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Please help me with the reading comp
briceschrumpf
Core Member
Hello friends, I have been studying over the last 4 months and have seen a SIGNIFICANT improvement on my LR, currently averaging about 1-4 incorrect per section. However, my Reading comp has remained horrible, averaging about 10-13 incorrect per section. I have tried many different reading comp methods over the last couple of months to no avail. I am very desperate for any RC tips you may have since the November test will likely be my final test before applying to law school. I am currently sitting around a 162 and if my RC was similar to that of my LR, I would be able to score around a 169-170 range, hence the urgency.
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I too want to know how to improve on the RC section.. can you share how you were able to improve on LR? struggling a bit with that too
@princessney777 I can try giving you some pointers that are installed into my brain but they may or may not come out the way I intend them to. First, be able to understand which questions are hard and which questions are easy. Usually, reading the stimulus and the question number itself (ex: 1-13), I can usually assume it will be a relatively quick question. So during these, I read the stimulus and understand the task that I must complete. Then I go to the questions and answer quickly, not giving much time at all to answer choices (instead of trying to reason with each answer choice, I quickly eliminate each choice that isnt 100% correct). Building a habit is what enables this for me, through a series of practice, I can understand read the stimulus and know what the answer should sound like about 90% of the time, at least on the easy questions. Then on the harder questions (15-20), I usually take a little bit more time, I understand the patterns and by the time I go into the questions, once again through repetitive practice and habit I will be able to have an idea of the correct answer, but usually these harder questions have two answer choices that work with what I built. From there, I decide which answer is most strict to the stimulus, not which answer overall has the most profound and "reasonable in the real world" answer, but which answer applies MOST to the stimulus. Then for the hardest questions (20-27), I know that these are created to be hard, so the answer choices that answer it as if they are the questions within 1-13, I usually assume are wrong because it is meant to blind others from further thought and reasoning with other questions. I can usually scratch out 2 answers like this and also scratch out 1 answer choice that is meant to sound overly "smart" (such as a choice with profound wording and definitions that are within our syllabus, like "the justification of the commerce trader is appealing to a kind, that unlike the kind within the stimulus, is unreasonable with further efforts", basically just a string of random and confusing texts.) Remaining with two answers, I would usually pick the answer choice that I believe COULD work, however, after further practice I now understand that these answer choices are also usually meant to make us over assume, which leads to an incorrect answer. So I have begun choosing the 1 of the 2 answer choices, that although don't sound AS reasonable as the latter, need less assumptions/ or no assumptions at all to take place in order for that answer to be correct against the stimulus, even if this answer choice isn't as strong as the other would be, it is still stronger in face value because it does not need extra assumptions to take place. Once again, I don't know if this information is accurately written down as it is in my head but the main tip I am getting at is that you must practice and get used to the question types that will be persistently used AND remember that this is a test made by a human, so this human will try to use certain techniques to make you miss questions, try to combat these techniques, that are primarily used in the hardest questions, by remembering past techniques used.
I had to really shift the way I read. In the core curriculum, and most all LSAT courses, they tell you to focus on structure and purpose but that just doesn't come natural to me - I get focused on the details even if I know I shouldn't be. Two things have been helping me:
1. Force myself to forget about the details (reading faster helps with this)
2. Work toward getting that gut feeling of understanding
There is a gut feeling you have when you really get something you're reading, when you kinda get it, or when you are lost. I know what that feels like for me, so I make that the goal that I work toward in every passage. These are the prompts that I use to practice:
1. First Paragraph
- What is the thesis? (If none, then you're reading background - keep looking)
- Where is this going?
2. Each subsequent paragraph
- What is the point of this?/Why is the author talking about this?
3. After Final Paragraph
- ID the passage: Is it a Phenomenon-Hypothesis, Profile, Clash of viewpoints Problem, or are they just telling you about something?
- Quickly review the structure - what is each paragraph doing?
If I know these things I find that I'm better set up for the questions - even though if feels wrong/scary not having a grasp on the details. I find that most of the time the questions are asking about these things anyways. If there is a question about details then I can go find it. Also, knowing these things helps you eliminate 4 wrong answer choices just as often as it makes the correct answer choice stand out.
@briceschrumpf @themagician thank you guys so much for sharing tips. These are what I desperately needed for. I'll definitely use them for practicing.
Search kevin lin on YouTube. those LR videos he has, and he has live class recordings on 7Sage in the Live Class library you can check out, are extremely helpful. You will start to get them right.
Hi! Have you tried doing untimed sections? doing that allows you to slow down and understand the passages and question types. Good luck!
Hey! I was in a similar boat.
The biggest thing that's helped me is really focus on what the passage is saying. Not what I assume it says, or what I think about the content, or anything extraneous. Instead, I really, really pay attention to what the passages are telling me. The more sections I've done, the more I realize ALL the answers are ALWAYS in the passages. Even for the inference type of questions, there will always be evidence to support that inference in the passages.
