Sharing some thoughts on newer Reading Comprehension sections

WillJayK

For the purpose of ruminating on my mistakes after reviewing few recent (post 65) PTs before February LSAT this Sunday,
I would like to share my thoughts on some noticeable tendencies in newer reading comprehension questions.

(For the record, I was usually scoring -3~-5 on reading comprehension sections during 40s~lower 60s PT,
and dear God I am scoring -7~-11 in newer PTs.)

1. There is more wiggle room for choices of words in answer choices.

Particularly among those newer suggestion/inference questions,
i found that answer choices that might have been easily regarded as wrong or overstretching inferences
getting to become an answer choice after the process of elimination.

In addition, some answer choices in non-inference questions are sometimes themselves written in a twisted way,
forcing me to take another step to see them as valid answer choices.


2. For reference questions that ask the purpose or meaning of certain parts in a paragraph,
answer choices are starting to make INTRA-passage inferences.

Previously on eariler LSATs, i guess it was safe or generally correct to focus your choices of answer on a specific paragraph for reference questions. However on recent questions there have been few instances where the answer choices were inferences made outside a specific paragraph but made within specific passage, connecting ideas from other paragraphs in a passage.




As a non-native English speaker i have felt that these changes in a more pronounced way, but I have to admit that I may have been wrong since I do not have a firm grasp on every nuance of the language. And some recent passages like Dodo extinction and mirror reflection have been brutal on me regardless of shifts in questions.

Any feedback is welcomed!

Petrichor

I agree and I think once you get acclimated to the newer passages you can get back to the level you were at before, perhaps even better. I focused on elimination which helped immensely and read a ton of articles from NYT, NY'er, Atlantic etc which helped with speed, accuracy and mental endurance. A lot of questions also look like LRs in disguise so working on that also helped.