Highlight the Issue with the Answer Choice
Oftentimes, students will come to me saying they narrow down a question to two potential answer choices but always pick the incorrect one. In these situations, it is important to identify what is bad about both answer choices. In the future, highlight in your remaining answer choices what you do not like about the answer. Even for your best contender! The correct answer will have the smallest problem out of your two possible answers. By highlighting, you will be able to easily compare the level of assumption required by our answer choices.
Track Referential Phrases
A large challenge presented to us across all sections of the LSAT is referential phrasing. Whether you are completing a game or passage or analyzing a stimulus, you will face referential phrasing meant to make the test maker confuse information. Without a concrete understanding of these phrases, we will add to the time it takes to locate the right answer.
For example, say we identify a conclusion in a Logical Reasoning stimulus to be “thus, their argument is correct.” From this sentence alone, how much information do we really have? Well, we don’t know who “they” are, we don’t know what “argument” they are supporting! This is known as referential phrasing.
We need to keep track of referential phrasing through the stimulus in order to have the best possible understanding of what our conclusion is saying. Every time you see a referential phrase, you should go back to the previous sentence to remind yourself what group or idea that referential phrase is talking about. As you continue to practice, the translation of referential phrases will become second nature. This will help you make clear predictions going into the answer choices.
If you have a difficult time remembering to identify and translate referential phrases, you could instead focus your analysis on a low-resolution summary. This type of summary is one where we focus on identifying the conclusion and main support, and describe it as briefly as possible. This does not mean we are ignoring the referential phrase. Instead, creating your own translation will help you better understand an argument’s referential phrases subconsciously.
For more information on tackling referential phrasing, check out the core curriculum here!