Another thing is pay attention to everything, details included. A lot of times the general idea of the passage will get you to answer some questions right, but for ultimate accuracy, you need to pay attention to the details.
With that in mind, I usually allow myself 3-4 minutes to really read and take in the passage. After that, the questions tend to feel much easier, even the knit picky ones. I also skip questions I'm unsure about, flag them, and answer them as best as I can before moving on to the next passage. Sometimes if I'm unsure about a question the other questions and answers for that passage help fill in some of the blanks I was previously unsure about.
I highlight bits that jump out at me, but only BITS. Too much highlighting is distracting. And for the "Passage A" "Passage B" questions I highlight each passage a different colors.
Finally, I've had to practice a lot with speed. I do one full reading comprehension section every day with timer to make sure I am staying up to speed. Take about 8 minutes per passage. A little more is fine, but don't get too hung up on a difficult passage and let that bite into your overall time. With test day so close I don't see that slowing down and doing untimed reading sections only for comprehension would help. On test day you need to perform with both speed and accuracy.
I'm sure you've got this, I believe in you. Best of luck!
Hello, might be repeating what a lot of people have already said, but spending time on the passages has helped me a lot! I spend about 4.5 minutes on the passages understanding and making sure in my mind I'm connecting all the sentences and saying "Okay, so first this happened then this, and now we're talking about this, etc".
When I do this then I'm able to fly through a lot of the questions! Also, make sure in the answer choices NOT to make assumptions or think "this was kind of said in the passage, maybe it's right", DONT do that! All the answer choices will come from the passage, not from your assumptions. If between 2 answer choices sometimes I use the search feature for key words and if that doesn't work then I compare the 2 answer choices and look closely at wording.
Hope this helps a bit!
Hi!! I am on the EXACT same page as you. I average 2-4 for LR, but 10-13 for RC. What has been helping me is to read it TWICE. I know there is very little time so this is how I do it: I read the first time normally, then I skim the second time looking for things I think they will ask me + main arguments of each paragraph. This has helped me understand the overall idea of the passage and has helped me get better at answering the questions. Good luck on the LSAT!!
I am going to join in on this one and just say that this is largely how i do this too. When I first took my diagnostic I only got 7 wrong on the RC section. I used to tutor the SATs and I just used the same exact method that I did for the SATs. After going through the 7sage curriculum I took some of the new strategies, especially their passage A passage B strategies, but other than that I focused on timing and just honing my skills. Now, I can pretty consistently get 0-4 wrong per RC section.
The biggest thing I used to teach during the SATs is DO NOT READ... ok... maybe thats a bit misleading. But from my personal experience, I have a hard time retaining information. I would often find that even if I fully read a passage, I still had to re-read large portions when answering questions. This ate into my time really bad. So, my SAT tutor at the time, taught me the trick of skimming the passage. Your goal the first read through is just to generally understand what the passage is about and what each paragraph about. My trick was to read about the first sentence and last sentence of each paragraph. I would usually skip the fluff/detail. I would take some minor notes like P1: talks about the thesis P2: talks about X detail, P3 talks about Y detail... I can sometimes read a passage in about 1 minute. (the only exception to my skimming technique is the passage A passage B combos. For those, I use 7sage's method of fulling reading passage A then crossing out each answer choice for each question)
Now you'll immediately notice in using this method that by the end of reading the section, you know barely anything about the passage and that is okay! You see the trick is that the test writers are out to get you. They know that you have barely read this passage/probably didnt read it correctly. So what do they do? The very first question is going to be what is the main point/conclusion... you have no idea! you barely read the passage! so what do you do? you SKIP the first question(s).
What I will do is pretty much always, without hesitation, skip the first question. Instead, I immediately jump around until I find an "easy" question. Early you mentioned having an intuition in LR as to the difficulty of a question, this is kind of similar. I look for questions that I think I am going to have the easiest time finding a direct quote to support. So for example, if the passage talks about plate tectonics and the question says "which of the following is an answer regarding plate tectonics that the passage has sufficient detail to answer." I can be pretty confident that i can find a direct quote to find the answer. So I start re-skimming the passage. I sometimes use my notes because maybe I took a note that paragraph 3 discusses how plate tectonics work. Once I find my answer, I skip around until i find the next easiest question(s) - such as "the author uses X phrase to mean", "the author would most likely agree with"... You'll notice that with each subsequent question you need to re-skim less and less.
By the end of the easy questions you have now basically read this passage multiple times. ONLY NOW can you answer the main conclusion/main point questions. The other reason i leave those for last is that the test writers are always going to ask you important questions. Very very rarely are they going to ask you about some irrelevant BS. So, by doing the other questions first, you have now actually re-read all of the important parts.
I will fully admit that the skimming method takes a while to get used to. It feels wrong to barely read the passage and the amount that you need to read the first time to feel comfortable is different for every person. So I am not sure if 1 week is enough time. However, if you decide to wait for law school/retake the LSAT at a later date I highly recommend this strategy. It has worked wonders for my brain.