About question 20 and onwards in LR

[desiboy96]

Hello Powerscore, during my practice I've noticed that the overwhelming majority of the questions I have been getting wrong in LR are those from question 20 and onwards (it is not limited to a specific question type). As I understand it and correct me if I'm wrong, these questions are usually the hardest on a section. To mitigate my errors, I have been making a list of all the questions I got wrong, writing down what tempted me to pick the wrong answer choice and ignore a correct answer choice. For the most part though, I manage to limit it down to the correct answer and a tempting wrong answer.

I have also made a little checklist that I read everyday to pinpoint some common mistakes I have been making in LR so that I engrain these mistakes in my head so I don't forget them. If you're curious these include but are not limited to, not paying attention to contrapositives in the stimulus or the answer choices, not thinking about logical equivalents that could mean the same thing as what I prephrased (ex. few= not many), and not thinking carefully about the implications of an answer when inserted into the stimulus even if the answer may not seem relevant.

My question is do you have any tips for navigating through these questions? I realize there is no one size fits all approach or magical solution to this question, but really any advice helps.

Thanks for reading this

[atierney]

Hello,

Firstly let me commend you for being so observant! Indeed, the final 5 or 6 questions (generally those questions after 20) of the LR are the most difficult, and this is, as you mentioned, irrespective of question type.

Now, given this increased degree of difficulty with respect to these questions, improvement on them correlates strongly with general with overall improvement of the section. In other words, the better you get at each question type/the LR section as a whole, the more proficiently you will be able to answer the most difficult questions on the section, generally. Thus, I would really say that to ensure improvement you should really focus on two things: a) time management and b) a comprehensive understanding of each question type.

In terms of time management, I would suggest making it a goal to try to do the first ten questions of the LR section in under ten minutes if possible, ideally (and this is very ideal indeed) in under eight minutes. It's doable, but obviously you don't want to compromise on accuracy. The idea here is to be able to allocate as much time as possible on the latter questions, especially those parallel reasoning that can take up to two minutes just to read the stimulus and answer choices all the way through! Additionally, the more time you can save on easier problems, the more likely you can minimize the risk of missing a key word in one of the stimuli or answer choices of these later problems.

As for practicing question types, this is definitely one of the advantages of studying with PowerScore. Utilizing the bibles, self-study, or live/online course materials, you can get comprehensive instruction on all question types, but specifically those (like parallel reasoning questions) that are more likely to show up toward the end of the test, due in large part to their own inherent difficulty.

Finally, don't be afraid to listen to your gut! The key is to read each answer as thoroughly as possible, but time is a pesky lock, and at the end of the day, after you've reasoned through during process of elimination it's best to go with the first answer choice that struck as the correct one.

Let me know if you have any further questions, and I wish you the best of luck in your LSAT preparation!

[desiboy96]

Hello, thank you so much for the advice!