Best way to memorize LR strategies? Forum

[proustitute]

I feel very disorganized when it comes to LR strategies/categorizing question stems. I'm a little bit flustered because of the different ways the question stems are categorized in the lsat trainer (mike kim) Vs. elsewhere, anyone that has used the trainer + the bible /other resources, have a comprehensive way they mapped out all of the stems/approaches?

Also, did you guys limit your memorization/familiarity with the stems-approaches with drilling and PTs? Or did you guys actually memorize the strategies in a way you might a formula?

TY.

[Mikey]

I think the best way to do it is to just practice. But I guess you can memorize strategies (or certain tips and tricks for a question type, which can be good to know) if you want, although with practice you will just get used to the strategies since you learn them as a skill. And you must practice, so I feel like spending most of your time memorizing and not doing questions wouldn't be the best use of your time. I'm not saying ignore memorizing anything, because you do need to know how to do things. All I'm saying is to not do this whole memorizing thing over doing practice questions, which are more valuable.

[Platopus]

I'm not sure you need to be "memorizing" the approaches to LR. For the most part, familiarity with the test is what teaches you what you need to be looking for in each answer. I would suggest working through the practice problems in each chapter of your books. Working as you go along gives you an idea of what you need to be looking for. Eventually, the question stems boil down to a single word. If you drill enough you be able to see words such as "explain", "discrepancy", "disagree", "weaken", "support", "infer", "required", and what not, and you won't even really be reading the stem in full - at least in my experience. At this point, it's not really a matter of approaching the questions methodologically, it's a little bit intuition, and a lot of "muscle memory". Don't get too bogged down with the fancy terms these books through around. Things like the "negation test" are a tool, not necessarily a strict approach that needs to be followed for every necessary assumption question.

[maybeman]