Struggling with LR

[sekyiste]

With test day approaching, I am still struggling with the LR section. At first I thought it was timing so I cut down answering all questions so I can take my time to answer at least 20 questions sometimes selecting questions I am more comfortable with. The first 10 are always good, out of 10 i'll get 8 right. The remaining 10 I sometimes get all wrong or 2 OR 3 correct. I have dedicated soo much time to studying and I feel like its not paying off. At this point I cant give up but at the same time I dont know what to do. With such a short time left I just want to get at least 15 right answers per LR section. I have stopped taking full practice tests and only focusing on taking timed LR sections. Still no improvements. Any advice on what to do? Is it also possible to increase my LR section score with less than a week from test day?

[Adam Tyson]

There are a few things you can do that might help, sekyiste. First, take a day off and give your brain a rest. Studying for the LSAT is about rewiring the brain to think along different pathways, logical ones that we mostly aren't used to following, and that inflicts a lot of stress on the brain. That's okay - no pain, no gain, as they say - but you can't just keep pounding away without giving yourself time to heal now and then. Go to a movie, watch TV, read something fun and easy (I recommend pretty much anything by Bill Bryson, but especially A Walk in the Woods), take a nap, play go fish or Cards Against Humanity or something else with friends.

Next, don't just focus on LR, but do plan to take another practice test. You cannot afford to let your LG and RC skills get rusty, especially not if you are relying on them to help balance out some of your LR weaknesses. Put the greatest emphasis on LR, for sure, but take periodic breaks from LR to give appropriate attention to those other sections.

Next, consider your pacing, and the ultimate goal here which is more right answers (as opposed to just more answered questions). Set your pace with an eye towards only answer 15 questions, guessing on the rest. The first 10 are usually fairly easy, so you will probably still be answering most of those, but as soon as you come across any stimulus that gives you pause for any reason, guess and move on, marking that question in the test booklet to come back to later if you have time. It doesn't matter if you skip a bunch in a row, especially in the mid-teens to early-20s, as those tend to include a lot of the toughest questions in the section. You don't want to get bogged down on q18 when you could be easily knocking out q24 and q25 in the same amount of time and getting both right.

Constantly remind yourself of your strategies and techniques. What kind of question is it? What are you supposed to do with that question type? Is there something conditional that you should diagram? What is the conclusion, and is there a flaw in the argument? Prephrase your answer every single time, then sort your answers into losers and contenders quickly, without spending any time staring at any one answer and trying to see if it deserves further consideration. If you don't hate it, call it a contender and move to the next one, fast. Only after you have sorted the answers do you spend any time thinking about the answer choices that are still in contention, and then it's only about which one is better than the other and why.

To practice these strategies, turn off the timer for a while. Do an untimed section this way, just answering the easier questions and then skipping anything harder, then circling back to start slowly and methodically applying those strategies to those questions. Try covering the answer choices with your hand and not peeking until you have a solid prephrase in mind - that should help you build the habit of analyzing the stimulus before looking for an answer to jump out at you. The authors will try to distract and confuse you and make bad answers look good and good answers look bad, so go into the answer choices prepared to fight off those distractions with your prephrase.

First, though, take a day. Relax. Get a massage, maybe. Listen to music. Take a nap. Give your poor, tired brain a chance to recover from the damage you've been inflicting on it.

Good luck! You can do it!