Trouble With LR

Comments

• JDream2025 Alum Member

  June 2021 996 karma

  Which question type is giving you the most trouble?
• Ben P. 1930 Member

  June 2021 76 karma

  @JDream2020 Right now I struggle the most with Flaw and weakening questions.
• Bagelinthemorning-2-1-1 Core Member

  June 2021 476 karma

  Hey! It's great that you've identified the patterns in the questions you miss. It'll be helpful to create Problem Sets of those questions and drill them. I'm doing drills now and they're helpful to see the patterns in the cookie cutter answers too.
• 1 Like

  Ben P. 1930 Member

  June 2021 76 karma

  @Bagelinthemorning I agree and it is odd how many answers seem like almost repeats. The analytics portion is helping me narrow everything down, I think that may be the most useful tool 7sage offers.
• 3 Likes

  Saaamuel Alum Member

  June 2021 128 karma

  This is probably going to be pretty unhelpful but:

  1. Practice your reading skills and familiarize yourself on the BASICS in a wide variety of topics (oil drilling, carbon dating, psychology, economics, art history, ancient civilizations, neuroscience, forestry, etc) so that you have a basic understanding of what's going on when you read an LR question

  2. Read the stem first so you know exactly what to look for.

  3. Most importantly, it's all about premise-conclusion and the assumption / "jump" that the author sneaks in when transitioning from P to C. You must identify P-C and think to yourself, okay, does this conclusion truly follow from this premise?
• 1 Like

  shaybaebee Member

  June 2021 185 karma

  this helped me with flaw questions - understand and memorize the logic of the argument behind the flaw questions. They tend to repeat a lot, the topic or wording may change, but the argument is still the same. At some point it will become intuition, and you can pick these ones off super fast. I can now do these questions in 50 sec max.
• 1 Like

  Glutton for the LSAT Alum Member ⭐

  June 2021 edited June 2021 551 karma

  I recommend reading and doing the drills in Ellen Cassidy's The Loophole in Logical Reasoning. I also think LR is a buildable skill like anything else; so, practice, practice, and practice. I would say it's important to redo the questions you got wrong, and really understand why you got it wrong.

  It's possible to improve in LR, so please don't lose hope. Personally, I've gone from -12 in one LR section to slimming it down to around -3 now.
• 1 Like

  DontPay4LawSchool Member

  June 2021 edited June 2021 571 karma

  I had the same issue for a very long time. I went from regularly doing -8, simply because I was spending too much time on initial questions, to -2 consistently. I had all of the basics down and became extremely frustrated that I could understand everything relatively well in retrospect but still miss so many questions. The differentiating factor between then and now is that I chose to care less. Seems contradictory, right? Well, at least for me, and I am sure others, I was a chronic over thinker. I became an abstract artist of sorts. I started taking the follow steps:

  1. Read the stimulus and truly understand it. (If I didn't, then I would select a best guess, write that number at the top of my scratch paper, bookmark it, and then move on).

  2. I would do a low-resolution synopsis in my head immediately following reading the stimulus (much like JY suggests for RC).

  3. I would make note of any weaknesses in the argument and try to identify the question type without looking at the question stem first -- and, yes, this contradicts the advice of JY.

  4. At this point, I would scan the ACs quickly until I found something that matched what I had pre-phrased or simply looked like the correct AC. I would then confirm if it was or not and take a quick look at the other ACs. 75% of the time that was the correct AC and I could move on without thinking too much about the other ones.

  The success of the above approach, however, was to not criticize my own AC too much. This was my biggest weakness in my initial studying. This led to time-sinks and subsequent misses on guesses. The most effective thing you can do is PRACTICE. This will make you familiar with the common ACs and especially the incorrect ones, which will help you care less.
• Ben P. 1930 Member

  July 2021 76 karma

  @DontPay4LawSchool @"Glutton for the LSAT" @shaybaebee @Saaamuel Sorry I did not respond to all of you sooner for some reason I was not receiving any of my 7sage notifications for a few days. Nonetheless, thank you all for the advice it has given me a lot to think about and add some new perspective. Wishing you all the best in your studies!
• 2 Likes

  andrew.rsn Alum Member

  July 2021 831 karma

  I have found that when it comes to Flaw questions, they seem to be more difficult in more recent tests than in the earlier tests featured in the CC. They've tended to become much more descriptive and abstract, and less mechanistic. In other words hard to label or put into a flaw category. I think this is an important change to be aware of in your practicing going forward.
• Barbie Blonde Member

  July 2021 152 karma

  hey there,
  I'm struggling a lot on it as well so I totally relate to you. I am also writing in August. Something that I did notice that helped me was 1. going through the question blank on exactly what I got wrong and 2. downloading the app velocity lsat prep - they detail different questions based on sufficient assumption and give you a full break down of why its wrong. you can use it via computer or off your phone. I felt like noticing based off 12 questions in a set what I got wrong and right really helped me and they also keep track of all your results. I also though that Nathan fox logical reasoning book helped a lot. I have it and I can send it to you for free if you'd like message me directly
• Ben P. 1930 Member

  July 2021 76 karma

  @andrew.rsn thanks for this tip I will continue to rep out flaw especially now knowing it's tested at such a complex level.
• Determined_-1 Member

  July 2021 924 karma

  @Saaamuel Thanks so much for sharing this! Do you have any recommendations on learning the basics of the topics you suggested? Like links or videos you found to be most helpful?