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Related Discussions
Increasing Speed
FutureSportsLawyer
Alum Member
So I’m currently in the drilling stages of my LSAT prep. I found that I’m pretty good at answering questions and gaining an understanding of what I’m supposed to be looking for. However, I’m not sure of the best way to increase my speed. Once I start time myself, things get bad. Any tips on increasing speed?
Comments
Speed is a function of accuracy--I whine this to everyone all the time. The best way to increase your speed at this stage, imho, is to continue to drill diligently and intelligently. Continue to finds ways to increase your accuracy/understanding of stimuli. Skipping and pacing strategies are another consideration, but the benefits that come from continued drilling are incredible. You want your approach and ability to answer questions correctly to be as reflexive as possible on test day.
Many people film themselves to get a better idea of when they are wasting time thinking about an answer they already know is right.
But, this saves a little time at the edges. The main way to save time is to gain better understanding through further drilling.
The people above me are smart and you should listen to them.
Understanding and accuracy brings speed naturally.
Do you think doing LR sections untimed is a good way to drill? Or should I only do them timed when getting better while drilling?
@TaylorAnn
I think untimed work is so critical. You could do the occasional untimed section if you wanted a variety of LR questions to deeply study. Or you could maybe be focusing on a particular process for LR (like really identify the flaw, or the conclusion, or something that is pretty universal to LR questions).
For LR, I would just do deep dives on your weaknesses, untimed. That could be by question type, it could be "lawgic" or maybe argument structure.
Generally, the only time you should worry about timed work is when you're near the end of your prep. That's when you can start doing sections timed for confidence drills. But near the end of your prep you should be getting in enough proctored PTs that you're getting plenty of timed work by the nature of the test anyway.
Thank you so much AllezAllez
Did you take untimed sections or opt to focus on drilling by question type during the drilling phase of your studies?
It depends. Do you think you are taking a long time because you don't have a good understanding of stimulus? This is usually evident when you go through answer choices and you find that the understanding from the stimulus was not in fact adequate to pick the right answer?
In this case, doing untimed drills and focusing on cookie cutter nature of arguments can be helpful.
If you find that your time is spent agonizing over answer choices, like getting stuck on 50-50, eliminating all answers, learning how to skip questions and doing drills with a good section strategy can be really helpful.
I think the worst thing people can do to increase speed is just try to rush and go faster. You'll just end up rushing your reading of the stimulus and getting more questions wrong. Speed instead results from having better understanding of the cookie cutter nature of arguments and being decisive in answer choices. Moving on from stimulus that are too hard, or going to the next question where you read an answer choice and pick it and move on without reading the rest of the answer choices because you are confident .
I agree with @Sami, and I feel like the best way to distinguish that is to look at your BR score. If you're consistently less than -2 per section of LR on BR (and more often -1/-0), then you can start looking at execution strategy and timed work.
@TaylorAnn I did a mix of both but usually I drilled by question type. It kind of depends on where you are in your prep and how much you have left to go. With a couple months remaining I was taking 1-2 PTs per week and that meant I had tons of BR to do. I felt that all that intensive BR was a good portion of my studying. I then sprinkled in drilling by question type.
Thanks Sami
I've been doing some timed sections and am consistently missing about 6 questions. There doesn't seem to be a pattern to the questions I miss. Some just feel harder and even with drilling the question types I miss, BR, and reviewing my fundamentals, I don't seem to be doing much better.
I don't necessarily feel like speed is a primary issue for me since I'm able to finish sections on time. I do find myself not being able to understand the complicated stims sometimes though and I usually skip those questions. But it does seem like I'm not getting better by continuing to do timed sections, so I'm looking for other things I can do like untimed sections to work on solidifying better strategies & work on my accuracy.
I tend to miss 2-3 on my LR blind review, but miss 5-6 per section on timed. Would you recommend drilling and doing more untimed work until I can get that timed score down to -3 or so? I just don't feel like continuing on with timed sections is really helping me. I think most of why I miss questions at this point is just because I mis-understood something complex or just couldn't really fully understand it while taking the section if that makes sense.
Some questions on LR are extremely hard and that's completely fine. But they are better missed than attempted and gotten correct because they take too long to get correct. I like that you have time left at the end of the section. So the big questions for you is how many questions do you have circled at the end of the section and how many do you attempt in second round? Based on that, how many points do you gain in the second round? If you have five minutes left at the end and you only end up gaining one point in the second round, this means you are attempting the wrong questions in second round.
For example, at the end of my first round I am usually at a -5/-6. But with 10 minutes left and strategically attempting the questions I know I have the highest probability of getting correct in the shortest amount of time first, I am able to maximize my points gained in the first round. I am able to bring the questions missed to -3 and -1 range.
I think you probably have the best idea out of all of us why you could be getting these questions wrong. If you think its a fundamental issue, then its fine to work untimed on these questions. Bu because your blind review score is a lot higher, it could be that you are moving on from questions when you still have work left to be done on that question, or you don't have efficient strategies for doing questions under time. At the moment, without seeing a video of you doing a section and talking to you about how you approached each question its rally hard to say what the problem actually is. So my only concern is that I want to make sure you are evaluating yourself fairly about what's actually making you get those questions incorrect under time.
I think I just started timing myself to go faster without enough practice. I’m glad I asked and got both Sami’s and
@AllezAllez21’s perspective on how important untimed practice. I think I started timing too early and it was becoming frustrating because I’d miss questions that were simple but I was just rushing. Thank you guys!!!!