LR Problem Set #3, Q: 264

[moshei24]

How is E a better answer than B? Both can explain why the funding is inadequate. I chose B. But I see why E works, too. Unless, am I not able to assume that some of the funding goes places other than the scientists? So B would be wrong, because all the funding goes to the scientists, so even if their salaries went up, there still is enough money? Would you be able to make this question a little clearer please? Thank you.

[Adam Tyson]

I think you are right that B might help resolve the issue here, but it doesn't do nearly so much as answer E does, and I would hope that your prephrase was something closer to E than to B (something like "funding 10 years ago was grossly inadequate").

Problems with B include 1) it only deals with one aspect of cost - salaries. We cannot assume that that's the only place the money goes, so if it helps it might not help much. 2) The stimulus tells us that even taking inflation into account, funding has tripled - answer B doesn't say how much higher than the rate of inflation the rate of salary increase has been. B can still be true and not have much impact on the final equation. 3) It only deals with scientists employed by the government. Who says that they make up a large component of all the scientists working in the field? Maybe there's just one of those, and the rest are all in universities and private industry, getting government funding by way of grants. B just doesn't do enough.

E is a big difference - it takes everything into account in one sweeping statement. If funding back then was almost nonexistent, and now it's increased sixfold, that's still only six times "not much", which means it might still be "not much". That resolves the paradox very neatly.

Hope that helped.

Adam

[moshei24]

That does help. Thank you. I'm not sure if I even prephrased on this question. I tend to prephrase more often when I see where the question is going and the answer pops into my head right away. If I have to take some time to think about answer, I usually don't prephrase.

[Adam Tyson]

If you're looking for a breakthrough on LR, it might be that taking that extra moment to prephrase could get you there. You may feel like it's taking you extra time, but for many students that extra time pays off in a quick and confident rejection of wrong answers, especially trick answers that you might otherwise spend some time analyzing. I find that prephrasing works a lot like developing inferences in a LG diagram - taking time pays off. Slowing down allows you to speed up. Just a thought - perhaps it would be worth practicing your prephrasing more to see what impact it has on your performance? It is one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal.

A question - do you prephrase the main point and tone in your RC passages? If not, you should consider trying it. I believe you mentioned you were looking for additional strategies to improve RC, and again I find that prephrasing is very, very powerful stuff.

Adam

[moshei24]

So for LR, I sometimes do prephrase, because I often know right away what I'm looking for, but I feel that to take 15 seconds to think about what the answer is going to be when off the bat I have no clue can eat up crucial timing. You think I should prephrase even when I don't have a clue where it's going? With 3.5 weeks until the test, I should experiment with a new method? Though, more often than not, my LR mistakes are stupid mistakes because I missed a little wording or because I just feel for a trick that is uncharacteristic of me.

When it comes to RC, lately, I get the MP questions right. It's rare that I get it wrong, even though I don't really prephrase. I think I do prephrase subconsciously because I read the passages with a better flow now, and reading with the flow, I know what's going on, and I end up recognizing the MP right away when I read the choices. And for the tone, I also usually get it right because I could cancel out a bunch of the choices right away, and also for those questions the words I would use to describe the tone usually won't be the ones the LSAT uses.

When I bombed an LSAT yesterday (163), I messed up on a few respects. On LR, I was tired and didn't have complete focus. I got an 89% question wrong because I misread it and answered something that it wasn't asking. I got 8 wrong in the two sections, which is my worst in a LONG time. In LG, I got 4 wrong, and got 5/6 on the dinosaur game, but I think I psyched myself out a little bit knowing that game was coming and my timing overall wasn't too good. From what I could see, the dinosaur game is overratedly difficult. In RC, I got 9 wrong, and shot myself in the foot on the second game when I was moving at a good pace, and on one of the last questions in that game, I second guessed the answer that I had gotten in under 30 secs for two mins, which really through me off. I knew I had 8:45 for each of the last two passages, but it would be 15 questions, so I was cutting it close on time. And then to top it off, the third passage was CC, and it was a hard humanities, which is my RC weakness at the moment, so it got under my skin, I couldn't focus on the reading, and got 5/8 wrong. So I know where I messed up in each section, and my plan now is to take another test on Sunday, and take what I learned to get back on track with that test.

Do you have any tips of how to go about reading dense humanities passages? I tend to have issues getting through them, which messes me over on the questions. I feel like they flow worse than every other type of passage...

Thanks!

PS - Breakdown on this test:

80/101

LR: 43/51 (4 wrong in each)
RC: 18/27
LG: 19/23
Exp. LR: 23/26 (one of the ones I got wrong was the third question - very uncharacteristic of me, and sorta careless.)

