What Books Make the RC Passages Appear Easy? Forum

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gdane

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Re: What Books Make the RC Passages Appear Easy?

Post by gdane » Mon Jul 19, 2010 7:13 pm

hv1 wrote:
MagnumLifeStyle wrote:I've been searching this forum and have seen several recommendations. I've seen many recommend the Economist, but I think the level of difficulty of its prose is comparatively easier than that of the passages that appear in the RC section.

Could you please recommend any book (hopefully interesting) that you've read that makes the RC passages look very easy?
Reading TONS of RC passages. Read nearly every RC passage before the real LSAT. That is what makes RC look easier.

After at least 50 passages, you will see argument patterns (cause/effect, etc.) as well as argument patterns distinct to the subject (such as nuances and differences in law passages, science passages, history passages, etc.).
Does your name stand for "Herpes Virus-1"?

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Re: What Books Make the RC Passages Appear Easy?

Post by djjf39 » Mon Jul 19, 2010 7:15 pm

sumus romani wrote:
djjf39 wrote:
let/them/eat/cake wrote:Heidegger. Being and Time.
Don't bother with this book, very little comparison with RC sections. Try reading a philosophy anthology instead, like The Nature of Consciousness

I take it you mean The Nature of Consciousness edited by Block. That is a great compilation. But it runs used for $20 at Amazon. There are cheaper books available. Also, of the phil of mind stuff, the consciousness stuff is the hardest to grasp, and therefore not necessarily the best to start with. Some parts of it have been taken over by zombies (you just have to look into it further :lol: ). A good survey from, say 15 years ago could cost the OP just $5, and include mind-body stuff. For example, The Nature of Mind by Rosenthal is excellent. To be sure, the OP will not be up on the best recent work in phil of mind, but the point is to increase reading comprehension.
Good point about the cost, I am jaded b/c I get a lot of philosophy books for free from the department and publishers. I would point out that philpapers.org has nearly every essay in the Block anthology for free personal access.

sumus romani

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Re: What Books Make the RC Passages Appear Easy?

Post by sumus romani » Mon Jul 19, 2010 7:16 pm

No, read stuff that has asserts the following relationship: premises --> conclusion.

This means science-stuff or philosophy.

Stuff that is just dense or difficult won't necessarily resemble the RC passages, and thus won't improve your RC or LR as much.

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Re: What Books Make the RC Passages Appear Easy?

Post by apropos » Tue Jul 20, 2010 7:46 pm

I very much agree that philosophy articles are the best way to make RC passages seem easy. "Philosophy and the Limits of Philosophy" by Bernard Williams is written in a good style for this. I think Phil of Mind would generally require too much knowledge of specialized concepts. Philosophy of Mind employs a lot of terms that are either not used at all outside of philosophy or are used in a totally different way than youre used to (and often multiple ways among different philosophers). It would take a lot of learning that's probably not worth the effort if all youre looking to do is improve RC. It would be better to find philosophy stuff that doesn't require much learning so you can concentrate on just the reading part.

So I'd go with Ethics or Politics. Rawls's A Theory of Justice would be good. Stuff by Williams (mentioned above). Thomas Nagel (his ethics stuff mainly). I think William James would be another good choice for his style of arguing.

If you get bored, get a Metaphysics or epistemology anthology.

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Re: What Books Make the RC Passages Appear Easy?

Post by deadhipsters » Tue Jul 20, 2010 7:54 pm

James Joyce‘s, Ulysses. If you can read and comprehend that, then you ought to be able to plow through the RC passages. Or just do all the RC passages that are available.

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3ThrowAway99

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Re: What Books Make the RC Passages Appear Easy?

Post by 3ThrowAway99 » Tue Jul 20, 2010 7:57 pm

Jonathan Edwards- Freedom of the Will

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Albatross

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Re: What Books Make the RC Passages Appear Easy?

Post by Albatross » Tue Jul 20, 2010 7:59 pm

sumus romani wrote:
vandalvideo wrote:Reading anything by Kant can be one of the most laborious experiences a reader can have. All the jargon and contextual word usage can drive a person crazy.

I have felt that pain for weeks at a time :evil: . I wouldn't recommend Kant to anyone trying to increase reading comprehension.
Excellent. I'm taking Kantian Ethics this fall.

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Albatross

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Re: What Books Make the RC Passages Appear Easy?

Post by Albatross » Tue Jul 20, 2010 8:01 pm

gdane5 wrote:
hv1 wrote:
MagnumLifeStyle wrote:I've been searching this forum and have seen several recommendations. I've seen many recommend the Economist, but I think the level of difficulty of its prose is comparatively easier than that of the passages that appear in the RC section.

Could you please recommend any book (hopefully interesting) that you've read that makes the RC passages look very easy?
Reading TONS of RC passages. Read nearly every RC passage before the real LSAT. That is what makes RC look easier.

After at least 50 passages, you will see argument patterns (cause/effect, etc.) as well as argument patterns distinct to the subject (such as nuances and differences in law passages, science passages, history passages, etc.).
Does your name stand for "Herpes Virus-1"?

