Howdy, Stranger!

It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!

Sign In Apply for Membership

Categories

Logical Reasoning Rut

lemweaver01lemweaver01 Live Member
in Logical Reasoning 20 karma

These logical reasoning questions make me feel so stupid! It makes so much sense afterwards but not in the moment. I don't know how i'm going to get a strategy down that will make me see this in the moment and before I make the mistake. I need a foolproof strategy for this! Anyone got any tips or methods they've found helpful? Please message me! I'd love to bounce ideas off of one another for LR and become study buddies.

Show Related Discussions

Comments

  • kanikapatelkanikapatel Live Member
    20 karma

    I have the same problem! Would love to be study buddies and ft/zoom once a week maybe and work through problems together?

  • paigehajiloopaigehajiloo Core Member
    edited May 11 16 karma

    1. Pre-phrasing has helped me tremendously with LR. Basically it's predicting the answer to the question as you read the stimulus by learning to spot holes in arguments (which comes with time and practice). Note: that does not mean reading the question first, it means learning to identify various elements of argumentation in stimuli and having an idea of what the question might ask of you, before you even read the question stem or answer choices. After a while of honing this skill you'll feel yourself making instinctual inferences about the stimulus automatically that will help lead you to the right answer.Do some research on the art of pre-phrasing for LR, and make a consorted effort to practice it every time you do a section.

    2. The other big thing is timing (the flaw and parallel flaw questions take so much time, as you can easily spend 3 times more time on those questions than others). I improved on LR by realizing that if I can't answer a question in a minute or so, to just move on and return to it when I get to the end of the section. (You should get to a point that you're using no more than 10 minutes for the first 10 questions and just under a minute and a half for each question thereafter). That will give you at least few minutes to return to problem-child questions at the end.

    3. Question types. Learning all of the LR question types helps you learn to identify and follow different approaches for different kinds of questions, which will eventually become second nature as you do it more and more. Learning the question types will also make you more comfortable with the section in general and improve your confidence because you'll be more familiar with it, and you'll seldom get caught off guard.

    4. The final thing I'll add is to stay calm and confident. The test always get people stressed at the end of a section and messes with their mentality...it purposely puts the most difficult questions at the end, gives you a five minute warning, and changes the color of the timer to red. All of this is designed to give you anxiety and test your ability to stay relaxed and focused under pressure. If you find yourself running out of time don't be jumping around trying to answer the last few questions under the gun freaking out because you only have four minutes left. Just keep moving forward as you would, and remain, calm, confident, and laser-focused.

    My average is -3 on a given LR section. Hope this helps :)

  • gbv215gbv215 Alum Member
    119 karma

    I was in the same place, and it's still not perfect for me to be honest. I kept getting -10 to -8 consistently on LR. Now I'm getting -3 to -5. Somethings that helped me were:
    1. Wrong Answer Journal - less so about really writing everything down but really thinking about why you picked the wrong answer choice/changed your mind in blind review
    2. Taking care of myself - cannot believe how long it took for me to realize that I need to sleep lol
    3. Reading the Loophole - honestly the only textbook I found helpful (and engaging!)

Sign In or Register to comment.