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How to improve based on LR wrong answer patterns?

janehzhang17janehzhang17 Member
in Logical Reasoning 49 karma

Hi, friends!! Hope you are doing well. I have a question regarding LR study methods. I have done about 50+ PT, got the question type basics, and found some general trends when I am doing the questions. e.g. I found that I repeatedly fall prey to strengthen/weaken/flaw questions and the parallel questions in my recent PTs. I understand theories like correlation =/ causation flaws, but face problems discerning between answer choices on a case-to-case basis.

Since I do not have a lot of new PTs left, I wonder how should I make good use of the LR wrong answers during the review. Should I redo some, if not, most of them? How should I make a summary of the specifics of each question? Or should I spend more time blind reviewing the new PTs? I feel like I haven't done a great job at BR so far.

Background information: I plan to take the June LSAT. I am currently at ~-6/LR section and hope to improve to -2/-3. I welcome you to comment on efficient LR study methods. Thank you!!

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  • canihazJDcanihazJD Alum Member Sage ⭐
    8491 karma

    Without more specifics, I'd just say you at least have enough material to carry you to June. Obviously, hard to say more without your scoring vs goals and a ton of other details.

    If you've burned 50+ PTs and are at -6 LR, you might consider investing a bit more effort into a review of your performances. Volume of material matters very little compared to quality of review. I think breaking 170 in around 10-15 PTs, and settling comfortably in the low 170s in 20-25 is very reasonable if you are taking the time to squeeze all of the value out of the content.

    We should be doing a strict blind review, followed by a in depth written review of anything that gave you trouble. If it doesn't feel painfully tedious, you're probably not doing enough. You need to be coming up with a specific description of every issue/weakness you can find, and a equally specific plan to address them. Just saying, "oh I suck at flaw questions, so I'll just work on that," is only slightly better than saying ,"oh my score is low so I'll just make it higher." Without a specific plan, you're just going to be stabbing in the dark hoping to hit something. Perceived question type weaknesses are usually caused by very specific issues, some of which affect our performance throughout the entire test. In my example about flaw questions, say someone can't reliably pick out a main conclusion. That would cause issues across the board, most noticeably where? In flaw questions, because they are a very common question type. But performance across the board is still going to be affected by that one specific issue. We would want to go beyond just saying well... just find the main conclusion... just look for the flow of support. We want to ask why is it an issue? Anxiety? Time management? Translation errors? Conceptual gaps? Then once identified we should say I will specifically do X in order to fix this, and Y criteria is how I will know I've done so successfully. Otherwise we could end up doing a whole lot of work with very little ROI.

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