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Details Issue

BigJay20BigJay20 Member
in General 443 karma

The questions i'm getting wrong on LR aren't because I don't know what I'm doing. They're because I keep missing minor details in the stimulus. Any tips on how to overcome this?

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  • Burden.of.FloofBurden.of.Floof Core Member
    1050 karma

    That was happening to me, too. No matter how many times I reminded myself to focus on key words, and not misread, I still would.

    I finally decided to start giving myself more time to do a section to reinforce good reading, and other test taking habits. It’s definitely helping… we’ll see if it sticks when I start giving myself less time!

  • BigJay20BigJay20 Member
    443 karma

    @"Burden.of.Floof" said:
    That was happening to me, too. No matter how many times I reminded myself to focus on key words, and not misread, I still would.

    I finally decided to start giving myself more time to do a section to reinforce good reading, and other test taking habits. It’s definitely helping… we’ll see if it sticks when I start giving myself less time!

    I'll try that. I'm slated for August and afraid may not be ready and I would hate not to hit my target score because I have a details issue. Good luck to us both

  • dubattdubatt Core Member
    41 karma

    To overcome that, I began transcribing my thought process during the BR. It is definitely more time consuming and hard work but worth it if it helps you to ingrain the habit of parsing out the implications of key words and referential phrases. So, for each LR question I would right out the stimulus in the same way that I want to be processing it. For example, once I get to a referential phrase, I would wright out fully what it means and its implication. When I do this, I start to automatically pause and make sure to fully understand what is happening in the timed sections too. I do the same thing for answer choices. I would transcribe my process of thinking, see where the gaps are and eliminate them by doing this repeatedly. I started doing this about three weeks ago and my LR has improved from consistently scoring between -8 to -11 to between -5 to -3. Also I alternate between practicing timed and untimed problem sets so I make sure that I am sticking to the habits I've ingrained. Hope this makes sense and good luck! Also remember patience during the test and in general for studying. Sometimes I'm surprised how fast you go when you slow down and own the stimulus before going into question.

  • Kris4444Kris4444 Member
    266 karma

    I agree with @dubatt that recalling your thinking process will be helpful. Remember, getting a question wrong means making two mistakes: thinking the right answer is wrong and thinking a wrong answer is right. I can only think of a few questions where a misreading of the stimulus would make a wrong answer right. Usually, misreading will throw you off the scent of the right answer, but even if your misreading was correct, the tempting wrong AC still wouldn't touch the argument. Basically, if you misread a stim it should seem like there are 5 wrong ACs. So it could be helpful to recall why your misunderstanding of the stim led you to think a wrong AC was right and why it doesn't work, misreading or not.

    While there are strategies you can use to improve your focus while reading, there will still be times when you look over something important. But if you can figure out that none of the ACs work, it becomes much easier to see that you probably missed something in the stim.

  • love2learnlove2learn Free Trial Member
    252 karma

    It helps to do a drill set style where you 1) read the stimulus, then 2) try to reiterate it. Do a run-through where you specifically target modifier words - look for them and take notice of them. Then try to reiterate that stimulus after that comb through. THEN work to answer the question. For the tests in the 80s, as their answers became more complex than earlier tests, do the same slow comb through with the answer choices. Target modifier words.

    as you do this over-and-over, and obviously you can't do this at the start in 1-1/2 minutes, you'll start to spot those words instantly and you'll remember what's going on in the stimulus without having to reiterate it.

    I recommend working this on weakening, strengthening, and flaw questions before moving into other question types.

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