Speed and Comprehension

[paralegalchgo]

I feel like I have struggled so much to “get” the way the LSAT test makers think. In 2009 I took an online Powerscore course and at the time decided due to family obligations was not ready to attend law school but since then, I have been on/off studying for the LSAT either by using the Powerscore Bibles or taking (untimed) practice tests. In June 2015, I thought I was ready but bombed big time by getting a 143. I know I want to attend law school (PT) but between working FT (and being a parent) I feel I am at a disadvantage because I don’t have the luxury of time. I found that when I took the June 2015 test, my biggest setback was that I would run out of time and this was probably my own fault since I did not really take timed practice exams. I was more concerned with understanding the concepts and rules for approaching the problems that I didn’t factor in the timed constraints.
However, I don’t know if I am just feeling mentally burnt out but I find that when I read a Logical Reasoning passage, it takes 2-3 re-reads for me to fully understand the flow of the passage and determine how I am supposed to break it down to attach the answer choices. I feel that somewhere in my approach I am going about this the wrong way if it takes me a few times to grasp the facts/argument of the passage which then leads me to getting discouraged.

[Robert Carroll]

paralegal,

One thing to consider is that not all Logical Reasoning stimuli are created equal - some are much more straightforward, whereas some "hide the ball" so effectively that it takes very careful reading to untangle what the author was even trying to say (much less whether the author's point was well made!). Length of the stimulus is not necessarily a guide - a short stimulus could be simple or could be complicated in the interaction of its parts. Thus, if you find yourself occasionally feeling lost, remember you might be dealing with a particularly difficult stimulus.

If you routinely have the problem described in your post, then it helps immensely to know the kinds of things you can expect to see in a LR stimulus. Even in a particularly difficult stimulus, the general features won't change, they'll just be more complicated or subtle, so knowing what to expect allows you to orient yourself if things aren't perfectly clear at first. The things you need to look for are in the Logical Reasoning Primary Objectives. If a stimulus is intimidating, don't try to juggle all the information at once - determine whether the stimulus is an argument, pick apart the pieces of the argument if it is, notice if you see conditional reasoning, etc. On its own, each step will be simpler than the whole process of understanding the stimulus - "Is this an argument?" is a Yes/No question, so you have only two choices there. Determining what the conclusion of the argument is means that if you've already answered "Yes" to the previous question, you need only look at all the parts (sentences or parts of sentences) in the stimulus and determine whether or not each is the conclusion. Although there may be more than two sentences or discrete parts in the stimulus, and thus this question may have more possible answers than the "Yes/No" situation before, it won't be much more complicated than this.

At first this procedure may be slow, even if you've been studying on and off before, because it takes practice and you may either forget some steps or struggle to apply some of the steps. Thus, you need to commit to doing enough practice so that you develop the skill to apply the procedure correctly; when you do it enough times and successfully evaluate stimuli (and then, of course, use that information to prove the correct answer!) you'll find further practice goes more quickly and easily because the variety of stimuli, while large, isn't unlimited - and sometimes you'll notice common patterns in stimuli that will build familiarity with the thinking of the testmakers.

In order to practice right, you need to review your mistakes. If you missed something (and that doesn't just mean the correct answer; any step in the understanding and attacking of a stimulus is vital to do well on Logical Reasoning), go back and seek to understand what you missed and how you can avoid doing the same in the future. Work on accuracy first, and then work on speed later - you need to get the right procedure down so that you always employ it, and rushing won't help you understand the stimuli better.

I hope this has helped!