Please help! RC is becoming a problem

paige621

I am planning on writing the Aug LSAT and my pt score keeps dropping. I’m not burned out and I’m not sure what is happening.

My worst section is RC and it is getting worse rather than better with practice and I need some tips.

Please help!

Cynical Bean Counter

I've been in the same boat as you. I will also be taking the Aug LSAT.

Would you say it's your understanding of the text or your understanding of the questions that's tripping you up?

For me, it's almost always my understanding of the text that faulters my score.

gman32324

My two cents, I've caught myself needing to lock in just a bit more and focus in on just the passage. Blocking outside thoughts. I'll sometimes refresh the basic lessons to keep my reading comp skills sharp.

mklinger

Here are a couple tips I found to be helpful for me. I was really struggling with RC as well, but with these strategies I found myself going from -7 to -1/0.

The first thing I would ask myself is, am I sure that I am not burned out? Before my June LSAT I too was convinced I was not, but when test day came I simply did not have enough gas in the tank to do quite as well as I had been on PTs. I would say try not to do more than 3-4 hours of studying a day and focus more on drilling and section tests rather than whole prep tests. Doing drills and section tests each day and then a PT once a week made my score jump from ~160 to 169 in less than 3 weeks.

In terms of the reading comp study strategy that has helped me most is to do memory drills. To do that, pick 2 passages (ideally from the core curriculum section of the drill bank) that you have not done yet. Then, read the passage thoroughly (but in under 4 mins) and have a good low-res summary. After you do that, go through and answer the questions but DO NOT look back at the passage AT ALL. It will be super hard at first, and some of the questions will likely be impossible to answer. Don't worry if you get a lot wrong at first; after a couple times of doing the drill you will start to find yourself going through the questions much faster and more accurately as you actually have a good understanding of the passage and remember more of it.

As far as a reading strategy, I have found it super useful to pause after each paragraph and quickly summarize it in my head as well as having the written low-res summary. Ie. maybe my low-res summary says "phenomenon" and then at the end of that paragraph I would say to myself "the phenomenon is that there is not enough water for humanity to survive 100 years at the current rate and they are trying to figure out a solution." If you do that, by the time you finish reading the passage you will feel much better about passage. You might find that you end up taking 4 mins to read the passage doing that, which is why the memory drill is important--it will teach you how to sprint through the questions with the limited time while still getting them right and feeling confident doing so.

Hope that helps!