And I consider a 163 to be bombing the test because I got a 167 last week and a 165 the week before.

All advice is appreciated. Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

Since this thread is about an LR issue, I'll limit my response to that issue. You can re-port the RC question in the appropriate section of the forum and I'm sure you'll get great feedback.

Now, as to prephrasing, three answers. First, 15 seconds is way too long to think about your prephrase. 3-5 seconds is the most I would spend, and I think that for most students that investment will absolutely pay off big time. Second, when you have no idea what's going on in a stimulus, that's absolutely the most important time to prephrase, because otherwise you go into the answer choices totally susceptible to attractive wrong answers like opposite answers and shell games. Prephrasing will force you to make sense of what you just read. If you can't come up with a prephrase, you should consider whether you ought to re-read the stimulus rather than go to the answer choices completely unprepared for them. Third, prephrasing should NOT be a new method - you're already using it sometimes, and I am suggesting that you use it more often, not just when it's easy.

With 3.5 weeks yet, you still aren't where you want to be, so why not keep trying to add new tools to your toolbox? You know the old saying about what happens when you keep on doing what you always did: you will keeping on getting what you always got. I'm not saying it's time to try some radical new approach and throw away everything you've been doing - I'm saying to apply a technique that you already know works more frequently and diligently.

You're here for advice - you need to be more open to accepting that advice. Those of us giving it have taken the test and killed it, and we've been working with students at every level for a while now with a great set of tools and resources, usually with great success. You have to trust us and not assume that you know better. If you want to get to the next level, then you have to try new things.

Adam

[moshei24]

Thank you.

And in response to your last comment - I'm not saying I know better. But one thing is that I've heard conflicting tips from different PowerScore instructors. And I've heard things that I know wouldn't apply to me. So when I get advice, I weigh the pros and cons and decide if it would be beneficial to me. Me questioning yours or anyone else's advice is not me saying I know better or saying your advice is bad; it's me getting more insight into it so I could better decide if it will benefit me.

One issue that I've noticed with prephrasing is that I'll prephrase an answer and that will be an answer that works, but there will be a better answer that works better that will end up being the right answer, but I may end up crossing it out because I didn't think into it enough because my prephrase said something else. What do you do about that?

Thanks,
Moshe

[moshei24]

Adam, if you see this, I posted a question specifically for you on this thread (http://forum.powerscore.com/lsat/viewto ... f=2&t=2184).

As for your comments on RC main point questions, after the test I just took, I see more what you mean about prephrasing (and I'm sorry for not taking your advice sooner). For easier MP questions, prephrasing isn't as crucial, but for the more difficult ones, I see now why you suggest it. I got 2/4 MP's wrong on this past LSAT, which was 3/9 RC mistakes. How would you suggest going about prephrasing when it comes to MP's?

Thank you,
Moshe

[Adam Tyson]

Prephrasing the main point on an RC passage is typically more involved than on an LR question - the main points tend to be more complex, expressed in compound sentences. Often (though not always) I find the main point to be a combination of some piece of information found in the first paragraph and another piece found in the last paragraph, so I always encourage my students to give extra focus to the very beginning and the very end of the passage.

This isn't an accident, by the way - the authors know that many students won't remember the opening information by the time they get to the questions. They also know that many students tend to rush through the last few lines, perhaps because they see a "light at the end of the tunnel" and want to hurry up and start answering questions. "Hiding" important info in places where students will forget it or just plain miss it is typical behavior of the sneaky folks that write this test. Don't let them get away with it - take additional notes and pay extra attention to the opening, maybe even reviewing it one more time after you finish the passage. Slow down, rather than speed up, as you come to the end, and really focus on it. A lot of main point questions will be easier to answer this way.

One last note - to prephrase the main point, ask yourself this: "How would I explain what this was about, in no more than two sentences and without being too general, to someone who hadn't read it?" That will help make the difference between, say, "It's about Gray Marketing" and "It defines Gray Marketing as something that causes problems for trademark owners, and argues for better and more consistent regulation."

Give those approaches and try and see what that does for you.

Adam

[moshei24]

Thank you, Adam.

How much time do you think is a reasonable amount of time to put into prephrasing MP questions? Because sometimes it could be hard to prephrase those types of questions?

Over the past few days, I've been prephrasing LR a lot more, and thank you - it's helped, especially with justify questions. But in general it allows me to see more patterns in the questions and what the answers are going to be, so thank you for stressing that onto me. And for justify questions, I feel like taking extra time to prephrase them really help, because they are the most mechanical type of question out there.

Again, thank you!