Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Categories
- 32.1K All Categories
- 27.1K LSAT
- 16.5K General
- 5K Logical Reasoning
- 1.3K Reading Comprehension
- 1.7K Logic Games
- 72 Podcasts
- 193 Webinars
- 9 Scholarships
- 193 Test Center Reviews
- 2K Study Groups
- 108 Study Guides/Cheat Sheets
- 2.4K Specific LSAT Dates
- 1 June 2024 LSAT
- 1 April 2024 LSAT
- 11 February 2024 LSAT
- 23 January 2024 LSAT
- 37 November 2023 LSAT
- 41 October 2023 LSAT
- 12 September 2023 LSAT
- 38 August 2023 LSAT
- 27 June 2023 LSAT
- 1 August 2024 LSAT
- 30 Sage Advice
- 4.8K Not LSAT
- 3.9K Law School Admissions
- 11 Law School Explained
- 9 Forum Rules
- 573 Technical Problems
- 280 Off-topic
Related Discussions
Stuck in the mid 160's... again. RC help needed!
adore-no
Alum Member
So I've been studying for the LSAT for a year and some change now.
Finally decided to sign-up for 7Sage in December.
I was averaging around 165 with BR's in the 168-9. I went through the curriculum and for my last 4 PT's my actual score is still around 165, BR score has been in the low to mid 170's. My major improvements came in LG and LR.
I miss anywhere from 4-7 on LR (mostly PSA and Flaws)
-0/-1 in LG
5-9 in RC.
I'm hopeful that with another two months of studying I can shave off a couple of mistakes from my LR and consistently hit -0 on LG. But my Reading Comprehension is so incredibly inconsistent.
A lot of times I'll do -2/-1 on RC drills but when I sit to take the real thing all hell breaks loose.
I've watched the webinars on Reading Comprehension and make an effort to read actively but this is just driving me nuts.
I remember when I first started studying for the test, RC was by far my best section (-2/-3). After a year of studying I'm missing three times that much.
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
- I'm planning on taking the June LSAT and would very much like to get a score in the 170's
Comments
Hi @adore-no !
I'd focus on eliminating issues with flaws. This will help you in other areas of the LSAT because if you can see and understand why arguments are flawed, you should be able to identify the point at issue with other question types more efficiently. Learn flaws well. It helped me a lot to go through the Wikipedia flaws (there are also books on flaws that some sages have read). I wrote notes and made flashcards on the flaws and this helped me immensely. I found that by learning flaws and getting more familiar with how and why they ruin argument validity, I was able to quickly spot holes and weaknesses in many other LSAT question types. After going through those, get to know what kinds of flaws re-appear on the LSAT. If you can definitely look at the LSAT Superprep books and read LSAC's explanations of right and wrong acs as well as their explanations for flaw questions. (Here's a flaw intensive webinar if you are interested https://7sage.com/webinar/flaw-intensive/ )
For RC, there were some great intensives on how to improve from Daniel, Josh, and David---keep an eye out for those getting uploaded on the webinar page and check them out. Here are some key points from my session notes:
1. Read actively and get a basic understanding of each paragraph. Don't get caught up in details. Have a big picture idea of the passage.
2. Know the main idea of each paragraph and how they fit together in the whole passage.
3. Note (in addition to the main point) the authors tone and argument structure of each paragraph.
4. To make big improvements in RC it's going to take a lot of deliberative practice. A sage did 2 to 3 RC sections a day to improve.
5. Develop a good notation strategy to keep track of things like major nouns, tone shift, units and the passage of time, examples of points being made etc.
6. Refer back to the specific parts that are referenced in later paragraphs while reading about the ideas that you previously anticipated. This is to give yourself a better chance at understanding the reasoning structure.
7. For parallel and analogy questions look for ACs that keep the same necessary condition as the argument that you need to find a parallel argument for.
8. With comparative passages, check quickly and see if you have questions about passage A, read passage A then answer those questions on it. Do the same for passage B.
You're welcome to join the June study group as well. We take PTs and review them each week. We support each other and there's a Thursday night option and a Saturday night option.
I hope this helps!
Maybe your drills aren't reflective of taking a 35 minute section? If you get -2/-1 a lot of times in drills but do poorly on the test then maybe timing or concentration is the main issue.
Thanks for the tips Nessa. I've been meaning to join a BR call but my schedule couldn't accommodate it. Hopefully I can join the next few.
Timing is somewhat of an issue. I finish just in the nick of time, and my instinct is to generally not skip RC questions.
Hi!
Definitely take @"nessa.k13.0"'s advice. A lot of super helpful info in there that took me a long while to learn!
Also, I would look at @TheoryandPractice 's guide that was posted a few days ago. Sometimes, we can forget to get in the active reading mode or be overconfident but when remember that each part of the passage is building upon another part, we simultaneously active read and read for structure.
Hope this helps too!
Hey! Definitely take @"nessa.k13.0" 's advice.
I'll also give you my two cents. I think I am in a similar boat but my RC has been improving. I know you said you went through the CC but did you go through the RC parts and actually listen to how J.Y. breaks down a passage? Maybe you have which would be great but I know sometimes we go through the CC without actually listening. Anyway, in my case I definitely skipped/glossed over RC parts of the CC because that was my strongest section and I was over confident. Then LG improved to the point of -1 and LR to the point of -3 to -5. My BR's are in the 170s consistently so I know that my fundamentals are good (although you can always improve those).
So with that, I needed to step up my RC game. In general, what has helped me is quite simply drilling RC passages and watching J.Y.'s videos thereafter. More specifically, I naturally came up with a personalized notation strategy. So, through drilling I noticed (just naturally developed) that I circle subject matter, put important concepts in parentheses, underline less important concepts, box dates or kind of the.central.theme/person/scholar etc, and last but not least draw arrows connecting concepts or ideas from paragraph to paragraph (just like JY does). Doing this is definitely improving my reading for reasoning structure, as they say, which conceptually I think we all understand but doing it is much harder.
Lastly, for drills, I started just saying to myself "main point, author's tone, argument structure" before each passage. I can also tell through using analytics that I was missing a lot of the inferauthorperspective questions, which means I had a weakness in author's tone (why is someone writing this, what is the essence of the passage? what is the purpose?) so I have really tried to focus on bringing out words that tell me the author's opinion.
Last but not least, use the main point question, which is usually the first after the passage, to confirm certain aspects of the passage. If you are 100% of the main point answer choice use it.
Anyway, that's what I've been doing and I do see improvements even if I'm not there yet. Also, looking to take it in June. Feel free to let me know your thoughts.
@RafaelBernard thanks for the tips. I think I may have to check out the CC once again because I glossed over much of it as well. It may have to do with overconfidence too, like @JustDoIt suggested. I think I'm going to spend a couple of days drilling and practicing with these suggestions in mind.
I'll report back and feel free to do the same!