kill the weakness!

[byhw92]

hi- for me the struggle is with the LR section. I understand things well in the LRB, especially what is correct/incorrect for the various question types. I get about 65% of LR questions correct. One particular thing which comes to mind is that when i run through questions, usually the mode i go into is eliminating answers cause "they dont feel like the the correct answer" rather than a sharp analysis why its wrong. (for example when eliminating, i dont think in a must be true "this is wrong because it is possibly true.." rather i usually eliminate till i find the choice which seems to meet the criteria) I also find that with about 15% of the questions i get wrong, the answer that i have as a final contender yet dont choose is the correct answer. any insights as to how i can improve my accuracy are appreciated!

[Laura Carrier]

Hi byhw92,

You are right to suspect that improved accuracy in Logical Reasoning often involves being able to eliminate incorrect answer choices for specific reasons. Along those lines, I would suggest that, whenever you miss or even just struggle with a question, you use it as an opportunity to analyze not just why the correct answer choice was right, but also precisely why the incorrect answer choices (particularly any that you chose or debated over) were wrong.

The Logical Reasoning Bible is an excellent resource for familiarizing yourself with the most common forms of incorrect answer choices by question type, and since you already understand that information, it sounds as if a slight shift in focus will be all you need in order to put this information into practice to your advantage when you are tackling Logical Reasoning questions. Instead of looking for the correct answer choice—which can often encourage people to unwittingly help out a weak answer choice because they are rooting for it to be right—try to find reasons why each answer choice can be eliminated as wrong. Being deliberately skeptical about every answer choice and holding it to a standard of strict scrutiny should help you to minimize the (all too common) problem you mentioned of spending time debating between two contenders and ultimately going with the wrong one.

It should also help to determine whether there is any pattern in the types of questions you are getting wrong, since this can tell you what you may need to focus on more carefully. In the example you raise of Must Be True questions, incorrect answer choices are most frequently appealing because of not paying close enough attention to the language of the stimulus (e.g., not making sure that you eliminate any answer choices that go beyond the specific degree of quantity or likelihood supported by the stimulus). Alternatively, if you find that you are having more trouble with questions where the stimulus contains an argument, make sure that you are focusing on the precise conclusion as stated rather than on simply an approximation of the conclusion.

Attending to these specifics can help you to create a better prephrase, which will in turn help a lot with eliminating incorrect answer choices. So another practice I would encourage you to take seriously is fine-tuning your prephrasing abilities whenever you practice, by asking yourself whether your prephrase matched the correct answer choice, and if not, why it didn’t.

It sounds as if you are on the right track to improving your Logical Reasoning accuracy—I hope these suggestions help to clarify things!
Laura

[Dave Killoran]

Hi B,

Thanks for the question! I think Laura's answer is excellent, and took a lot of the things I would have said to you

There's nothing wrong with eliminating answers because they aren't good enough—that happens all the time, and there are some problems where it feels like there is no other approach. But, there are certain instances where you can know what type of answer will be correct, and you can seek that. When that occurs (and again, it doesn't happen all the time), you save time in the problem and that's critical over the course of a section.

I'm sure that happens for you on occasion—say in a causal or conditional problem where you know how they are manipulating the reasoning, or inf a flaw question where you identify he flaw prior to looking at any of the answer choices. So, I'd bet there are cases where it happens, but you are looking to increase the number of times that happens. That's an excellent goal! To make that happen, and also to help with the situation where you are down to two answers and choose the wrong one (also very common), you have to start tracking your misses. This way you can identify patterns in the mistakes you make, but it also allows you to notice patterns in the way the test makers present concepts and how they use language in tricky problems/answers. Create an Excel spreadsheet or something similar, and look at every mistake you make—what type of problem, what reasoning, if any, what type of mistake did you make, etc. Group them together by type and it should help. Our Self Study Site has study plans that contain basic tracking sheets you can print out multiple times, if that helps.

Laura is also spot on in talking about first knowing when you are looking at an argument or a fact set, and then if it's an argument making sure that you isolate the conclusion precisely. Failure to identify exactly what is being said causes many missed questions, so make sure that this is something that you are doing habitually.

When you self-study, a big portion of the process is self-analysis. And that is actually a really hard thing to do. In classes or in tutoring, you have a teacher to do it with you. But, you can still do it on your own, you just have to focus on the process. The tendency is to want to work through a lot of questions to solve the problem, and I'm all for that, but only after you first isolate what you think is going wrong. Put in the time first to analyze, then afterwards start doing a ton of problems in order to become efficient.

I hope that helps. Thanks!