increasing speed and improving fundamentals -Help

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• inactive Alum Member

  May 2017 12637 karma

  Bumping this to the top!
• 5 Likes

  Mellow_Z Alum Member

  May 2017 1997 karma

  @"evonne-alkhatib" said:
  So I have gone through the entire course and I would say it has helped greatly, before when I would do a LR section I would be getting 14-15 right untimed. Now untimed (which generally takes me 45-50 minutes) I am seeing improvements where I usually end up with 20 right (I always do BR, where I choose to keep or change my answers, so sometimes ill hit 20 with changed answers sometimes i'll hit 20 without changing any answers). I have noticed though that I am consistently atleast -5 to -6 wrong on my LR sections untimed. I have also realized that flaw, parallel and Resolve reconcile explain give me the most trouble. What do I need to do to greatly increase my score on untimed sections? I have reviewed the flaw, causation and parallel sections on 7sage. Does this just come with continued practice and extensive review on untimed LR? and once I am seeing these improvements on untimed tests, how will I begin to increase my speed? Should I be doing blind review on every single question after I do a section or just the questions that posed me difficulty?

  I wrote the December LSAT and scored a 151, due to bombing the logical reasonings sections. I am writing in September 2017 and will spend however many hours necessary in order to increase my accuracy and speed on logical reasoning.

  Hi Evonne! First off, I just want to say that you've made great improvements so far from where you started! Congrats, and keep up the hard work!

  So it seems like you have two questions, which I'll break apart and address separately: First, how do you increase your untimed score? and secondly, how do you increase your speed?

  A question to you : Are you missing the extremely tough questions each section? Or are you just struggling on the question types that you mentioned (all difficulty levels)?

  In order to excel and start scoring higher than what you are now, you truly have to have all of the basics of this test mastered. If you are struggling on flaw question types, you are likely missing a “piece” of the argument puzzle. Flaw questions really rely heavily on understanding the relationships between the context and premises. And they make up a decent portion of each section. If you struggle on this, you likely have underlying issues with a large majority of the other questions when you get to the extremely difficult “curve-breaker” type questions. Why? Because a large majority of LR questions are all about understanding the argument that the author is presenting you with (which is the building blocks of flaw questions).

  I personally, would go back to the argument portion of 7sage’s CC and just make sure you know all of that stuff like the back of your hand. Another recommendation I will make is to check out other content. Maybe use Manhattan’s LR and/or Mike Kim’s Trainer to supplement the Cc in the areas you struggle. They are both highly recommended from a lot of students. I’ve read them both. They teach the material somewhat differently, and naturally cover somewhat different topics. Maybe a different style is what makes it “click” for you. Once you touch up on the basics, I would just start drilling whichever problem types you are having issues with. Once you can answer the questions accurately untimed, then you move on to worrying about timing.

  And finally, back to the second point you made; speed. I think you are running slow because there is something that you keep hanging up on. It might be the fundamentals in the arguments that I mentioned in the last few paragraphs. If you truly master the argument structure, and feel comfortable with your aforementioned question types, you will start to see patterns. They (LSAC) can only ask these questions in a limited number of ways. You will start to see that the ways they ask certain questions are regularly repeated, just with different context. This is what makes you go quicker. It will become muscle memory, and outside of the curve breaker questions, you should be able to answer a bulk of the questions without much difficulty. Another way to practice this, is to take somewhat simple questions, and just drill them. Aim for the first 15 questions of your sections to be complete in 15 minutes or less. This is a good pace to leave yourself plenty of time for the difficult questions at the end of every section.

  You also made a comment about your BR strategy. I can’t tell how you do it with the limited amount of detail, but make sure you are BRing on a BLANK copy. If you do BR over top of your existing work and answers, you will experience confirmation bias. You will (either consciously or sub consciously) attempt to justify that your first answer was correct. This will likely lead to you selecting the same answer more times than if you were to be doing the problem fresh. Always do a blank copy.

