LR 4/5 Difficulty Q's - more speed and accuracy?

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• 1 Like

  beezmoof Alum Member

  March 2018 edited March 2018 555 karma

  I was and still am in the same position as you with regards to the more difficult flaw/NA questions. For about a month now I've been doing 5 difficult (level 3, 4 and 5) flaw and 5 difficult NA questions untimed everyday from PTs 1-35. Like an intensive mini BR session. My scores have finally been improving. Maybe go through your analytics and see which q types are giving you the most trouble and consider trying this method out too?

  Edit* I think doing this untimed is helping me because I'm subconsciously starting to see more patterns and come time to the timed PTs I feel much more confident answering a questioned via POE or based on a certain vibe, and my gradual improvement in scores show the confidence too.
• goingfor99th Free Trial Member

  March 2018 3072 karma

  Do you immediately read for arguments when you approach LR stimuli? Do you skip questions to return to them later?
• youbbyun Alum Member

  March 2018 1755 karma

  @goingfor99th yes - i read question stem first and then go into the stimulus with a mindset to identify premise and conclusion. i skip questions to return to them later -- but that's just strategy tactics. sometimes even when i go back on the second turn, i still don't know how to do it (hence why i get wrong on BR). i'm hoping to improve my fundamentals/skills where i can just get better and faster at these hard questions.
• goingfor99th Free Trial Member

  March 2018 3072 karma

  Yeah speed is a function of accuracy, or so I'm told.
• lsat4life Alum Member

  March 2018 edited March 2018 255 karma

  @simplereally said:
  Any advice on how to get better at LR 4/5 star difficulty Q's? I'm like -7 for LR (both sections) and almost all of the 7 wrong are all level 4/5 questions. The 7 wrong are also kinda scattered throughout question types.

  I find that many of them I can't get right in blind review, and it also sometimes takes me a LONG time just to process and think through it -- even after reading an answer explanation or watching the video explanation.

  How can I expect or get to a point where I can get to -0 or -1 in LR and get these 4/5 difficulty questions with speed and confidence?

  Can you give an example of some of these tough questions that you couldn't understand without a LONG time? Can you describe what made it tough for you? Like, was there a fundamental misunderstanding of what the argument was even saying? Or a total misreading of what an answer choice means? Etc.
• youbbyun Alum Member

  March 2018 1755 karma

  @thrillhouse said:

  @simplereally said:
  Any advice on how to get better at LR 4/5 star difficulty Q's? I'm like -7 for LR (both sections) and almost all of the 7 wrong are all level 4/5 questions. The 7 wrong are also kinda scattered throughout question types.

  I find that many of them I can't get right in blind review, and it also sometimes takes me a LONG time just to process and think through it -- even after reading an answer explanation or watching the video explanation.

  How can I expect or get to a point where I can get to -0 or -1 in LR and get these 4/5 difficulty questions with speed and confidence?

  Can you give an example of some of these tough questions that you couldn't understand without a LONG time? Can you describe what made it tough for you? Like, was there a fundamental misunderstanding of what the argument was even saying? Or a total misreading of what an answer choice means? Etc.

  Thanks for following up. PT 23, Section 3, #25 - this is one example of a question that is super abstract and uses a lot of referential phrasing. I guess many of these questions are just tough and takes so long to do. It's hard and time consuming to imagine/comprehend the various vague abstract ideas, and then to be able to process the logic relationships, etc.

  I also think what's tough is for sufficient assumption questions that are logic heavy. just diagramming out all the logic takes a lot of time, especially for the tougher sufficient assumptions questions (Which have multiple links and include also some and most statements). Also, often the answer choices refers to certain parts of the stimulus but uses different words to express the same idea. Being able to catch on that the "ABC" and "DEF" mentioned in the stimulus and answer choice are actually the SAME thing logically -- is tough.

  Also, of course the parallel reasoning/flaw questions that are logic heavy. I guess it's super super time consuming - not sure if there's a way out? then just do diagram the stimulus, and then diagram each answer choice.

  Also, I generally think I'm kinda weak on strengthen/weaken questions - so I think i should just do more drilling on those question types.

  Yea i guess there's no silver bullet to these super tough questions except just practice practice and review a ton.
• 1 Like

  cstrobel Alum Member

  March 2018 228 karma

  @simplereally had some great observations that I stuggle with. With the logic heavy question types, I look for immediate parallels in the stimulus and the answers. Immediately eliminating options where, for instance, the conclusion is wrong, quantifier in a premise is wrong, etc. will make it so that you only have to spend time on two-three options, max, for the hardest of questions. Not diagramming everything saved me a bunch of time.
  Like other posters have mentioned, repetition will help in getting it down faster because of your muscle memory. But it will also help because you can quickly pick out the important things and ignore the filler.

  Good luck with your studying!