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When you begin a question, do you first identify what type of question it is?

letsgo1stletsgo1st Alum Member
in Logical Reasoning 121 karma

By type I mean MBT, Sufficient Assumption, etc. Just curious if you guys first identify it, then solve the question in a way that is unique to each type of question (diagramming, finding the assumption, etc.). If so I think I will memorize most of the question stems before attempting another full LR section haha

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  • Cant Get RightCant Get Right Yearly + Live Member Sage ⭐ 🍌 7Sage Tutor
    27902 karma

    You should definitely know what the question stem is asking you. That isn’t always accomplished by rote memorization of question type, but that can be a really good start.

    From there, how you proceed might depend on your goal score and present level of development. Early on, approaches like diagramming and identifying assumptions can be good exercises to help reinforce the skills and lessons taught in the CC. If you’re aiming for much higher than about a 160 though, you’ll need a more sophisticated approach which is adaptable and responsive to the unique challenges that individual questions present. As you start breaking into 160’s, the usefulness of relying on question types to classify errors or dictate procedures dramatically declines. That has a lot to do with why so many people plateau in this score range.

  • letsgo1stletsgo1st Alum Member
    121 karma

    @"Cant Get Right" thank you for your advice, will keep it in mind!

  • Mr Bean Esq.Mr Bean Esq. Core Member
    10 karma

    I do now, but not because someone told me I should. I know it's encouraged to practice that from the get-go on 7Sage (nothing but love 7sage, I'm back for more this month!), but personally I found it overwhelming and unhelpful to start out. I'm sure it works for some starting out, though. For practice, do both and see what feels right. If you know what kind of learner you are you have an advantage. I know myself really well and have a good ability to separate myself as evaluator from myself as performer, and knew that in order to get my grip on LR, I'd have to dive into stimuli initially, just to get myself familiar with the essence of my enemy. Once I began intuitively sensing what the question stem would be in the middle of the stimulus, I knew I was ready to be a stem-first type, and my LR improved by a few points overnight. But when I tried it out right after my diagnostic, it was way too much, because even though I knew what the question stem was I didn't know how to use the question stem to read the stimulus to my advantage because I hadn't come across enough stimuli ... keep in mind when we learn things on this site or from tutors that we should always be parsing for the core principle, not a mindless commitment to details at the expense of your most valuable asset - knowledge and understanding of your own brain! The test score matters more than taking the test 'the 7sage way' or whatever (by the way, 7sage rocks!)

  • mesposito886mesposito886 Member
    254 karma

    Yes, for LR I always look at the question stem first and then read the stimulus with the problem-solving framework for that type in mind.

  • Steven_B-1Steven_B-1 Member
    800 karma

    It's weird because there's conflicting advice out there. The LSAT demon creators reiterate that reading the question stem is useless and i've also been reading the powerscore bibles, and they too opine that it's a waste of time so im a bit conflicted.

    I do see why reading the question stem first and then again before looking at the ACs would be a waste of time, but i think 7sage's approach of quickly identifying the stem makes a lot of sense.

    Any thoughts ?

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