Stuck at 163..Tips on RC?

lx621146

Thanks to this forum, all the comments I've seen are very supportive and helpful

163
LR:-2,-3
LG:-0
RC: -13

What are the recommendations for those who have made significant improvements on RC?

cjones76

Story of my life. I'm in the exact. same. boat.

Pacifico

Go check out @nicole.hopkins' webinar on RC.

nicole.hopkins

@lx621146 said:
I've heard that RC is quite fixed.

Who the heck told you that!

Pacifico

@nicole.hopkins said:
Who the heck told you that!

TLS told me that.

StopLawying

People think that RC scores are "fixed" but this isn't true at all. Don't start timing yourself on RC until you consistently get 0-2 on BR. There's really no way you should be getting more than 2 wrong on BR. Once you start hitting -0,-1 on BR, you'll see your timed scores improve. Dissect every single paragraph and every single incorrect answer choice. Although tedious, you'll definitely see your timed scores go up.

nicole.hopkins

@Pacifico said:
TLS told me that.

Silly TLS.

nicole.hopkins

@StopLawying said:
Don't start timing yourself on RC until you consistently get 0-2 on BR.

Well ... See ... I have no idea why you would ever do sections untimed ... The test is timed ... Why would you ever want to train in a situation that is literally the opposite of what you will face on test day ... You feel me? This kinda sounds a bit silver bullet-ish and I think it's going to tend to build bad habits.

Quick Silver

Join my webinar on Saturday at 12 noon EST on RC Question types - Knowing Q types makes a significant difference!

lsatings

Don't focus too heavily on the content that you're reading! Try to focus on strategy / general outline for the content over any of the details. I used to struggle and zone out during any STEM passages, but once I started to focus less on the actual content and ignore a lot of unnecessary details, i got better at 1 getting through the passage and 2 comprehension 3 finishing 4 sections on time.

But, it takes time and practice. I would suggest doing maybe 1-2 timed reading comprehension passages before bed every night when you have no distractions/pending errands or projects that you are thinking about and have a clear mind, and then blind review to understand what you did wrong. I found that strategy helped me best.

Q.E.D

Just eating dinner and poking around the forum. 'Guess I'll run my digital mouth. Why not?

I've been reading dense material for my whole adult life (age 30), so RC is one of my strengths. Absorbing linguistic meaning off the page is rapid and instinctive for me. Not bragging by any means. LG destroyed me on my diagnostic. Still, it may help for me to share some thoughts and observations.

1. LSAC deliberately hits you with badly written horse****. I even have trouble with pieces from the humanities, which are poorly organized and excessively loose with metaphor and diction. What is the concrete meaning of "the theoretical underpinnings of her respect"? (In case you noticed my punctuation, I take issue with the received practice of quoting punctuation that isn't part of the language targeted by the quotation.) The answer is that it means nothing. That's not your fault.

2. I think LSAC chooses passages with needlessly confusing conjunctions. I'll clarify with a contrived example.

"Their insistence on clarity was tantamount to an ultimatum, but they were too uncompromising to admit the most apposite metaphor."

The 'but' above functions logically as 'and', but it also indicates some opposition between the two sentences. There is no opposition, no coherent reason to say 'but' instead of 'and'. It just confuses the reader by signaling some extra layer of meaning that isn't there. When you see a bunch of confusing connectives that work logically as 'and', 'or', or 'if, then', just ignore the incoherent layer and look at the logic. Others include 'because', 'nevertheless', 'moreover' etc.

3. The last two were observations but this bullet is prescriptive: be logical. The root of logic is truth and so-called truth conditions. The linguistic meaning (as in "what does he mean?") of a sentence is just that state of affairs that would make the sentence true; so, if you know what would make a sentence true, you know the meaning of that sentence. Whenever you're unsure about the meaning of a sentence, just ask yourself what makes the sentence true or false.

Perhaps you noticed my impatience for ambiguity. Every author is on thin ice with me. I read every line asking "What does this bullsh** even mean? Was that word necessary?" I think that attitude makes me analyze each passage more carefully than others would. Maybe try that hat on and see what it does for ya.

Best of luck!
MT

sarahfatima28

@mtilton05 3rd point is pretty interesting. *tags it in her head* Keep reading about how treating an argument (or a passage as you just said) like it's been said by a very questionable source helps in dissecting it better. Will definitely try it.

Elle2015

@mtilton05 said:
I think that attitude helps me in the RC section. Every author is on thin ice with me. I read every line asking "What does this bullsh** even mean? Was that word necessary? How does this rise above the level of pure gibberish?" I think that adversarial attitude makes me analyze each passage more carefully than others would. Maybe try that hat on and see what it does for ya.

I strongly agree with this.

Pacifico

Got a regular Bill Shakespeare over here.

Q.E.D

@Pacifico I think I come off pretentious. It's a character flaw. I'm working on it.

Like I keep saying, 7sage is wonderful and I'm so thankful for the good advice available for free in this community.

DumbHollywoodActor

@Pacifico said:
Got a regular Bill Shakespeare over here.

I think he’s more of a Paradise Lost fan.

Pacifico

Ha! He got you Dave! It's mtilton not Milton... Attention to detail my good spaceman!

DumbHollywoodActor

Aw, he did. He really did. Serves me. T is my least favorite letter.

Pacifico

But without it you would just be a dumb Hollywood acor!

lx621146

Thanks!