Rereading LR questions

Comments

• Sue Doe Nimb Alum Member

  September 2018 183 karma

  You're fine. Takes time to get your speed down.
• Ohnoeshalpme Alum Member ⭐

  September 2018 2531 karma

  I like the minimum effort strategy. If a question doesn't click on the first read, skip it and move on to the next question. Keep skipping until something clicks then roll back to the first question you skipped. You can even skip 5 questions in a row if you need to.
• tayanthony31 Core Member

  September 2018 81 karma

  Thank y’all. Ill try
• Adam Hawks Alum Member

  September 2018 990 karma

  DO NOT SKIP QUESTIONS~! There is a reason why you are stuck. You're probably not identifying the conclusion nor are you identifying the premises. It's ok to skip some harder questions, but you should not be skipping at all during this phase of preparation.

  You need to be working on breathing and focus exercises, because if you can't focus on what the argument is saying, you're in a lot of trouble for the next question.
• 1 Like

  Tim Hortons Alum Member

  September 2018 edited September 2018 389 karma

  @tayanthony31 I feel ya. I struggled with keeping my focus on LR questions at first, especially during the CC's practice drills. What I found helpful was reducing the number of questions I was exposed to per day and closely reviewing each one until I felt confident that I 100% understood it. For example, on good days, I could answer + BR + closely review between 25-35 LR questions all within 4-5 hours. On slower days, I spent the same chunk of time on just 5-10 questions. Yet, I consider both days equally productive. Stressing about how much I covered or how long I took to internalize the content was counterintuitive to what I otherwise wanted for myself: to maintain a healthy mindset and be fully present when studying. So, I considered the time I spent upfront, untimed review and all, a "steeping" period (If you're familiar with Tim's steeped tea, you'll get the pun ).

  My advice to you: For easy and difficult LR questions alike, I recommend approaching them untimed while you're still getting a hang of things. This means taking the time to understand the argument (read and re-read till you get it), identify each argument part and their relationships to one another, parse out difficult language, and come up with reasons for why 4 ACs are wrong and 1 is right. The more I did this, the quicker I became at identifying recurrent argument patterns, question types, and typical wrong/correct ACs. If I compare my timing and accuracy now to when I was moving through the CC, I've improved immensely.

  It's all about the baby steps. If you spend more time up front becoming comfortable with how to put one foot before the other, you'll be able to bolt your way around things with effortless speed and precision.
• Bamboosprout Alum Member

  September 2018 1694 karma

  That's normal. It takes a while before you should think about timing. Try developing some methods to make notes while reading the stimulus though, such as underlining the conclusion, or drawing a slash before other people's statements or context, or brackets for modifyers, etc. That will help you retain information better.
• tayanthony31 Core Member

  September 2018 81 karma

  I think I'm going to go back to my fundamentals with 7sage. After reading powerscore 2 months ago. I only retained about 70 percent of that material