Studying for the LR Section

[VioletR]

Hello,

First, let me just say that the Powerscore books have helped immensely; my score has greatly increased since using them. Yay!

However, I am having difficulty increasing my LR score. My target is the low 170's and I seem to be stuck in the mid-160's. The issue is that there doesn't seem to be one particular question type that I'm particularly "bad" at. The LR questions I miss are an even smattering of every question type. Purchasing the online Advanced LR course is not an option for me. In addition to consistently doing practice tests and practice LR sections, is there any other sage advice? I am also in the process of reviewing the material in the Powerscore LR Bible.

Thanks for taking the time to read,
Vi

[Emily Haney-Caron]

Hi Vi,

Thanks for your question! I'm so glad you've found the PowerScore materials useful!

Definitely review the LR Bible. I'd also recommend trying to identify why you are getting questions wrong. Is it a time issue? Is it misreading them? Is it being foiled by a sort of red herring answer? Do the correct answers make sense when you go back and look at it later? If you can identify the main cause of those wrong answers, that will help you create a targeted strategy for improving.

Best of luck!

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Vi,

Thanks for the very kind words about how the books have helped you—we really appreciate them!

The good news here is that you aren't very far away from where you want to be. Going from the mid-160s into the 170s is a matter of small adjustments, not major changes. Further, when there's no specific or obvious weakness, it's probably just a few different possible causes that could be in play. One is difficulty. When you look at the questions you are missing, what is the range of difficulty that you see? Are they the higher level ones? Related note, you can score all your practice tests for free in our Self-Study Area, at http://students.powerscore.com/self-study/index.cfm. The test results break down your performance, and also show you the difficulty of the questions Another possible cause is time pressure. Where are you missing the questions? Is it spread through the section? Only in the second half? Or all at the end? If you can tell me what you've seen, we can tell if this is playing a role. Third, although no specific question type seems to be at fault, is there anything you see from a reasoning type standpoint? For example, do causal arguments pose a greater difficulty for you? Sometimes what we find is that it's not the questions type, but the reasoning type, and since the reasoning type appears in all different question types, fixing that fixes multiple questions. Please let me know your thoughts on the above, and we'll keep talking.

Also, I'm all for you reviewing the LRB again—it's very tough to get all the little points out of that book on the first read through (partially because it is gigantic!), so I think that reviewing it will help solidify the ideas and help you be even more assured with the techniques. Thanks!