Vocabulary

badgalriri

Hi everyone,
I took a couple RC (and even LR) sections recently, and noticed that I made 70% of my mistakes because I did not fully understand the meaning, or alternate meanings, to key words in the passages or question stems. I'm an English major, so I thought I had a strong grasp of vocab but now I just feel kind of stupid. I've started noting down these words and will try to expand my vocabulary on the side, but I was wondering - have any of you encountered this problem? Are there any techniques you could suggest to overcome this?

Thank you so much for any advice!

goalis180

I also do not have an expansive vocabulary, however the context clues surrounding the word usually give up the word's intended meaning. Also, what the test makers do sometimes is they use the word with little info on what it means at first, but when you continue reading you'll see the word reappears and from there assess the word's meaning. Ofcourse there are always toughies, but im sure for most you will be able to get the using ghe clues.

Pacifico

Honestly I've never encountered this problem myself. There's probably only 1-2 words per PT that I don't know the definition for, but I can still work with them using context clues. After 10 PTs I can't say I've ever been in a situation where my performance hinged on something like this, since the language they're actually testing you on is the simple stuff (e.g.- for, since, because, some, most, is, unless, cannot, etc.)

Part of me wonders if you're just focusing too much on individual words and not coming away with an understanding of the reasoning/argument structure. You need to focus on the forest and not the trees. If the LSAT is a forest that you're trying to traverse in 3 hours, you can't expect to finish the journey if you get hung up staring at every tree for 5 minutes. If this is really bothering you then sure, go get some vocabulary resources (e.g.- apps, flashcards, etc.), but I think it's masking a different problem.

nicole.hopkins

At least LSAC no longer tests on on made-up language proficiency ... @c.janson35

nicole.hopkins

You could try something like this GRE vocab builder I just found! https://gre.magoosh.com/builder/vocabulary

Certainly couldn't hurt. Looks like it's an app as well as web-based.

badgalriri

Thank you so much for all the advice!

nye8870

Oh my goosh! That was fun.