Logical Reasoning Suggestions?

lorreissy

I am currently preparing to take the LSAT in December...I think LR is a huge problem for me and I don't know how to fix it and I feel super frustrated My LSAT score is around 165-175 (depending on how badly LR is going) and I would love to get 170+ in December...on my last PT I scored -3 in one LR and -6 on the other. Ouch!

I've reviewed the curriculum and I've gone through powerscore, and I just started using the LSAT trainer. I've used analytics and it seems like I miss flaw questions often. I have also been doing BR and writing out explanations, looking them up, watching videos, etc.

Going to try and describe my problem...it seems that I can always understand the conclusion and the support. I generally know what is wrong with the argument but my phrasing of it seems to be off? Then I get thrown off by the answer choices. It always makes sense after I read an explanation, but then the next time it seems like I am still missing LR questions. I feel like I have been studying for so long that this is making me wonder what I am doing wrong - I must be being inefficient somehow. I don't know what to do.

Is this normal?

Thanks for your help.

tanes256

@lorreissy if you're prephrasing and still not getting the answer right there's definitely something you're not doing right. For the flaw questions you're prephrase may not be in the answer choices but it should be somewhere in the ball park. Are you familiar with the common flaws? I just posted something similar to this recently regarding prephrasing and flaws. I did not start out prephrasing and I'm trying to implement it in my studies but I can't always prephrase before getting to the answer choices. There are also times when I get to the answer choices and I don't know what the flaw means maybe because of the way it's worded. I have gone back to studying and memorizing the common flaws. I might now have been big help, but maybe someone else will come along with more suggestions.

BlueBell

i had a similar issue when i was studying for June and thats why i ended up waiting until September. Think the main issue that i really improved on the 2nd time around was just realizing that there really is just one correct answer to each question and the other four each will have something wrong with them. I used to think that it was about picking the "best" answer, and spend such a long time deliberating between two answers once i narrowed it down, but its important to realize that there will always be something wrong with all but one of the choice. might be a slight technicality in the wording, that its worded too strongly, some qualifyer they slipped in, look carefully, there will always be something. Another thing is maybe that once your done studying in the sense of learning rules and methods, put that all asside once you start doing timed practice. You want to get familiar enough with the techniques and practice them enough initially that once you are practicing timed you shouldnt have to think about them at all, it should really feel 2nd nature to just answer the questions to the best of your ability. For me it was almost to the point that I thought i maybe forgot all of the techniques i had learned because i never actively thought about them when i was taking practice tests, and thats when you know you have reached your maximum in terms of being prepared. You'll get to a point when you are so familiar with the techniques and have seen all the underlying "riddle" types that they transform into different questions that it should feel very natural to just know which one is right without deliberating for long. until then, just keep practicing. and i wouldnt worry about running out of practice material, in my experience you go through so so many questions that you really shouldn't remember the specific question and its answer by the time you get to it again.