Wrong LR Questions

angelleung

I notice that I tend to get a bunch of easier LR questions wrong, which is incredibly frustrating. A lot of the time, the question type/category varies, so it's hard to pinpoint exactly. According to the analytic feature, though, my weaknesses are weaken and flaw questions mainly. I've already done the Cambridge drilling packets for those and I have improved but not as much as I was hoping I would. What else can I do, not only for these specific types, but for my LR performance overall? I know I can get -2/-3 with enough practice and focus but the question is how do I get there?

Ron Swanson

I used to have a lot of trouble with weaken questions too. For these questions it's important to target the support that exists between the premise and conclusion. Try isolating the premise and conclusion and then selecting an answer choice that most undermines the support offered by the specific relationship between the premise and conclusion

c.janson35

If you're getting easier flaw and weaken questions incorrect, then it probably means you're just rushing through the stimulus without stopping to comprehend the relationship between the premises and the conclusion, and why it all doesn't add up. You have to spend the time up front with the stimuli just as you would in LG. Read, absorb, analyze, attack. Don't proceed to the AC until you have a handle on the argument because the choices are designed to trip you up.

This advice applies to the whole test as well. Once you start truly understanding the stimuli you'll be able to start predicting answers, which will not only increase you accuracy, but also your speed.

If you haven't given the trainer a look, do so. It has a great intro into flaws, and it sounds like that's exactly what you need.

Pacifico

@c.janson35 said:
If you haven't given the trainer a look, do so. It has a great intro into flaws, and it sounds like that's exactly what you need.

+1 ... I came here to say the exact same thing, was not disappointed it had already been mentioned.

Also, if you're already into PTs, then after you do your BR and score the test, make a drilling section out of all the ones you got wrong both before and after BR. If you have PDFs you can do this easily with a PDF editor to copy and paste the questions into a Word or Powerpoint document until you have 25 questions and then bam there's a whole new challenging LR section for you to try.

angelleung

Thanks! Also I speculate that I might be trying to adhere to the "15 questions in 15 minutes" guideline at the expense of accuracy. Is this a general principle that top test-takers advocate? How do I know when I'm ready to aim to meet that self-imposed time limit? And should I start off with the first 10 Qs under 10 minutes?

angelleung

I would feel bad if I were to make a separate topic/discussion so I thought I'd just append this additional question I have for LR: for which questions should I really be getting the hang of prephasing? I'm decent at parallel and PF questions and obviously you can't completely prephase it but I do take a moment to articulate to myself the structure, flaw (if there is one), and notable elements in the argument. Are there any other types of questions where a prephase might not be readily apparent but would still be very beneficial nonetheless? I can't think of any others off the top of my head.

c.janson35

I strive for 15 for 15, but if I don't meet it then I'm alright with it. Sometimes it takes me 18-20 minutes to do the first 15. The only thing that changes is that I don't have the extra time at the end to revisit any questions at the end, but that's ok--I spent the extra time on the tougher questions during the first run through.

Whatever you do, you don't want to sacrifice accuracy. You don't get points for being fast, so don't miss out on questions that you could and should have gotten correct.

angelleung

Ah, makes sense. Yes, I need to ingrain that into my head. For the 15 for 15, how many minutes is this strategy supposed to leave at the end of revisiting questions, exactly? Sometimes I just power through difficult questions without circling them and returning, necessarily, so I get lost in the 20 latter questions.

Ron Swanson

I tend to have 3-5 minutes at the end to look over answers. Powering through questions can sometimes cause me to get more bogged down than I realize. I've read in other places if you can't fully grasp the stimulus on your first read just skip and come back to it

c.janson35

15 in 15 isn't necessarily supposed to leave you any extra time, it's just to help ensure you have enough time to get to all the questions while giving you the opportunity to spend a little extra time on the tough ones.

Pacifico

Think about the 15 in 15 this way: On average there are 15 easy to medium difficulty questions in any given LR section, and then there are 10 harder/hardest questions. For most tests, 9 out of those 15 are going to be in first 10 questions, but that still leaves you 6 more spread out through the teens and 20s. You need to get through those 15 questions in 15 minutes, and in order to be able to do that, you need to be able to see every question, which means cutting bait and moving on when you don't get what is going on for a given question. It is tough to do but will really reward you. If you begin to have the mindset that there are 15 easy questions in each LR section, then you'll start to push to see them all because that's 15 easy points if you don't make any stupid mistakes. That then will leave you with at least 2 minutes for each of the 10 remaining questions. A few of those will be curvebreakers, and a few of those won't jive with you for one reason or another. But half of those shouldn't be too bad, so now we're looking at 20 points with only 5 or 6 questions to lock up and more than 2 minutes left for each of them. Master a methodology along these lines and you'll be sitting pretty.

cacrv567

I have a really hard time skipping questions on LR bc unlike LG substitution questions where I know as soon as I read the question that I should skip this, with LR I won't know if this is a hard question until I've read the stem, stimulus, and the answer choices (at least twice) and then once I realize this is a hard question, I always feel like I've already put in too much time too skip. I guess my question is, are there tips on when to skip a question? Apologies if there is already an existing thread on this- feel free to redirect me to one if it exists!

c.janson35

@cacrv567 well, you shouldn't be relying on the answer choices to see yourself through because 80% of them are designed to mislead you. You should only go to the answers with a clear view of the task at hand. Yes, sometimes you will have to reverse engineer the correct answer choice, but if you read the stimulus and don't know what's going on, and then you scan the answer choices and don't know what's going on, a second read through is likely just going to cost time. I do mean scan here, too. When you don't really know what the stim is saying, going to the answer choices is effectively shooting for that "aha!" moment that affords you the right perspective on the question. Spending time debating the merits of 5 answer choices when you don't know exactly what the argument is saying and what's wrong with it is generally a waste of time.

Pacifico

Great advice here from @c.janson35 and to caveat off of his advice, you shouldn't be reading the stem again and you shouldn't be reading the ACs twice, or even once for that matter if you don't understand the stimulus.

Read the stem, draw a quick letter or two next to the stimulus to reinforce the question type (e.g.- "S" for strengthen, "PF" for parallel flaw") and so you don't need to read the stem again. Then read the stimulus. If it makes no sense, take a deep breath, recognize it might be a tough one and read it again. If you still don't get it, circle it and move on. This is not RC or LG so you really can't rely on the answers to aid your understanding whatsoever since each question is its own little world. You'll likely do this for 5-10 questions at first and when you go back after finishing the section to spend more time, remember that whatever approach you took the first time was most likely wrong, so be open to alternative interpretations.

cacrv567

I skipped 3 questions on my last PT after reading this, and came back to them at the end of the test - something I couldn't manage to do before. Thanks for the help!

c.janson35

@cacrv567 nice!!