Triggers for Active Hunter vs Passive Receiver Mode

Comments

• 5 Likes

  FindingSage Alum Member ⭐

  April 2020 edited April 2020 2042 karma

  I understand the breakdown you posted above and believe there are some people who have scored very well on this test using the idea you are presenting above. For me, this did not work. While I have, for the most part, tried to predict answer choices on questions like main point and flaw for awhile now, for most question types I tried to go into active reciever mode. I had various degrees of success this way, but also very wild swings in LR. Sometimes I would only miss a couple of questions and other times, I would miss quite a few. Even when I did well, I was never confident, always nervous and often down to two answer choices. Even an "easy" question I never felt like I could be sure I had gotten them right. As an example, for a weaken question if I felt like I found an answer choice that weakend the connection between the premises and conclusion, in the back of my mind I always felt like I could easily be wrong and that another answer choice could weaken the argument more.

  Now, I am in hunter mode all the time. Once in awhile, I still fall back to old habits or get nervous and don't follow my plan- these are the questions I miss. Seldom, I miss a word in answer choice and I get questions wrong that way, but I now get more questions correct than I ever could have in reciever mode. In hunter mode, I am activley predicting answer choices and though I don't always get them word for word to what the answer choice says, my prediction is either what the ansewer choice is saying in different words or close enough that I have found the assumption the argument has made and can quickly find an alternative ansswer choice that addresses this assumption. When I make a prediction, I then scan through the answer choices and if I find my prediction I carefully read the answer choice choose it and move on. It doesn't matter if the answer choice is answer choice B. If it matches my prediction I am going to choose it and move on, if I have extra time I might come back and read other answer choices, but that isn't my goal with extra time either. If I don't see my prediction, I am trying to flag the question and come back to it on round two with fresh eyes.

  To give you an example, I previously approached a strengthen question as a reciever question. Now, I read the stimulus, make a loophole and my strengthening answer choice is trying to block that loophole. Weakening questions are an even better example, because I can read the argument, find a loophole and then hunt for it in the answer choices. Though I still continue to work on confidence and taking the test on my terms, trying to be in hunt mode all the time has had a major impact on my performance.
• 1 Like

  jmarmaduke96 Member Sage ⭐

  April 2020 2891 karma

  I think this is something that is different for a lot of people. I know many top-scorers do exactly what you and @FindingSage mentioned. However, in my experience, it didn't work for me. When I tried to go into active hunter mode and predict answer choices, one of two things would generally happen. First, I would come up with a decent prephrase but I would end up being so tied to it that I had trouble identifying the same idea if it was phrased differently in the answer choice and if I didn't see it I would become paralyzed and not know what to do. Alternatively, I wouldn't be able to come up with a prephrase and then doubt myself much more because of that problem.

  Now I don't make much of an effort to prephrase hardly any questions. If a prephrase jumps into my mind without me consciously thinking about it (this sometimes happens on AP, MP, SA, and Parallel questions) then I won't ignore it, but I'm not married to it. I would say that for 20/25 questions on an LR section I am in passive receiver mode and my score has gone up significantly because of this change in approach. I had a lot of trouble with this and spent several sessions with my tutor on this concept.

  Take flaw questions as an example - before I would have tried to identify the flaw in the stimulus in my own words, have a prephrase and see if it is in the answer choices. Even when this worked, it took me so long and I couldn't really finish LR sections comfortably. Now I take a clear and careful read of the stimulus, make sure I understand what it is saying, and go to the answer choices. For each answer choice I ask myself if it indeed describes something that the argument actually does. If not, I move on. If yes, then I ask myself if this answer choice is describing a flaw. If so, then I have found my correct answer choice. As an important note, at this stage I am not trying to tie each part of the answer choice back to specific parts of the stimulus to match the flaw. I'll do that on BR, not under timed. Instead, I trust myself that I understood the stimulus and that I did good work on evaluating the answer choice at the first stage - determining that it is descriptively accurate. If I determine that the answer to step 1 is "yes," and then I determine it would be a flaw, that is all the work I am doing under timed conditions. I know I need to move to other questions. I use a similar approach on most of the other questions. Doing so has both improved my accuracy and decreased the amount of time I spend on an average question, so its a win-win for me.

  So, while this has obviously worked for me, the opposite has worked for some other people. I would encourage you to try both ways and see if either comes more easily to you. I hope this helps!
• FindingSage Alum Member ⭐

  April 2020 2042 karma

  @jmarmaduke96, I totally agree that different approaches will work better for different people. And just as you are saying if you are married to your prediction you are going to have a problem. For me, making a prediction means that I am identifying the gap strongly in the argument and then I am trying to make a prediction about what the answer choice might look like.

  I use the answer choices as my back up and this works well for me. Like in a flaw question I do try to perdict and for classic flaws I normally can. For an argument that is just using flawed reasoning and not relying on a classic flaw than you can try to find where the argument is weak and attack that. But if you can't make a perdiction you can try to look at the answer choices asking yourself 1. Is this factually accurate, as in did this happen in the argument? 2. Is this an error the author makes?

