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My decent strategy for RC
Bamboosprout
Alum Member
I always see posts about timing for RC for people who have completed the CC and have decent fundamentals, but are having trouble going faster. Although I consistently still get -2 on RC, here's what I went through, to achieve a decent speed.
In the past, RC was always my weakest section, and in both actual tests, I ran out of time. Here's more details on the 2 things I did:
- Do every single 5star passage to get familiar with convoluted argument structures. When reading these passages, the thing to focus on is not even the subjects anymore, but the uncommon methods of reasoning that are used.
For example, on the September LSAT, there was a law passage that I honestly had no idea what it was talking about, but I knew what the author was trying to say, and how he or she felt about it. And from experience, I knew that even if I read it again, I simply wouldn't get it, because I lacked the technical knowledge.
If you're like me, and have relatively little background with law, this is a 6th sense you have to develop to do well in RC, and can only develop through doing countless difficult RC passages and analyzing each one slowly. I timed every passage, analyzed how big a difference it made in my understanding when I read it twice, on what type of topics were the differences the largest (which is how I knew rereading law passages were ineffectual for me), and timed every question, did them twice, and on the second time, analyzed any questions that took me over a minute and why it took me over a minute, and if possible, compared it to JY's live recordings for the same passage (I did this on top of the standard BR process, of course. In case you're wonder about the specific order: I do the BR after my second attempt, check for wrong answers after that, and then compare with JY's live recording last). This leads me to my second thing. - Try recording yourself with something, at least try it once. It may sound awkward, but it helps, guaranteed. You will have a perspective that is impossible to get when doing the passages normally (I did it by tilting my macbook camera down and just using the free apple camera software. It was too blurry to even see the words, but it gave me a clear understanding of where I paused and wasted time). This technique honestly has high diminishing returns, since you'll probably only be making the same few mistakes every time, but is a good reminder every now and then.
After recording, you then compare it to JY's recordings to see what you 'should' have done. This shaved off 4-5 minutes of my time, because I found out I refer back to passage way too often when I had no reason to (well, there's always reasons to refer back, but the cost/benefit is too high). This led me to develop my personal golden rule, which helped me shave off the 5 minutes: only refer back to the passage if the question refers to a specific section, or if you eliminated the answers down to 2 choices and remember where one of the two choices is in the passage; otherwise, just circle it and skip. Statistically, unless you can easily finish the section with 10 minutes left over, if you refer to the passage outside of those two specific conditions, then you are wasting more time than you have. Just imagine referring back to multiple parts of the passage and trying to compare them. We do this all the time in BR, but it takes at least a minute or two, time that you cannot afford on the real test. Side note: if you find yourself reading the answer choices more than twice, skip, because for RC, the stimulus is so large and confusing that it's much more unlikely for you to have an "Ahah!" moment when you re-read a question and it's answers, compared to LR.
Hope this helps someone.
Comments
Going to try this out! Especially your golden rule. I'm waaaay to stubborn during RC. I have no problems skipping LR questions but RC questions just irritate the hell out of me and I get hung up way to easily. How often do you find yourself skipping/changing the answer choices during your extra time at the end of the section?
@"Pride Only Hurts"
Hope it helps. If not, give me some feedback, and I'll see if I can change my suggestions.
Hmmmm... Not too often, actually. Probably less than half of the time do I actually end up switching. Typically, I tend to focus on the ones I skipped and didn't choose an answer at all, and spend most of my remaining time trying to eliminate wrong answer choices.
Can you expand more on this? What exactly do you mean by read it twice? As in, the first time you laid eyes on a new passage, you read it twice and then went on to the questions?
Ahhh, sorry I didn't specify. I actually did a bit of both (reading it twice right away, and reading it once, doing the questions, and then reading it again, and doing the questions again). When I was just testing out the waters in regards to how to approach different types of passages, I initially tried reading the passage once, doing the memory method, and then reading it again to see how my understanding changed before moving onto the question, and I found out that reading it again helped a bit with remembering the details.
However, doing that was unrealistic, because during the test the questions are more important than reading the passage a second time, in terms of time used, and very often, going through the questions can help give you a better understanding of the passage, so I ended up reading it once, doing the questions once, repeat for 3 other passages, and then reading it a second time, and doing the questions a second time, and repeat for 3 other passages. The second readings essentially simulated how I would feel if I chose to focus my review on a specific passage. I would time each attempt of each passage and question, and analyze any answers I changed, and then do a BR.
