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Difficult (not everyday language) words on the LSAT.

I get tripped up whenever I see a word I have never encountered before. Words such as unimpeded, unadulterated, ephemeral, impartial etc..

First, can someone post the link to where we have a selection of difficult words that typically appear on the LSAT. I remember it being somewhere in the curriculum.

Second, how do you handle a situation where you see a word and you don't understand the meaning ? It could lead to choosing the wrong answer, simply because of the misinterpretation of a word.

Comments

  • Andrew AlterioAndrew Alterio Alum Member
    394 karma

    https://7sage.com/lesson/lsat-vocabulary-flashcards/
    Personally, I haven't found that I answered a problem incorrectly because of a unknown word. Usually, the context will provide enough info to answer the problem correctly.

  • BinghamtonDaveBinghamtonDave Alum Member 🍌🍌
    8711 karma

    https://7sage.com/lesson/lsat-vocabulary-flashcards/

    I looked the words up and committed them to memory. That is what really helped me. Also, reading helped me a ton, any time I didn't know what a word was, I would look it up and read article's and blurbs containing the word. For instance, "ephemeral"; there is a current SCOTUS case that deals with ephemeral ponds of a certain frog:
    http://www.scotusblog.com/2018/10/argument-analysis-justices-jostle-over-endangered-frogs-critical-habitat/
    So, I tried to engage with the words.

    When faced with a new question that contains a difficult or uncommon word we can try to use context clues, the surrounding words to deduce an approximate definition of the word. Ultimately, we want to keep building and building a wider net of the words used multiple times, for instance the LSAT seems to like the word "iconoclastic" or "novel." Knowing these words' definition is a huge help. But every once in a while, we might have to "wing" it. I believe ultimately for me personally, I could mitigate the difficulty of the words I wasn't familiar with, the difficult part was whole concepts I was not familiar with and didn't even know enough to imagine: for instance concepts on RC passages that dealt with art. These I later had to look up.

    David

  • 26 karma

    thanks for the advice guys

  • Logic GainzLogic Gainz Alum Member
    700 karma

    I found reading dense books while studying helped. I've gotten a couple questions wrong in RC because I didn't know the definition of a word, but it rarely happens.

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