Living in RC hell

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• 3 Likes

  TheMikey Alum Member

  July 2017 4196 karma

  I am literally the same as you. Excellent at LR/LG, crappy at RC. I found that Nicole's RC notation strategy helped, and just overall reading for structure and trying not to remember the details since that's what the notations are for.

  Have you checked out Nicole's strategy? If not..
  
• fmihalic2 Free Trial Member

  July 2017 266 karma

  I just watched about 10 minutes and it seems like it could help! I'm going to watch in full tomorrow! Thanks
• 2 Likes

  Cant Get Right Yearly + Live Member Sage ⭐ 🍌 7Sage Tutor

  July 2017 27860 karma

  I really like certain aspects of Nicole's approach and really dislike one key element. I like having standardized notations. I've always been a heavy notator, but my notations were always random and arbitrary. Using consistently meaningful notations was a huge benefit for me, and Nicole's annotations provided a great foundation from which I developed my own notations.

  What I don't like is how Nicole uses the notations once she's moved on to the questions. As good as it feels to be able to confirm an answer with a specific citation, there just isn't time for that and I think it represents a serious underconfidence issue for the vast majority of us.

  Nicole is really great at RC, so I'm not saying her method can't work: Clearly it worked for her. I just think that for most people, the process of using notations as a tool to confirm answer choices is too time consuming. So try it out. But if you fall way short on time, you shouldn't be surprised and you'll just need to adapt your strategy. I annotate while I read and then use the memory method once I get into the questions. While reading, I consciously focus on the big picture elements-structure, tone, and purpose-and allow my annotations to highlight the details without having to expend mental capacity on them. This allows me to devote my conscious mental efforts into forming a highly accurate and concise low resolution understanding while the notations flesh out the higher resolution elements. So the notations sharpen my reading and make my memory more reliable, and I think this is a much better reason to annotate.
• fmihalic2 Free Trial Member

  July 2017 266 karma

  @"Cant Get Right"

  I don't annotate very much at all so I didn't really love Nicole's method. I've tried so many of these methods that my score has actually gone down in RC. The problem is that it was -8 before...so I don't want to go back to that. I need to just keep working at it until I find something that works for me but that feels almost impossible at this point...even when I read the passage and feel really confident sometimes I still end up with -3 on that passage alone. It's maddening and I get so frustrated that I don't even feel like doing games or LR.

  For me, annotating a lot wastes too much time. I do box the viewpoints though. Sometimes I'll write the purpose of a paragraph next to it if it's really obvious. However, I constantly fall into trap answer choices and don't really know how to prevent it given the time limits and the fact that I'm doing everything I need to be doing...

  For example when I get a question that asks why the author used a certain phrase...I get that wrong about 9/10 times.

  How do you get all of the questions done in time while looking back at the passage for a few questions per passage? There's no way that there's time to check every single answer with the passage....you would only get done 1.5 passages in 35 minutes.

  Maybe I'm focusing too much on trying to remember so many little details that it's hurting my ability to grasp the main points and the big picture...what exactly do you focus on remembering? Do you focus on the specific elements that you know are most likely to be tested?
• goingfor99th Free Trial Member

  July 2017 edited July 2017 3072 karma

  I notate/mark passages quite a bit, personally. I find rather than it being a waste of time, it assists me in digesting the passage. It slows me down and helps me to notice things I should notice, but may not notice if not for my notations. Front-loading the work like this is similar to exhausting a logic game before you even touch the questions.

  Have you been doing much untimed work? That would be my suggestion for you, to do a whole lot of untimed work. You should really take your time with it, too, and make sure you don't move on from a passage until you're reasonably certain that all of your answers are correct. While doing the passages untimed, also notate your passage as much as you need to in order to understand the intricacies of it. As you get better at notation, you will start to notice things you may have missed before, and this will give you a better idea of the things the test makers want you to look for. When I first started, I liked to make sure that I had marked/notated the source of every answer selection in the passage before I checked my answers.

  Mastering RC is really all about picking up on little cues that the average reader will usually take for granted. The more you notate, the more efficient you will become at it. Eventually you will be able to cut down on notation because your brain will instinctively pick up on things you may have needed to notate before in order to fully account for them.
• OlamHafuch Alum Member

  July 2017 2326 karma

  Hard to argue with a Sage, but I am a bit surprised about @"Cant Get Right" 's attitude toward checking to passage to confirm answers. If you have a good idea about the structure of a passage and where to find details, it's really not that hard to quickly reread the relevant parts to confirm answers. Indeed, the Official LSAT Superprep II writes: " . . even if you are fairly confident that you remember everything you need to answer a particular question, it is usually a good idea to confirm your answer by checking the relevant portions of the passage anyway." Even before I had read that advice, I had been doing that, and I have never had problems with completing the four passages in time. I guess this just confirms the obvious: there really is not one right way to do things, and different things work for different people.
• goingfor99th Free Trial Member

  July 2017 3072 karma

  I almost always match my answers to the part of the passage that I feel provides the answer, unless I'm 95%+ sure I know the answer cold. My tutor has advised me to do that, too.
• calcal101 Alum Member

  July 2017 582 karma

  I feel your pain on RC struggles, though mine are slightly different--mainly a time issue!!