The idea was to see if rereading had benefits, and if so, what type of passage did it benefit the most. The goal was to gather experience and data, and develop a system. After doing this for almost a week, I was able to get a general idea of what worked for me and what didn't. Typically, for me, science passages did not require a second read through; a second read through for law passages didn't help because the concepts were too foreign; and the biggest benefit was reading arts and history passages a second time. In conclusion though, I decided that there was not enough benefit to rereading any passage in its entirety, but this still gave me a good idea of how I should skip, review, and focus my efforts in RC sections (Arts/Humanities>Science>Law).
It was also actually helpful because it relieves some of the pressure to know what my weaknesses are, and how to behave despite them. It feels nice to embrace skipping and and just knowing that my time is better spent elsewhere. Do you know what I mean? I feel like the best thing I got out of my intensive was the knowledge that although both outcomes are not ideal (skipping and staying on a question), I now have a good idea of which one is preferred, and thus have an obvious choice, as oppose to freezing because of uncertainty.
Sorry for rambling. Hope this wasn't too off-topic in regards to your question. Lol.
Yes I do understand what you mean. Basically trying things out helped you figure out what worked and what didn't and how to come up with the most effective strategy for yourself. I need to do an intensive myself to figure out how to shorten my gap.
Glad you understood, lol. I was rambling there, and wasn't even sure I understood myself anymore. It's a very freeing feeling to be able to always know what I should do. Hope you develop an awesome strat and share it with us.
@Bamboosprout what recordings are you talking about? The explanations that JY has for the RC section or is there video footage that I am missing?
@Bamboosprout thanks for the advice! I am curious whether you use passages from earlier tests (1-38?)
In many of the more recent PTs, JY has actual recordings of himself taking them for the first time. So you can see how his timing and skipping strategy compares to your own. He also has post-commentary to critique himself, which gives you more insight on how his ideal timing and skipping strategy would go. I think you might need ultimate+ for this though, since he only does it in the more recent PTs. Sorry, I just noticed this. I suppose my recommendations aren't even available to everyone =(.
Yeah, I used them, and more. When I'm at the question bank, I just search by ALL PTs, because I've already done every RC section from the earlier PTs. Maybe it is a bad idea to use all of them, since some people view it as a waste of PTs. I personally don't see it that way. I needed more of them to improve and refine my technique, and for me, improving my technique is more important than saving fresh reading comprehension questions.
thank you for the advice!
I'm still searching for the perfect method, but so far, what has worked well for me is along the lines of what you mentioned in regards to reading the passage a second time after a good attempt at all the questions. I try to read through the passage quickly for about 2 minutes (working retaining enough information during this step for sure), 4 minutes answering the questions, 2 minutes re-reading, then 45 seconds returning to any answers that stuck out as wrong after reading through the passage again. I definitely need to edit the time breakdowns of each part of the process, but I've found I catch almost all of my mistakes and wrong answers when I re-read the passage after having a good try at the questions.
That's really amazing. I wish I could do that for the real timed sections. I only read them twice during practice to analyze what I missed during the first read through, and can't read fast enough to do that in timed sections. It takes me about 4 minutes to read a passage once, since my fastest reading speed is 250words/minute, but I always have to reread sections or make notes. Keep trying different methods though. You never know what works best until you try everything. Wish you the best of luck
@Bamboosprout do you remember specifically which ones JY has video footage for? Tried to go through the passages for PT 84 and saw nothing ?
For comparative passages, has anyone adopted the method of skimming the question stems first, look for which passage (A or B ) is being asked more frequently on, read that passage first, go through the questions that ask for "which of the following do both passages agree" and eliminate answer choices that passage does not mention, AND THEN finish all the remaining questions that compare the two passages?
I personally feel like this is working for me (at least on the comp passages I came across so far) as I am able to shorten the time AND have better short term memory when I eliminate answer choices that one passage didn't talk about.
Let me know how you guys are devising your strategies for comp passages.
PT 84 might be too new. 83 should have it, if you have access to them, and also 82, and 81. PT 80 only has 2 LR sections recorded. Let me know if you see them?