  In short, I think there are multiple ways to take this test efficently. Testing and seeing what works better for you will help you figure out the way in which 1. You are most accurate. 2. You are efficent. 3. You learn to develop confidence in yourself and are able to minimize nerves so that you control your test taking experince, the LSAT doesn't control you.
• Markmark Alum Member

  April 2020 976 karma

  @FindingSage Great answer, this was very informative
• Markmark Alum Member

  April 2020 976 karma

  To kind of sum up, you don't stay attached to your prephrase if you have one at all. You do take a thorough and accurate read of the stim and the flaw then move into the ACs.

  Do you guys take an active "hunter" or aggressive mindset though? I find it very hard to get questions right quickly and move on, even with the "confidence drills" I tend to miss quite a few.
• 1 Like

  ahnendc-1 Member

  April 2020 642 karma

  @FindingSage @jmarmaduke96 thank you both for the well thought out answers and suggestions. It's great to know that there is not a one-size fits all method and that potentially, as your familiarity with the LSAT and standard LR forms increases (through repeated exposure) the Hunter/Passive ratio might adjust accordingly.

  Myself, I am somewhat early in the journey so I feel that Hunter mode works best really with MP, Flaw, Parallel, Parallel Flaw and more 'obvious' weaken/strengthen questions but I'm frequently in a situation where my pre-phrase in not listed in the ACs.

  I'm trying to double down on my BR efforts, particularly in LR to build up the mental repository of familiar argument forms, flaws, etc. from which I am able to reliably draw under timed conditions. To this effect I will, do an intense BR (about a whole 8hour day for both LR sections), noting any questions that gave me hesitation (not just questions I answered wrong) and doing another in-depth analysis of each of these questions a couple of days after I've scored the BR and then putting all these Qs into a physical LR journal, out of which I pick 3-5 questions to dissect every other night (goal is every night).

  Let me know if there is anything else you might recommend doing? Hoping to experiment with increasing amounts of Active Hunter mode as familiarity increases
• 2 Likes

  FindingSage Alum Member ⭐

  April 2020 2042 karma

  @Markmark, When I make a prephrase I am really trying to do so by identifying the gap in the argument. If it is a strenghten argument for example I want to block where the argument is weak, which strengthens the argument. To do that, I read an argument find a loophole and then block that loophole. In creating a loophole, and then a way to block that loophole I try to be confident that I have found where the argument is weak and I have come up with an idea of how to block that weakness ( which strengthens the argument), but how I think that weakness should be defended may not be how the test writers chose to block my attack.

  So like it was suggested above, I am confident I know where the argument is weak, I have a good way to block that weakeness but if the test writers show me another way to block this weakeness I am not going to be so married to my original idea that I won't choose their way. On the other hand, if I make a loophole and none of the answer choices blocks my loophole, I could have missed something. In that case if I don't see an obvious answer choice I am going to flag and come back to the argument. Since changing the way I approach strengthen question I seldom get them wrong because I see them really difffernt than I once did.

  Also, aggression and I would say even confidence has been a hard thing for me and I still have times I stuggle with it. But I got stuck in the mid 160's a long time because I wanted to be so careful and double and triple check my work. I don't think I could have gotten into the 170's by keeping that approach. I am not any faster than I was before, in fact I make it a point to read the stiumlus slowly and try to understand and predict. What I do differently is be more efficent with my time. If I feel like the answer choice is B because it matches my prediction, I might pick B and move on in round one. I might flag the question and re read in round 2 but I want to keep moving and keep the momentum going. On the flip side, if I get to a stimulus I know I need to map out because it is highly conditional I am trying to skip it and come back in round two. But I do still really have to be concious I am doing these things because I am not naturally an aggressive test taker.

  @ahnendc-1- You are doing the right things! My biggest improvements have come because of re digging in deep on blind review even if it takes me hours, working with other people and changing my approach. Early in your prep focus on accuracy, understanding and also doing a thorough blind review. On some of my blind reviews I have gone through and translated every stiumulus in my own words, tried to predict and wrote out why each answer choice was right or wrong and had a single LR section take me about 10 pages to do this. It is tiring and almost feels counterintutive, like you want to move onto something more productive, but I learn a lot more this way than taking another prep test and making the same mistakes again.
• Markmark Alum Member

  April 2020 976 karma

  @FindingSage Thanks for the response! I'm in the same spot you were in it seems, 160s and going too carefully. I'm familiar with confidence drills and I try to go for about 85% confidence and most of LR Q's take about 1:30-2:00 (I have accommodations) but having extra time almost exacerbates my issue of going too slowly.

  What in particular about your approach changed from the 160s to 170s? Do you just go faster in round 1 and flag less? I understand the momentum part for sure.