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Hi everyone,

some books recommend reading the question before reading the argument/short passage in the logical reasoning section. Others do not. Which approach is best? Do different approaches work better for different people? Thank you.

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Across the lake!!! You sound like me now!!! Hahaaha!

Sophie,

It depends on each individual. Some say yes, others say no. I dont do it because I believe it wastes time. Most people read the stem more than once, why read it first if youre going to go back to it at some point again anyway? May as well save yourself time and read it after the stimulus. If you take 3 seconds to read the question stem first, thats 3 seconds times 25 questions, thats 75 seconds or almost a minute and a half that was wasted by reading the stem first. In short, doesnt seem effective to me.

Thank you for your responses.

you should always read a question first. reason: you will then know A, which time of problem you will be reading and B, you will know what to look for.

GoodToBeTheKing wrote:you should always read a question first. reason: you will then know A, which time of problem you will be reading and B, you will know what to look for.

you should always read the stimulus first. reason: you will most likely re-read the question stem, and you should be reading to absorb the information of the stimulus regardless of the question type. Besides, a decent amount of the time you can infer what the question type is by actively reading the stimulus.

acrossthelake wrote:http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 6&t=108140

+ A LOT of other threads like it if you use the search function. This question has been beaten to death, resurrected, and beaten some more, etc. a very large number of times.

Plus this.

In the end, do what works best for you.

Tiva wrote:

GoodToBeTheKing wrote:you should always read a question first. reason: you will then know A, which time of problem you will be reading and B, you will know what to look for.

you should always read the stimulus first. reason: you will most likely re-read the question stem, and you should be reading to absorb the information of the stimulus regardless of the question type. Besides, a decent amount of the time you can infer what the question type is by actively reading the stimulus.

It doesn't matter either way.

3|ink wrote: It doesn't matter either way.

Except one way saves time. *take note of my ninja edit

Try both methods. Find out what works for you.

Tiva wrote:

3|ink wrote: It doesn't matter either way.

Except one way saves time. *take note of my ninja edit

Try both methods. Find out what works for you.

Except yours depends on the assumption that the reader will have to read the question again. I think it's reasonable to assume that one could train him/herself to read the question only once.

I personally prefer to read the stimulus first. I've never tried any other way.

I think reading the question first is effective as long as you have a grasp of what it's asking you to look for. Then you can spend that time in the stimulus finding the answer. If you read the stimulus and then asks you to find the flaw, you're going to have to go back up into the stimulus to figure out where the gap in logic exists.

I chose to read the question first and never had to read it over again and spent the additional time deconstructing the stimulus armed with the knowledge of what exactly they're looking for. I think it helps target your approach to each question type.