Improving LR

[rose145]

Hi!!
I’ve completely worked through the 3 bibles and am nearly finished the workbooks. I find I’m strongest in LG section and usually get 20 q’s correct. Furtner, II’ve seen the most improvement with my RC section and am now also scoring about 22 correct (almost a 10pt increase). However, I’m rarely breaking 18 correct on the LR sections which is hurting my overall score. How would you suggest improving on this section. So far I’ve been trying to isolate question types that I get wrong aka formal logic and return to the bibles to drill the rules.

Is it simply reviewing practice tests and going over the basics again? Would you suggest purchasing the type training for LR. I’m only writing in November so I still have over two months to improve which I think is definitely possible. Any advice is helpful

[Rachael Wilkenfeld]

Hi Rose,

First, congrats on your improvement so far! It seems like you've made great strides and have a lot to be proud of.

Second, let's talk about how to get that LR score up a bit. If you aren't noticing any glaring patterns in terms of question type missed, you want to look at big picture reasons that you are missing questions. There are a few common reasons:

1) You are taking the wrong amount of time on questions. This could mean spending too much time on questions that you are likely to miss anyway, or spending too much time on questions because of inefficiency (needing to re-read the stimulus multiple times, missing conditional reasoning, and going back to draw it out, and so on). It could mean spending too little time on questions as well by rushing through questions you could have gotten correct in a reasonable amount of time, but felt that you needed to keep moving.

2) You are losing focus at some point in the section. This is usually pretty straightforward to identify. You'll notice a string of missed questions in a row (or 3/5 in a block missed) that is unusual for you. That's a sign something unusual happened, and it's often that you lost focus for one reason or another.

3) You are habitually skipping a critical part of LR analysis. It could be failing to identify the conclusion of the argument, failing to come up with a prephrase, or failing identify common patterns of reasoning such as causal or conditional reasoning. Skipping the phrephase is the most common error student will make with the LR process because it's so hard to force your self to stop before getting to the questions.

4) You are going through the questions in too rigid of an order. I love doing things in order. I've read every Agatha Christie book in order of publication, because I really like things in order. But the LR section will punish you for this desire. You want to keep moving through the section, and move on from questions once you are not making progress. That can mean skipping a question as soon as you read the stimulus because you realize the stimulus doesn't make a lick of sense. Or it can mean moving one once you've narrowed it down to two answer choices and can't see the difference between them. You can always go back to questions you skip or guess on. But moving on from questions you are less likely to get correct gives you more time for the questions you find easier.

The above was all assuming that your errors are not focused in a single (or a few) question types. If they are, the question type training may be helpful. But if they seem all over the map, I'd consider the 4 possibilities above as areas of focus.

Ultimately, you have plenty of time before November. Keep up the great work!

Rachael