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  ayesha1234 Core Member

  November 2020 edited November 2020 40 karma

  For me personally, moving from -4 on RC (pretty close to what I started out with) to -2 or less consistently was simply a matter of approaching the passages a little differently. I did a lot of research about different methods people used to successfully tackle RC, and there is truly such a wide variety of successful methods out there because different things work for different people. Here's what I did:

  1. Recapping author's attitude/ main conclusion of paragraph/ link to other paragraphs. At the end of each paragraph, I would stop and quickly ask myself: What was the purpose of this paragraph? What's the author's attitude (I would imagine the expression on their face as they were typing the paragraph in question) and did the attitude change from previous paragraphs? How does this link to the other paragraphs? This may seem like a lot and that it'll add significantly to the amount of time you spend on the passage, but it's kind of like prephasing in that it'll pay off dividends later. You also don't get tripped up by the ACs when you inevitably encounter question stems similar to these later. It's also worth mentioning that I didn't run through a checklist of all these questions, sometimes I would forget one or two, and that would work out fine, too.

  2. Reading for structure, not detail. Before implementing this, I found that I would always run out of time/ finish in the nick of time at the end, which would put me in a rush for the hardest questions that I'd flag for the end. I also usually didn't have time to go back and double check my answers. When I started reading for the structure of the argument instead of focusing on minute details, I saved plenty of time and actually started doing a lot better on many questions— including the detail oriented questions where you have to go back and reread/recall a specific portion of the passage. I think that RC passage writers will often throw in irrelevant, confusing, and quite frankly, distracting details hoping that they'll trip you up. So it's better to devote less time to processing the details in your initial read of the passage, and coming back to them later for detail specific questions.

  These were two methods which really worked wonders for me— but I recommend scouring RC advice posts and experimenting with the advice offered there. We all have different reading and information processing styles, and slightly modifying yours to whatever makes your brain function better and more efficiently could make that final difference and help you overcome the plateau. Don't give up! You're doing exceptionally well— and I'm sure you're going to show the LSAT who's boss. Best of luck!
• chimpwithalimp Free Trial Member

  November 2020 2 karma

  This is great advice, thank you!
• johnnytsunami Member

  November 2020 86 karma

  @ayesha.q.54

  Thank you so much! That's very helpful. It's a good reminder to read for reasoning structure. I typically ask myself "why is the author writing this part?" I don't think that necessarily helps me get past the -4 tough questions that I keep missing but maybe I recentering that approach will help!