  I’ve exhausted my limited amount of experience. I’m sure some others have incredibly useful information as well to share. Good luck!
• evonne-alkhatib Alum Member

  May 2017 26 karma

  @Mellow_Z said:

  Hi Evonne! First off, I just want to say that you've made great improvements so far from where you started! Congrats, and keep up the hard work!

  So it seems like you have two questions, which I'll break apart and address separately: First, how do you increase your untimed score? and secondly, how do you increase your speed?

  A question to you : Are you missing the extremely tough questions each section? Or are you just struggling on the question types that you mentioned (all difficulty levels)?

  In order to excel and start scoring higher than what you are now, you truly have to have all of the basics of this test mastered. If you are struggling on flaw question types, you are likely missing a “piece” of the argument puzzle. Flaw questions really rely heavily on understanding the relationships between the context and premises. And they make up a decent portion of each section. If you struggle on this, you likely have underlying issues with a large majority of the other questions when you get to the extremely difficult “curve-breaker” type questions. Why? Because a large majority of LR questions are all about understanding the argument that the author is presenting you with (which is the building blocks of flaw questions).

  I personally, would go back to the argument portion of 7sage’s CC and just make sure you know all of that stuff like the back of your hand. Another recommendation I will make is to check out other content. Maybe use Manhattan’s LR and/or Mike Kim’s Trainer to supplement the Cc in the areas you struggle. They are both highly recommended from a lot of students. I’ve read them both. They teach the material somewhat differently, and naturally cover somewhat different topics. Maybe a different style is what makes it “click” for you. Once you touch up on the basics, I would just start drilling whichever problem types you are having issues with. Once you can answer the questions accurately untimed, then you move on to worrying about timing.

  And finally, back to the second point you made; speed. I think you are running slow because there is something that you keep hanging up on. It might be the fundamentals in the arguments that I mentioned in the last few paragraphs. If you truly master the argument structure, and feel comfortable with your aforementioned question types, you will start to see patterns. They (LSAC) can only ask these questions in a limited number of ways. You will start to see that the ways they ask certain questions are regularly repeated, just with different context. This is what makes you go quicker. It will become muscle memory, and outside of the curve breaker questions, you should be able to answer a bulk of the questions without much difficulty. Another way to practice this, is to take somewhat simple questions, and just drill them. Aim for the first 15 questions of your sections to be complete in 15 minutes or less. This is a good pace to leave yourself plenty of time for the difficult questions at the end of every section.

  You also made a comment about your BR strategy. I can’t tell how you do it with the limited amount of detail, but make sure you are BRing on a BLANK copy. If you do BR over top of your existing work and answers, you will experience confirmation bias. You will (either consciously or sub consciously) attempt to justify that your first answer was correct. This will likely lead to you selecting the same answer more times than if you were to be doing the problem fresh. Always do a blank copy.

  I’ve exhausted my limited amount of experience. I’m sure some others have incredibly useful information as well to share. Good luck!

  Thank-you so much for the advice I appreciate it! You are right, I am definitely missing some of the fundamental basics and need to learn how to breakdown an argument like the back of my hand. I generally struggle with those questions in general as well as assumption questions (again breaking down the argument). I am going to go back to the basics of 7sage and I also have Powerscore's logical reasoning bible, so I will be using that as well!
• Mo Zubair Alum Member

  May 2017 391 karma

  I would also recommend reviewing 7Sage Grammar lessons again. To me they were key in gaining speed. We need to be able to parse down complex sentence structure in seconds.The lessons on grammar are key.
• nessa.k13.0 Inactive ⭐

  May 2017 4141 karma

  @"Mo Zubair" said:
  I would also recommend reviewing 7Sage Grammar lessons again. To me they were key in gaining speed. We need to be able to parse down complex sentence structure in seconds.The lessons on grammar are key.

  I second this^ it can be a huge game changer
• evonne-alkhatib Alum Member

  May 2017 26 karma

  Thankyou! I will be sure to do that
• Alex Alum Member ⭐

  May 2017 23929 karma

  @"evonne-alkhatib" said:
  Thankyou! I will be sure to do that

  @Mellow_Z nailed it! Also, @"Mo Zubair" brings up a great suggestion with reviewing the grammar lessons.