Help with LR

cgracia12

So this section is by far my worst... I think the timing aspect is really killing me, any ideas on how to improve, or how perhaps you've seen gains within this section?

I've been averaging about 8-12 correct per section (I know, it's pretty bad) but after BR I usually get about 5-7 more answers correct. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

Admin edit: Ahh! No full-caps in titles, please. I'm a very timid admin and I don't like being yelled at. ):

Sami

I think before you can even implement the skipping strategy you are going to have to bring your understanding of the questions higher because you are still getting a lot of them wrong even in untimed situation. Are you doing full blind review and writing out explanations of each and every stimulus; breaking it down, writing down why each answer is right vs wrong, and then compare it to see how JY did it and take notes on how he did it differently when compared to how you did it?

I would suggest seeing what questions type are your highest priority in the analytics portion and reviewing the core-curriculum for it. If you still have trouble with those questions feel free to post them on the forum, discord, or PM any one of us.

BranTwice

I would say you should work on BR more. Even if it takes 2 hours, go over all the questions that you circle until you're 100% in the answer, and 100% confident that all the other answers are wrong. I think ultimately the only way to get faster is understanding the questions (premise, context, and conclusion) the first time you read them.

cgracia12

Thank you very much for your help, @Sami and @branigan.satterfield . I am not necessarily writing it down, but I do review the correct and incorrect choices, is that enough? Do you really recommend writing down the explanations for each correct and incorrect choice? Or is reviewing each choice enough? I will definitely see which question type I need to work on as well.

After reviewing and getting a better understanding of each question type, do you recommend drilling a timed LR section of 35 minutes? I've heard others recommend this strategy, and wanted to see what you think..

lawschoolstuff16

@cgracia12 said:
Do you really recommend writing down the explanations for each correct and incorrect choice?

definitely write them down!

Alex

@cgracia12 said:

I've been averaging about 8-12 correct per section (I know, it's pretty bad) but after BR I usually get about 5-7 more answers correct. Any help would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

So your score tells me that you should probably return to the lessons and redo the problem sets. I think if you are missing that many it would help more to focus on reviewing fundamentals rather than doing timed sections.

dennisgerrard

Blind review is very important, though it consumes time. analyzing the wrong choices outweighs the quantities of PTs you take.watch the video to confirm the answer.

MrSamIam

Don't PT if you're only getting 8-12 wrong. Watch the lessons for every LR question type. Drill an easy, medium, and difficult problem set. Keep drilling until you've developed an efficient plan of attack. Do this with every question type, and you'll be able to answer the questions more efficiently.

a.ruqaiia

Thank you for posting this, i'm very much on the same boat as you. @MrSamIam which drilling packets do you recommend? Is there a specific brand/book or any will do?

cgracia12

Just wanted to say thank you for everyone's help on here, truly an awesome community of sagers!

MrSamIam

@a.ruqaiia I used the problem sets on 7Sage. However, any packet that organizes LR by type and difficulty should do.

loosekanen

I had some trouble in LR with simply not understanding what the passage actually said before I started struggling with the answers. While drilling 35 minutes sections I circled any question that I didn't feel 100% confident on and then took all those questions along with any other that I missed and rewrote the stimulus in my own words and then rewrote the question in my own words. This solved a large amount of problems though admittedly at a great cost in time. I was missing 7-9 in LR when I started doing that and had trouble adequately understanding why many answers were incorrect. I'm at the point now where I'm in the 3-5 incorrect range where I can now start funneling through the reasons I'm picking incorrect answers.
I think too often we focus on WHY the answers are right or wrong without fully comprehending what we just read. Anecdotal, admittedly, but I think that it pays to take an approach from the ground up if an individual is missing as many questions as you and I have missed. Grit and drive are important. Don't give up.

tanes256

@a.ruqaiia @cgracia12 try The LSAT Trainer if you're still not comprehending from the curriculum here. Lots of folks here use it to supplement. It doesn't hurt to go elsewhere for a different perspective. Sometimes the explanations here are a little too simplistic for me so I go elsewhere for a more thorough understanding. For the most part everything I read says the same thing but for whatever reason I needed to have it worded differently or something. Also, I'll have to agree with those above that suggested returning to the curriculum and thorough BR. BR is definitely where you'll do all your work and it may be a stretch but I'd go far as to say that you won't see much improvement until you put the necessary time and effort into thoroughly BR each question you're struggling with. Obviously it helps to watch the videos and see why the correct answer is correct but you also need to know why the wrong AC are wrong. Often you'll start to see patterns of wrong AC and trap AC. Also, when you actually know why an AC is wrong it'll obviously get you closer to the correct AC. Remember, you should be working to eliminate all wrong AC first, not just hunting for the correct AC. BR is tedious but it takes as long as it takes. Timing is crucial but I would also suggest laying off on the timing right now until you have a more concrete grasp of the question type you're drilling. You may want to run a stopwatch right now instead of the timer just to see how much time it's taking you on a particular question. Again, this wouldn't be my biggest concern at the moment. Good luck!

Cant Get Right

@loosekanen said:
I had some trouble in LR with simply not understanding what the passage actually said before I started struggling with the answers.

Yeah, this is a bigger problem than many people realize. Especially on the contemporary test, so much of the difficulty is the language rather than the logic. The logic very rarely gets complicated, but they just pile so much difficult language on top of it that it's hard to even get to it. Doing a grammatical breakdown of the stimulus was an essential part of my BR process and I made some enormous gains by learning to parse out difficult stimuli quickly.

@cgracia12 said:
Do you really recommend writing down the explanations for each correct and incorrect choice?

And just to reinforce what others have said, yes, write your entire BR out. Every stimulus breakdown, every answer choice, and your entire reasoning process for why each answer choice is either right or wrong.

Sami

@"Cant Get Right" said:
Doing a grammatical breakdown of the stimulus was an essential part of my BR process

Actually I second that statement. I started doing the same thing during my BR on @"Cant Get Right"'s recommendation and it has done wonders! Another thing I do is I draw my own parallel argument based on the logic of the stimulus. These are of course done only during the BR and should help your brain start recognizing the structure at a faster rate during timed PT.

And yes, I highly recommend writing down the explanations because its easy to lie to ourselves why we actually eliminated something after JY has already explained it in a video, but if you have it written down you are forced to see your own bad reasoning and evaluate how you should handle it better the next time.

cgracia12

Again, thank you to everyone for their suggestions, I will certainly try to incorporate these strategies, as well as write down explanations. Oh, and sorry for the All Caps post, 7Sage Admin.

inactive

@cgracia12 said:
Oh, and sorry for the All Caps post, 7Sage Admin.

Apology accepted. I'm very timid. :c

lsnnnnn0011

@Sami said:
@"Cant Get Right" said:
Doing a grammatical breakdown of the stimulus was an essential part of my BR process

Actually I second that statement. I started doing the same thing during my BR on @"Cant Get Right"'s recommendation and it has done wonders! Another thing I do is I draw my own parallel argument based on the logic of the stimulus. These are of course done only during the BR and should help your brain start recognizing the structure at a faster rate during timed PT.

And yes, I highly recommend writing down the explanations because its easy to lie to ourselves why we actually eliminated something after JY has already explained it in a video, but if you have it written down you are forced to see your own bad reasoning and evaluate how you should handle it better the next time.

Hi Sami,

By breaking down stimuli grammatically, do you mean dissecting sentences into subject/verb/object? I've never tried this method of BR but definitely going to try from today and just wanted to make sure if I have a correct understanding of what you mean