommend only looking for the MP in P1 on an actual test, only for drills. Instead (as you described) -- find the MP in each paragraph and then find an AC that summarizes all of those paragraph MPs into a passage MP.

IOnlyAnswerC

I see two primary types of wrong answer choices to main point questions (I'm assuming you're asking about whole-passage MP questions, not MP paragraph questions).
The first one has been mentioned by others, the factually incorrect choice. These say something that maybe the author has disagreed with or expressly denied in the passage, or (the more difficult ones) will say something that the author didn't mention, but it's possible that you assumed it. Rarely, also, factually incorrect MP AC's will mix up the passage in an incorrect order (using point A's premise to support point B's conclusion).
The second one becomes blatantly obvious once you start looking for it, so luckily they make up like half of the wrong AC's. See, in MP-passage questions, any wrong AC that fully explains one paragraph is wrong. If you read factually correct information with an accurate explanation of the author's opinion, but it is limited to the information in only one paragraph, it is totally wrong.
It's not a good idea to select the most general of the answer choices, but that's how it often ends up because wrong AC's often capture enough detail to either tell a lie about the passage or recapitulate a whole paragraph.