LR Strategies

[mattm]

Hello,

I plan on beginning LSAT prep within the next two weeks or so for an October 2015 take. I plan on starting now so that I can take a a week or two off here and there instead of pushing my LSAT prep until lets say June and taking less breaks.

I had a question regarding LR prep: When I prepped last year my scores were great in LR, -6 combined consistently and on a great day -3 total between the two sections..... Do you think I should attack LR by printing off LR sections from PT's and reviewing them in which by doing a section from a PT I would get a mix of all the LR question types, or do you think i need to do LR questions by specific type ( Flaw, Must be true, parallel etc)?

And as an instructor: what do you think the issue is when people say i have problem with X question type? Do you think the problem boils down to other things such as not understanding the argumentation, structure of the stimuli and other factors such as that more than having problems with a specific question type.....I was wondering your take since even within the categories in all LR question types such as Flaw questions for example, there will be some very easy ones but then there will also be some very hard ones that are difficult to get the correct answer if you are not understanding the argument.

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Matt,

This probably isn't the answer that you want to hear, but the correct answer to that question is: it depends. Each student is different, and there could be a variety of reasons why someone misses certain questions or types of questions.

At the most basic level, reading comprehension plays a vital role in a strong LR performance. LSAT takers with reading issues automatically have difficulty. Similarly, if you don't fully understand argumentation or reasoning forms, that will manifest itself in all sorts of errors.

More locally, sometimes certain question types do cause problems—Assumption, Flaw, and Parallel are notorious for being difficult. And of course, a high degree of difficulty yields a high miss rate, so it could be that.

With your past performance in mind, I'd first consider that it might be difficulty causing your issues, unless you are seeing the same question types over and over in the ones you miss. So, I'd start by doing sections and seeing what happens, but then carefully analyzing each section while watching for patterns. If you see a trend, isolate it and then attack it until it is eliminated.

Please let me know if that helps. Thanks!