Yeah, actually, I use to do that back when I consistently ran out of time. But then, after recording myself and going through the process I mentioned above, I started finishing the RC sections with 3-5 minutes left, so there was no longer a need for me to do this.
Looking back on it though, its usefulness was variable, depending on which test I was doing. I think back when comparative passages were first introduced, there was often a heavier emphasis for questions for one passage over the other, but towards the more recent tests, the test writers realized this, and the emphasis gradually balanced out. So I've practically stopped using this method.
I currently use the standard strategy that JY uses. Whenever there is an imbalance though, I still use the strategy that you mention above, since it only takes ~15 seconds to skim the questions. If it works for you, then keep doing it. Just be sure to prioritize fixing any underlying fundamental issues before thinking too much about the logistical issues.
This. Is. Very. Helpful. I had no idea the emphasis was gradually being balanced out in the more recent ones since I haven't done anything above 70 yet. Okay, I guess there really are no shortcuts. Back to drilling my fundamentals!
This is just my opinion. It can still work for you!
To me though, the 15 second cost to read the questions first is not worth the maybe 1 extra question for a particular passage.
Feel free to go over your RC methods with me next week, and I'll try to give some feedback. Wish you the best!
i don't actually have access to those because i only have premium lol sorry i wasn't more clear i only have access to PT84 because I bought it when it first came out. Right now I am trying to decide if i should upgrade to ultimate( i am too broke for the extra $400 for ultimate plus) but i was asking which PTs have the video footage because i really think it would help me for reading comp but i don't want to purchase the wrong ones. do you remember which PTs you have watched the RC video footage for? is it mostly the ones in the 70s or maybe the 60s?
Actually, only a few have it. Let me see... only PT 49, 79, 81, 82, 83 have recorded RC sections. But honestly, you don't need many. Maybe just one or two will be sufficient for you to compare your own recording with, and come up with some improvement ideas.
We should confirm with @"David.Busis" or someone on the administrative side to see what is the best way for you to get access to the recorded videos.
@Bamboosprout ok so this is so weird I just went through all the passages for PT 49(its the only one i have access to) and i did not see any video footage, is the footage similar to the recorded footage that they have for some of the Logic Games? like its actually someone doing the passage at a desk or something? i am wondering if i am looking for the right thing, but i am also going to message @"David.Busis"
It should be actually JY doing the passage at a desk. It might be locked behind the Ultimate+ paywall, unfortunately.
Hey @Bamboosprout @"Mia Fairweather",
@"David.Busis" is our admissions consultant
So he doesn't know about the details of the LSAT side.
When you have something, please ask @studentservice or use the chat on Contact Us.
Or you can ask me! There are Live Commentary videos for PT49, but they are not recordings of J.Y. taking the test. It's a student taking the PT. You have to purchase PT79, 81, 82, 83 to access videos of J.Y. doing RC: https://7sage.com/addons/
Ahhh, I see. Sorry. Wasn’t too sure who to ask, and only remembered David. ?
@akistotle thank you for your response! i realized that David was an admissions guy but I wasn't sure who to send this question to so I asked both him and JY who questions like this should go to. Thanks for clearing that up!
As for the video footage I have access to PT49 and I've looked through it several times and have yet to see any video footage for the RC section as @Bamboosprout suggested. am I missing something? Because I would really love to get access to that, I was planning on purchasing those PTs but I don't want to if I am there is no video footage of the RC section
Hi @"Mia Fairweather",
We've responded to your messages to J.Y. and David via email 2 days ago but have you seen it? Sorry it might have gone to your spam box.
On which page did you look for them? Live Commentary videos are on the Syllabus, so you can use the Filter function like this to look for them
:
https://media.giphy.com/media/cmxZfq87wkWaZjxJoC/giphy.gif
This Forum post has a list of Live Commentary videos: https://7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/10417/live-commentary-video
@studentservice yes I received it thank you! i would maybe add the live commentary links on the page for the PT explanations, unless you are looking at the explanations of PTs on the syllabus it doesn't show that many of the PTs have live commentary when you look at PTs under the "LSAT Explanation" section in the "Resources" tab. I didn't realize i was looking in the wrong place until @akistotle clarified, thanks for this
Yea, it might be hard to find them
I guess the thing is those videos are not really part of the explanation, and they are more like lessons on how to do it under the timed conditon.
Ohhhh, so that was the problem.