Just clarifying the RC Global section for going back to text

[lathlee]

Dear Admin,

I just want to make sure about this personal discrepancies that I seem to have these days.

Even though Logic Bible's RC , (especially 2017 version Dave made this part crystal clear), said that LSAT takers can go back to the text to separate the correct answer from the incorrect ones, I personally took it as it only applies to specific and concept reference questions. The reason is that As in that logic bible RC said i should have pretty good understanding the big picture of the text, aka, global reference, as I finish reading and do viewstamp analysis.

but as I go over the incorrect questions that I got wrong in the prior over, and some of them are global reference questions, i get to realize that many to all of these incorrect questions, if i went back to the text to have more of crystal understanding instead of my intuition of what author said, I could have got the question correct. However, the global reference questions, i thought my past method was the way to go and way to do it in order to save time.

These days, as I become more and more proficient in reading texts, I get to save time more than before including analyzing the VIEWSTAMP and figuring out all the traps, e.g. traps of separation before I jump in doing the questions, and my time saving for figuring out each RC passage technique is getting better, I want to ask to Dave and the admins.

Am I okay or do you guys, the LSAT bible authors, encourage for us, your students, to go back to the text for the global reference questions? If I am not supposed to go back to the text to answer global reference questions, am I doing my viewstamp analysis wrong?

[lathlee]

can i get an answer plz thx

[Claire Horan]

Hi Lathlee,

I did not write the Powerscore Bibles, but I will give you my opinion based on my own experience and what I see with students in LSAT courses and tutoring.

If you read slowly enough, processing the text in chunks and annotating as you go, you shouldn't have to go back to the text to answer a global question. I especially say this to students who read too quickly and rush to the questions or those who expect to just "find" the answers in the passage. Many students are used to taking these shortcuts with reading comprehension on other standardized tests, and, as you know, that doesn't work on the LSAT.

On the other hand, once I have read the passage and moved on to the questions, if I get to a global question that I cannot answer with a reasonable level of certainty, I will return to the text. Of course! But this doesn't happen often because I make sure to read slowly enough the first time. There is less time left for the questions as a result, but less time is needed because I am more sure of what I am looking for.

From reading your assessment of how you are doing, it sounds to me like you are not reading the passage slowly and deeply enough to have a good shot at answering the global questions. For the Structure component, are you annotating what the author is doing in each paragraph? Are you marking all the different views? The tone? The main point? If you were able to annotate the entire ViewSTAMP as you were reading or after, I would expect you to be able to answer them most of the time.

All that said, the bottom line is to do what gets you higher scores. So track how your scores differ and try to diagnose changes in how you've been approaching the passages. Go with whatever yields more correct answers! Good luck!