Herpes Virus-1 is known as HSV-1

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Re: What Books Make the RC Passages Appear Easy?

Post by petrovovitch@ » Wed Jul 21, 2010 1:41 pm

LSAT Blog wrote:I recently read Steven Pinker's The Blank Slate and found him to make several complex, yet cogent, arguments that functioned similarly to extended LR and RC passages. The Freakonomics books also work well for this purpose. Many positions are presented and analyzed in Pinker's work as well as in the Freakonomics books.
his arguments are terrible; i stopped half way when i realized that.

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Re: What Books Make the RC Passages Appear Easy?

Post by Justiceinbrothel » Thu Jul 22, 2010 4:31 am

MagnumLifeStyle wrote:I've been searching this forum and have seen several recommendations. I've seen many recommend the Economist, but I think the level of difficulty of its prose is comparatively easier than that of the passages that appear in the RC section.

Could you please recommend any book (hopefully interesting) that you've read that makes the RC passages look very easy?
This is not the problem of book but the style which makes that nasty. Let me ask you which one of following is easier to remember at first sight:

9652134708 -- Worst
9652-134708 --- Better (because of a little break)
0123456789 -----best and easiest (because of previous knowledge of number system)

Now this example is all about the way of putting numbers

Same things applies in LSAT/GMAT/GRE passages. They are not just those lucid editorials of newspapers or magazines rather they are especially written in a way to test your abilities to comprehend compressed and complex text and to test your ability to see the relationship of ideas stated in passage.

Good things for test takers - which test makers expect that only advanced student may know:
- Due to the nature of material in RC and limitation of topics the styles are handful which are repeated throughout the LSAT passages. Few of them are-

-Starting a passage from its history (datewise like 1890 or 1765) and then inserting some contrary but irrelavant information with introduction of words like "Except" "Unlike" "It wasn't untill" and then continuing this contrary but irrelavant information in next 10-15 sentences by putting types, examples, comparisons, exceptions. This cycle of putting irrelavant stuff between the elements of main topic of the passage is repeated twice if passage of of 45-50 lines or sometimes thrice if passage is long like 65-70 lines. These cycles clear or remove or wash your recent comprehension from first paragraph so after reading 3-4 paragraphs an average test taker feels what happened I can't get what the author is saying.

-If passage belongs to science, geology, geophysics, biology then starting passage with a specifc species (if Biology), sediments (if geology) or processes like lava formation in earth's mantle, enzymes, cells' work in plant growth and then after a paragraph or two immediately comparing the main topic of passage with several other things to break the link of comprehension so that you or test taker who was reading things in first para could be completely lost in areas of discussion within the passage.

The solution for RC is to find the nastiest passage from various books such as LSAT Superprep, LSAT Prep tests of 2009, 2008 and then simplify them and attempt same questions in untimed way so that a pattern of traps could be recognized and then work on speed which is 7-8 questions in 8 minutes and 45 second, So the method should be dissection of passage, simplification and then speed practice.

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3|ink

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Re: What Books Make the RC Passages Appear Easy?

Post by 3|ink » Thu Jul 22, 2010 10:21 am

War and Peace.

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downing

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Re: What Books Make the RC Passages Appear Easy?

Post by downing » Thu Jul 22, 2010 11:27 am

Fortune and The Economist are helpful for content and writing style.
I also think certain analytic philosophy books have the right kind of writing to use as preparation material. (Wittgenstein, Russell, Quine)
However, a lot of the suggestions on here are not helpful. People here seem to be correlating difficulty level alone with usefulness, but I would disagree. Reading literature or certain philosophy books (e.g. Anything by Hegel or Heidegger; moreover, Nietzsche is a great author, but useless to use as study prep), despite their difficulty, could even be detrimental. You'd be devoting a lot of precious time to the attempted comprehension of totally unrelated reading material, and, more importantly, to deciphering styles that have little in common with the passages included in the LSAT RC section. Literature and the examination of literature through criticism, for instance, are two different things, so I don't think studying literature would be half as helpful as studying literary theory or criticism. Literature is not included in the LSAT, but there is an abundance of criticism and theory.

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brickman

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Re: What Books Make the RC Passages Appear Easy?

Post by brickman » Thu Jul 22, 2010 4:46 pm

3|ink wrote:War and Peace.
Boring. Reading Russian novels gets so boring and you're never going to be dealing with 50 characters in a LR section. Ab-serd.

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Re: What Books Make the RC Passages Appear Easy?

Post by surfermikedude » Fri Jul 23, 2010 12:02 pm

In order to fully grasp the time constraint... How about trying to read Atlas Shrugged in a day?

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3|ink

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Re: What Books Make the RC Passages Appear Easy?

Post by 3|ink » Fri Jul 23, 2010 1:33 pm

brickman wrote:
3|ink wrote:War and Peace.
Boring. Reading Russian novels gets so boring and you're never going to be dealing with 50 characters in a LR section. Ab-serd.
The title of the thread is 'What Books Make the RC Passages Appear Easy?'

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