Avoiding mistakes on LR

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• 1 Like

  Confidence150 Alum Member

  May 2020 1422 karma

  I’ve also misread/misinterpreted the stimulus and answer choices, and I am improving LR. Focus on understanding the stimulus and don’t rush through it. Try to focus on the structure and this can help improve comprehension. In blind review, write down reasoning to why the answer choices are wrong and there can be a pattern in why it is out of scope.
• 1 Like

  Chris Nguyen Alum Member Administrator Sage ⭐ 7Sage Tutor

  May 2020 4598 karma

  I used to be in the same boat where I'd make silly mistakes from misreading and jumping the gun too fast. "Oh the answer is totally B!" When B was wrong because of one or two words and the right answer was D.

  It sounds obvious, but the solution that's helped me is reading slower and reading for understanding, letting your brain soak up the information. Go into these questions with the mindset that the LSAT is trying to trick you, because truly, it is. So act like you're a fine tooth comb when you're reading anything on LR. Yes, it takes a couple more seconds to analyze, but those couple of seconds I invested per question to make sure I'm understanding it correctly reduced my overconfidence errors drastically.
• 1 Like

  Jonathan22 Alum Member

  May 2020 28 karma

  I think taking the time you need to understand the stimulus is key. I've found that when I use my imagination and really try to visualize a stimulus, I understand the stimulus a lot better and it allows me to see the structure of the argument easier.
• 4 Likes

  Mike_Ross Alum Member Sage ⭐

  May 2020 3113 karma

  Hey!

  To add to everything else above:

  Comprehension is definitely key. Without this, you can't effectively analyze an LR problem. But, how do you know when you misread something? I found that the best way to avoid these errors is to have a standard attack strategy for each LR question type and to consistently execute them. This is important so that you're not rushing through the process. It may seem difficult and even time consuming to do it mechanically in the beginning, but it'll eventually become second-nature and you'll do it automatically

  Why is this important?

  say you encounter a weaken question

  The steps I usually execute is:

  1) Read & translate the stimulus into your own words & prioritize your the argument structure

  Ex: The author's argument is (conclusion) why? because (premises)

  or: "Dogs are better than cats; why? because dogs are friendlier than cats"

  This helps with your comprehension of what's actually important in the argument. It helps you sift through the density of the text and pick out the key components, rather than get lost in the complexities

  2) Prephrase a weakener loophole (what if ___? that would take away from the argument)

  Ex: what if friendliness isn't a good enough comparative criteria? what if dogs are more expensive to care for than cats?

  This is very helpful to identify what assumptions are at play and to know what kind of weakeners to look for

  3) Look for the weakener that addresses the issue you find with the argument

  Executing these steps consistently can help in several ways:

  • say I think I've translated the argument correctly, but can't even see what's wrong with it

  OR

  • say I identify what's wrong but find nothing close to it in the ACs that appears to also address the issue I pre-phrased: that's

  Those are sure signs that I likely missed some details and need to re-clarify my understanding. Often times, it really was a mis-read or that I overlooked something. It's like a failsafe that helps prevent over-confidence errors.

  There will be different strategies for different question types of course. Knowingly and consistently executing the same steps for each of these question types helps you build an understanding of what you know you need to do each time you do LR. It keeps you from rushing ahead without executing these fundamental steps. It also give you a 'standard operating procedure' that you can review in BR. If you get a question wrong, you can analyze how effectively you executed these fundamental steps and where the weaknesses were. Perhaps you missed the question because you misidentified the premises etc.. how did that impact you? it led to not really being able to find the issue. And what did you do? fumble around in the ACs hoping to find an answer that wasn't there, but you still picked one and HOPED it was right, instead of re-setting and doing it right.

  The better you get at this, the faster you move through and get better at LR!

  Hope this helps!