Help!

[bd622]

Hi there,

I am hoping that you can give me a bit of advice about speed. I actually took a proctored test today and got so freaked out in the middle of it that I had to get up and leave. Everything was blurring together. I was completing 2 full games and a couple questions of a 3rd on LGs, 18 or so LRs out of the 25, and I hadn't even gotten to reading comprehension yet but I can anticipate, based on my past performance, that I would only be able to complete 3 of the 4 sections.

I know that if I can increase my speed it will also help me to calm down in approaching the rest of the questions. I have talked to a learning consultant and she and I drew up a study plan for the next month in which I will take 3 PrepTests a week, starting at 50 minutes per section and then cutting 1/14th of that time on each section for each test thereafter (based on how many tests I will be taking in the next month). I recognize that this means that I will not be able to obtain accurate scores on all of these tests, which I am a bit concerned about just because it feels a bit like I am "wasting" them, but I think that this sounds like the best way for me to slowly chip away at my time while also concentrating on accuracy.

Would you mind weighing in on this plan? Based on all of your experiences with other students, does this sound like an effective method?

Thank you

[Adam Tyson]

Hey bd - I'm hoping that mine is going to be only one of several answers to this question. Here are my thoughts.

First, I'll tell you what I tell a lot of my students, and it seems to help. Relax. At this stage you're still working on the concepts - your time will improve as you get familiar with more of the strategies and the patterns used by the test makers. Also, crunch some numbers - see what sort of a score you might get if you finished 3 games with confidence, 3 reading passages, and 18 LR questions, plus filling in all the rest that you weren't able to get to with one letter choice (all B, for example) as your guess. Do that with a test you've already taken. Is that score in range of what you're hoping to get? If so, then breathe easy knowing that you don't have to finish to do well. I'll say it again - you do not have to finish the test in order to do well. The scoring scale on the LSAT is actually fairly forgiving.

After you've done that, remind yourself that you are almost certainly going to improve as the course goes along. You'll be more skilled, more confident, and a lot of the material will become more familiar to you (because the test-makers tend to recycle a lot - they don't reinvent the wheel with every new test, but rather take old games and questions and rework them to make them seem new).

Now, as to your study plan, it sounds fairly aggressive to me. At three tests a week, will you have enough tests to get you all the way through until your test date? Maybe it would be a good idea to intersperse some of those tests with single sections, just to be sure you have enough material to last? You also need to leave room to do the homework for the lessons and to review the lesson material. Don't burn yourself out.

Finally, practice ways to tune out distractions, like the sound of others turning pages. (By the way, for all you know they are turning back to previous pages because they lack confidence in their answers, so you might actually be ahead of them! It doesn't matter where anyone else is - you work at your own pace and do your best, and you'll be fine). How do you practice tuning that stuff out? Try taking a practice test in the food court at the mall, or in a busy coffee shop, or in McDonalds at lunch hour. If you can focus in those environments, with all that noise and movement around you, then you should be able to focus and tune out the scratching and sniffing and pencils and erasers and page movements in the test center.

Hope some of that helps, and I hope we'll both hear from a few other folks with other ideas. Your concerns are valid, but the problem is one that can be solved. Hang in there!

Adam M. Tyson
PowerScore LSAT Instructor

[bd622]

Hi Adam,

Thank you so much for your response. Yes, I would also love more opinions in response to my post, but what you have offered is definitely helpful!

I definitely know that relaxing is of utmost importance!

Thank you.

[Dave Killoran]

Hey BD,

Thanks for the questions, and the corresponding information. Let me add a few more points to Adam's good advice.

First, you are right, you are still early in the course, and you are in the middle of the "power" lessons, where a lot of new, difficult concepts are presented. It always takes some time for the ideas not just to sink in, but to really become entrenched and fully available. That will happen as the course moves along, and that alone will be one factor in increasing your speed (more on this idea later).

Second, I always like to joke with my students that the fast flipping of pages is not just meaningless, but often is a sign that someone is in trouble. It's like they see the first question or two and they say to themselves, "Well, I can't do that, so it's on to the next page," where the same thing happens again, so suddenly they are flipping a lot of pages! However, the thing I would note is that mentally, you should be in a place where you don't even hear other people in the room, let alone the flipping of pages. You have to be in the zone, and focused solely on yourself. We talk about this in a later course module about test mentality, but I'd suggest you jump ahead and listen to that module right now (It's in the Online Student Center, under one of the later lessons--the exact one escapes me at the moment).

Third, let's discuss the study plan. The plan somewhat worries me because it appears to focus so much on the time aspect that it may in fact make it worse. Every time you start a test, you are thinking, "I've got to go faster this time." That then becomes your focus, when in fact your focus should be on understanding what is on the page. Is my point clear here? The plan calibrates your efforts in a way that subtly seems to emphasize the very concerns you already have.

I've addressed speed a few times elsewhere on this forum (and you'll see it addressed in the classroom books as well, of course!), but before you focus on speed, you have to have concept recognition down cold (if you know what you are looking at with certainty, then you can move faster; uncertainty always breeds slower performance). I talk a bit more about these ideas in another post I made that you may find helpful (see the first half of my post at http://forum.powerscore.com/lsat/viewto ... =981#p1847).

Part of what is happening to you is nerves. You know the pressure is on to go faster, and that pressure then defeats your ability to retain information, which then cycles back and slows you down. It's a vicious circle! How to defeat that, then? Relaxation is certainly a big part of it, but I like to get more specific about how to go about relaxing. Here is one piece of advice that I've found is helpful: stop focusing on the end result. Instead, focus on the correct process: identifying the pieces of the argument, the meaning of the elements, etc. Don't worry about needing to go faster, getting questions correct, or even your overall score. This technique is similar to one that sports psychiatrists use with athletes who will face high-pressure performance situations (think game winning free throws in basketball, playing the last hole of a major golf championship when it's tied, or an Olympics final performance). In each of those instances, the advice is to not think about the end result. Instead, reduce pressure by focusing on the process. That reduced pressure will allow you to ward off the anxiety and relax a bit, and that will be another factor in your score improvement.

Essentially, it becomes an interesting causal argument: you think going faster will reduce the pressure, but I'm wondering if reducing the pressure won't actually cause you to go faster

As for three tests a week, I don't object to that number, as long as you have sufficient time to review every question on each test (both correct and incorrect!), and work through your class material, etc.

Last, if you combine some of the things I've said here, you may see that score increases (which is really what we are talking about, after all) are typically not about fixing one thing, but rather about fixing a number of small things that then add up (learn the concepts better so you can recognize them faster; learn the techniques better so you can apply them faster and more decisively; control your anxiety so you can take in the information more clearly and read more quickly; etc). This is the aggregation of marginal gains, where multiple small improvements in process add up to a large positive difference in outcome. But, the process can seem frustrating because usually there isn't one great shining moment where you see this huge difference. Instead, it takes time and work. But it gets you to your goal, and who really cares how you get there, right?

Well, that's a few things that jumped out at me from what you said. I hope that helps. Thanks!

[bd622]

Thank you SO much. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that both of you took the time to provide me with such detailed responses.

One more question:

I find that I perform substantially faster and more accurately on the experimental sections of the exams. Are the experimental sections taken from true, non-experimental past test sections? (As in, can I still count them as a reliable judge of my performance)?

Thank you!

[Dave Killoran]

Great, glad we could help!

Yes, those experimental sections appeared on previously released LSATs (it tells you the test it came from in the back of the exam), so they "count" (just not for this test, however). So, if you can do well on those, you are doing well on a real section.

Thanks!