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7 Likes
how to improve speed?
luxetveritas
Member
hello,
im wondering if the 170+ers out there have any tips on how to improve speed and accuracy for LR and RC. i can comfortably get 170+ untimed, but under timed conditions, i tend to feel rushed and my score dips into the low 160s. i started studying about two and a half months ago and have taken about 5-7 PTs, but no significant improvements in my actual score. would super duper appreciate any tips!
thanks!
Comments
For me speed came with exposure and practice. I did so much studying, and took so many pt's, that questions all began to look very similar. The "easy" questions took almost no time to answer, which gave me ample time to really sit and digest the "hard" questions. I got so comfortable with the test I didn't even need to look at a clock or watch because I just knew what 35min felt like.
This was one of my greatest strengths on the test, because I got so good at getting the easy stuff out of the way, I actually would finish almost every section early with time to go back and review the extremely hard questions.
This also went for reading comp. I just knew what the test was going to ask about the passage. There were never any surprises. So when I would read the passage, id be hyper aware of facts/sections/information that would likely be relevant for the questions.
Exposure and practice were the two greatest weapons I had to increase my speed.
@LSATcantwin I think that is a great way to ultimately increase speed, but were there any other tips you recognized along the way for getting better/faster at the R.C section? I can only get through two passages comfortably, and I'm approaching my 11th PT next week.
Read lots of dense boring stuff haha I think what slows most people down with reading comp is their brain wanders. It might sound crazy but I signed up for the Economist, and would read it every day just to train my brain to get use to stuff - especially stuff I wasn't interested in.
It's not a "solution" really but it did help. Really my break through was just time spent on the test (I spent over a year and a half studying)
@LSATcantwin That's awesome. I've been reading the Economist for a couple weeks now, and it has helped me read more efficiently. Just out of curiosity, how were you with RC at the start? Was it your worst section?
At the very beginning logic games were my worst but those were "easy" for me to learn and it quickly became my best.
RC was the wildwest. I'd always finish the 4 passages right on time with not much to spare at all. Sometimes, I'd go like -3 and sometimes I would go -10. The only way I improved (other than my reading speed through outside sources) was just know exactly what kinda questions were coming and how to deal with them. RC was my hardest section to improve my far.
@LSATcantwin What other outside sources were you using besides the Economist? Did you utilize 7Sage's RC portion of the curriculum mainly, or did you end up finding a different study resource that was more useful?
For LR have a strategy you can apply almost mechanically to question types. That will help avoid a lot of the speed bumps and distractions they throw out there.
What do you mean by a mechanical strategy. You mean like step 1, 2, and 3? What do you do? @canihazJD
A lot of this is covered by other people, but two things helped me - one drill-based, and one mindset-based. In terms of drills, doing a lot of timed sections/tests, and thoroughly blind reviewing them really was what made the difference, across all 3 sections. When I forced myself to just go through the inferences for the hardest games untimed (or to really really think through LR questions in BR), I found myself applying those same steps in real time, but faster. The combination of timed sections/review/repeat led to some real speed boosts (like 7-10 minutes faster per section than a couple of months earlier). It also helped me hone the ability to predict answers, where I could confidently just hunt for the right answer and mostly gloss over the other choices when I knew what to look for.
The mindset change was realizing that not all questions are created equal, and that banking time is really important. On LG, this meant finishing games 1-2 in 5 minutes apiece; on LR, it meant getting through the easy questions in 30 to 45 seconds apiece, and flagging (to come back to) hard ones after no more than a minute spent on round one. My later PTs would frequently have questions where I spent 20 seconds next to questions where I spent upwards of 5 minutes - the way to get those curvebreakers right is just having more time to pour into them. I also tried to set benchmarks - for LR, first 10 questions in 8 minutes, and the section finished in 25 minutes to give time to review the ones I cut bait on; for LG, getting to game 4 with 15 minutes left was my goal, to guard against a killer 5 star game.
For instance, if you get a flaw question: translate stimulus, ID flaw, check AC for - 1. factual accuracy, and 2. correct flaw. Don't worry about anything else... not what could the stimulus mean, what is actually written? Not what don't you agree with or what sounds stupid... why doesn't the premise support the argument. Don't linger on the AC. Did it happen... no? Eliminate and move. Hat tip to @Mike_Ross for drilling this into me.
IMO this is why Loophole works so well, you have a strategy for each Qtype... it's basically "if you see this, do that" for LR, and also gives a strategy that hones your sense of language use for right and wrong answers. Many ACs can be tossed a few words in, where reading the whole thing might cause one to at best waste the time reading, and at worst linger and consider a what it means or a way to make the AC work. Besides having Qtype strategies, this probably helped my speed the most. Its funny, one of the things that helped me with this is how in explanation videos, JY will stop reading an AC 3 words in, x the word and toss the AC... nope, wrong, gone, next, etc. which is ironically one of the more common complaints I hear about 7sage.