The EXCEPT/LEAST Effect

[mford]

I'm pretty sure this is just an issue with myself--but in any event, for whatever reason, when I'm taking these tests, EXCEPT and LEAST are vanishing from my sight. I'm sure that I'm actually seeing them, but choose to ignore them--maybe it's the capital letters. I have no idea why this is happening, and now I'm trying to circle them, to make note of them; but like I said, I only do this when they don't become completely invisible to me on the test. Why is this happening, and what should I do about it? Is this capital letter thing actually a visual trick? Maybe I should come up with my own EXCEPT/LEAST exercise? In general I feel that I'm not reading the question stems as much as I feel I should be, and I think it's partially because of the way the full course is set up--with the different types of questions divided into the different sections making it so that I don't have to read the question stems. Have you heard of this issue before?

[Dave Killoran]

Hey Mford,

I made a reply to another student who asked about Weaken Except questions, and some of that applies here to your question. That post is here: http://forum.powerscore.com/lsat/viewto ... 1059#p2129

In part, you explained the issue as deriving from this area: "In general I feel that I'm not reading the question stems as much as I feel I should be." I think we would both agree that that can be a fatal problem! You cannot just skim the question stem because they always have the option of adding in extra information, and when they do, it is critical. And I don't really think that is a product of the way the questions are classified; once you'd seen enough questions you'd likely naturally think that you knew what was coming. So, this is really a product of your focus. Fortunately, now that you know it is an issue, you can eliminate it by taking special care with these questions. That may mean circling/underlining every Except/Least that you see, or it may mean taking an extra moment before moving on to the answers, or something else.

I'm pretty sensitive to this issue, because early on when I started looking at LSATs years and years ago, I occasionally missed seeing the word Except too. My initial solution was to underline that word every single time I saw it thereafter, and eventually doing that made me so sensitized to that word that I never had that issue again. You are in that same position, and understanding the problem is the majority of beating the problem. Regardless, you have to focus on making sure you are answering the question they pose (and not what you think they asked). There are just too many examples of question stems that look standard but contain new information that affects how you answer the question.

Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks!