Questions (prepping for December 3rd LSAT)

tjphilbrick

A few thoughts and questions on my LSAT process so far (started studying in July):

1) Reasoning - I've been doing a lot more of this recently and have found that I'm consistently weak on MBT, Sufficient and Necessary Assumption, Parallel, and Method of Reasoning questions. I've started doing sections untimed just to focus on prephrasing and writing out what I need to look for, etc and that has helped a lot. However, my scores still go up and down - last weekend I went through a section and got 3 wrong, then got 10 wrong in another section the following day. Any consistency is around the 5-8 wrong range, which is too high if I am going to get above a 160. I'm hoping things will come together and start to click before too long. Any strategies or ideas on the weak points I mentioned above? I'm trying to do extra practice questions on those types but not sure if it is just something that has to come with time. A mentor of mine just suggested that I start diagramming the stimulus and every answer choice for all of the types of LR questions that I struggle with.

2) Games - my scores go up and down. Last night I did a section with 5 wrong and the other day I did a section with 10 wrong. I have a feeling it just depends on the difficulty of the section, but then again there are games that JY says are easy and should take 5 minutes and they take me 10 minutes, as well as some games that he says are insanely difficult and I breeze through them. Overall it is hard not to get discouraged when I repeatedly do LR and games sections and get 10 questions wrong, don't finish the games in time, etc. I'm trying to remember that I need to focus on gaining a complete understanding of everything I'm doing right and wrong so I can efficiently improve, but right now it seems like I'm plateauing. I'm assuming this means I just have to keep pushing through and trying to gain understanding until I make a breakthrough? Any tips on breaking through a plateau?

Alex

@tjphilbrick said:
Any strategies or ideas on the weak points I mentioned above?

I had similar problems with MBT and Parallel questions. I didn't really start seeing gains until I started revising the lessons though, especially JY's lessons on conditional logic, valid/invalid argument forms. To me, having a grasp on those concepts in essential to doing well on the these types of questions. I also kept a mental note of all the valid and invalid argument forms as well. Doing these two things (literally just going back through the CC lessons on these things) got me from missing -6 per on LR down to -3. The more MBT questions you do, the more they will start to become intuitive, at least in my experience. But knowing those important concepts like conditional logic, quantifiers (most, many, some, none, etc) and the arguments forms are what got me there. Memorize them!

For assumption family questions in LR you need to be able to weed through the excess verbiage in the stimulus and identify the argument core with surgical precision, identify the conclusion first then the reasoning and figure out why the premises do not completely substantiate the conclusion (there will always be at least one reason, there has to be). If you're able to pre-phase an answer it'll make it easier for you to identify the correct answer, that said don't fall in the trap of eliminating wrong answer choices because they don't match up with the answer you pre-phased. The arguments almost always have many reasoning issues and sometimes the correct answer choice will either be one that you did not anticipate or if it is it may be worded in a different way so be cognizant of that too. Also, one important thing when eliminating wrong answer choices work from wrong to right, not vice versa. A skeptical state of mind is imperative to doing well on this test, especially when eliminating answer choices. Usually there are 1 or 2 blatantly wrong answer choices which that you can eliminate pretty quickly. Of the remaining choices, the wrong answers will often contain a quantifier/modifier like "most" that extends the scope of the argument or something, so play close attention to stuff like that, one word can make an otherwise seemingly correct answer incorrect. Come up with one reason for why an answer choice is incorrect, if you can't don't eliminate it because it could be the correct answer. If you blindly eliminate an answer choice which turns out to be the correct answer, it's going to make it that much harder for you to evaluate and address your thought process when you were answering that question.

@tjphilbrick said:
I'm assuming this means I just have to keep pushing through and trying to gain understanding until I make a breakthrough? Any tips on breaking through a plateau?

Yes, that is essentially correct. Keep on pushing.... and know your conditional logic like the back of your hand. I mean these things have to be like walking.... completely effortless.
Games were the bane of my LSAT prep existence. They still aren't my strongest, though I tend to do well on timed section, I never feel confident and I can never get them to feel as quite as intuitive as LR.

Still there are things to do to help. Of course continuing to fool proof the games will help. Each game has a game breaking inference that you will need to make in order to finish the games quickly and do well on the section. Really pay attention to that game breaking inference/rule when you are solving the questions. Sometimes we figure out a rule but we fail to see just how restrictive a rule can be. Many times games will keep trying to give you question to see if you understand the rule.

Also, something that helped me was using my prior work to answer questions. When I was still missing 5-6 per LG section, I realized I wasn't fully utilizing my prior work. You can use it and POE to get rid of a LOT of wrong answer choices and sometimes find the right one.

I know a lot of this advice isn't novel, but I figured even if you already know all of this stuff it wouldn't hurt to reinforce it....

I will add this little anecdote: When I was learning games it was incredibly frustrating. I struggled a lot with my speed. After about 3 weeks of doing nothing by games, I still was slow. I took 3 days off for the July 4th weekend and when I drilled games again I went -2 on a timed section. It literally just completely clicked with what seemed to be overnight. (Well a few nights, lol)
Just keep pushing and fool proofing like you already suggested you will be doing...

Good luck!

desire2learn

For me on both sections it just took repetition, repetition, repetition and then some specific work on weak points. Revisit lessons, re-do games and questions that you missed, rinse, repeat. Your progress probably won't be perfectly linear but you will see an overall growth trend over time. Especially if you keep identifying weaknesses and working on them as you go.