- Fri Jan 13, 2017 6:42 pm
#32080
Your concerns are pretty normal, fmihalic1477, and we get asked all the time about how to get faster on logic games. Here's the thing - faster comes as a byproduct of better. The more you practice, the more efficient your diagrams get and the faster and easier the inferences come, the faster you will get. Speed by itself shouldn't be a goal - focus instead on creating better diagrams, being accurate and confident, and the speed will come along with that.
I want to caution you about setting specific time goals for any one game or any one game type. "Basic" linear doesn't mean "easy" linear - it only means that there are two variable sets, the order and the stuff being placed in that order. Some basic linear games are ridiculously hard, while some advanced linear games are very, very easy (the red and green trucks game comes to mind here). Rather than setting yourself up with what may be an unrealistic and somewhat meaningless goal of 7 minutes for any basic linear game you see, focus on building better diagrams on all your games and on averaging under 9 minutes over the course of any set of four games. Some may take you 12 minutes, others may take 6 - it's the average that matters if you want to finish all four games with high accuracy.
To get there, do something that may be counter-intuitive, and that's spend more time diagramming. I see it over and over again - students rush to the questions with incomplete diagrams missing key inferences because they think they can't afford to "waste" time exploring the relationships created by the rules while the clock is ticking. They fail to recognize that they are then wasting time on the questions, because they are constantly re-drawing, going back to re-do work they have already done, rethinking things and trying to ferret out inferences that they should have already found. Think of your diagram as being a great investment that pays huge dividends quickly. An extra minute on the diagram spent considering options (what if X is in the third group? what if the RP block is in the 4th and 5th slots?) may save you two or three minutes when you get to the questions. I've seen a student spend two minutes on a diagram and then 10 minutes on the questions, but when they re-do it and spend 5 minutes on the diagram they knock the questions out in just 3 minutes. That's what you should be aiming for!
For right now, set modest goals. If you are taking 12-15 minutes per game, then on your next few game sections plan on taking an average of 11.5 minutes per game, with at least half of that time spent on the diagram before you even attempt the first question. If you can hit that pace with high accuracy, you will complete three games in the time allotted, and have 30 seconds left at the end to bubble in your guesses on the last game (and maybe even tackle game 4's list question with no diagram, if it has one). Once you can do that consistently, then you can start whittling that average down to 10.5 minutes, then 9.5, and eventually get down to that average of 8 minutes and 45 seconds that will get you all four games. Always work at the pace that gets you the highest accuracy, not the one that gets you the most questions answered. Quality, not quantity, is what gets you the points here, so never work any faster than the pace at which you remain perfect.
Give that approach and philosophy a try and I bet you will see your time start to go down while your accuracy goes up. Good luck and let us know how it goes!
Adam M. Tyson
PowerScore LSAT, GRE, ACT and SAT Instructor
Follow me on Twitter at
https://twitter.com/LSATadam