  Definitely going to try watching Nicole's video when I get a chance, and I will follow this topic for further insights.
• acsimon Alum Member

  July 2017 1269 karma

  I have some thoughts about this, but I'm curious if there's some typical question types that you're finding that you're performing especially poorly at?...Might there be?
• 5 Likes

  Cant Get Right Yearly + Live Member Sage ⭐ 🍌 7Sage Tutor

  July 2017 27860 karma

  @fmihalic2

  Yeah, that can be frustrating. It sounds like you're expending too much energy on the details. The whole point of RC is to throw more information at us than we can retain and then see what we can make of it. If you're actively trying to remember details, you're likely losing the forrest for the trees. I've worked with a few people who've lost trees for the bark, lol. It sounds like you need to back away a little and look for a broader, lower resolution view of the passages.

  So one thing you said that really stood out to me is that you write the point of the paragraph when it's obvious. What about when it's not obvious? When it's not obvious, there's a point all the same, and it's important to figure that out. A lot of the time, we can't know the point out of context of the rest of the passage. It's important to recognize when this is the case, because otherwise we can get bogged down agonizing over not being able to figure out the point, lol.

  Try this untimed exercise:

  Read the first paragraph. Make a very concise, low resolution summary that really captures the big picture in one sentence. Something along the scope of: "Critics don't like a hypothesis because it fails to explain an observation." Then, try to project forwards. What do you think the next paragraph will say? I'd think one of two things here. Paragraph two is probably going to say either "And those critics are right because they're really smart and sexy," or "But those critics have donkey brains and are wrong because they're ignorant Philistines." We may have clues in the details about which is more likely. Either way though, this second paragraph will give us the context we need to define the role of the first. By projecting forward, we start thinking about the paragraph within context which is vital to understanding it. It's most macroscopic role will just be something like, "Introduces a critique of a hypothesis." The next level down will place it in context: "Introduces a critique of a hypothesis that the author dis/agrees with."

  Now that you have your summary and projection, read the second paragraph and make a concise summary for it. As you read, try to determine whether your first paragraph projection was correct or not. If you're right, then great, things are unfolding as expected. If not, that's equally revealing. Why is it going in a different direction than expected? Answering that will be tremendously valueable to our understanding of the first paragraph as well as the passage as a whole. Project backwards as well as forward now. Maybe the author remains neutral. That would be a deviation from expectations. The fact I had defined expectations will make the author's neutrality very conspicuous. Maybe paragraph two is just the author giving voice to the proponents of the hypothesis: "Proponents claim that critcs have missed a key insight of the hypothesis." If this is the direction it takes, we'll project back with something like: "Critics and proponents disagree over the merits of a theory." So now to project forward, what do you think? Harder to say here. Again though, we don't need to be right. It's just good to proceed with some expectation. We will benefit from either the expectation being met or not. Do this for the whole passage and I think you'll start developing a good sense of that broader scope. When I read, I try to pick up on overall structure, tone, and purpose. Fluency in this exercise is what gets me there with accuracy.

  Details are a different matter. I address this through annotation because it's more than I have the mental capacity to retain. As far as that goes, I will say that it was very time consuming for me at first too. I had to practice before I could do it without having to focus on it. I drilled my annotations until they were natural and didn't require any thought. It took probably a dozen sections before I really felt fluent. While you do the above exercise, you can also do high resolution summaries which are more fleshed out--as much detail as you can remember. Try that and see what you can do with it.

  The other thing you need to do is really study the answer choices. RC answer choices are way trickier than LR in my opinion. Really study them in review. Find the subtleties that differentiate the wrong answer choices from the right one. If you can start seeing those specific differences in review, you will eventually train yourself to see them in real time. That's just a difficult component of the section and it can only be addressed through practice.

  For all those who can return to the passage to confirm all your answers, more power to you. At my speed, I would be struggling to finish the third passage. If you have time for it, I suppose a confirmed answer choice is great.
• nmmizokami Alum Member

  October 2018 128 karma

  This discussion is really helpful!