165 - Need LR Help Forum

[stabiloboss]

Just got a 165 on a practice test. Raw 86.

LR1: -5
LR2: -7
RC: -1
LG: -1

My LR hasn't improved so much over the last couple of weeks. I seem to miss strengthen & assumption questions the most. I just don't know how to go about getting my LR up. Should I stop focusing on RC/LG and focus solely on LR, since I'm about 3 weeks from Oct 1.

Also, any timing advice for LR? I can finish the section JUST in time. No gaps for review on LR, or for that matter on any section. I think I get bogged down with a couple questions spread out across all sections.

[TMC116]

Pay attention to the verbs used in answer choices and the conclusion. That will help prove a ton of answer choices incorrect (seriously). You'll start to see a lot as too strong or irrelevant

Try it out

[stabiloboss]

Thanks for your reply.

Could you possibly give me an example?

[pinedust]

Here is a sample LSAT question - taken from PT 7



Almost all weaken questions will attack the conclusion - that is, they will attempt to show that the conclusion does not necessarily follow from the evidence provided.

Let's look at the argument's structure:
P1- Before the printing press, books were expensive.
P2- The printing press created books that were less expensive.
P3- In the few years after, demand for cheap printing-press-made books was higher than demand for expensive-manuscript-books. (More people bought books after the printing press was created than before)
CONCLUSION- This shows that there was an increase in the amount of people who learned how to read in the years after the printing press was created.

The take-away from this is that the author assumes that the number of books sold is directly related to the amount of people who can read. Ask yourself- does this always have to be the case? Does the fact that more Porches were sold this year mean that more people have learned how to drive Porches? Maybe so- or maybe it is just one guy who is buying up all the Porches. The key to answering this question correctly is recognizing that central assumption.

What I find most effective in answering questions is to try and eliminate answer choices that are obviously incorrect.

A) This is obviously incorrect because the passage deals with READING and this answer choice infers a connection between letter WRITING and learning to read. The passage makes no mention of letter writing- so we cannot infer anything about it. Because this choice shifts the scope of the passage from READING to WRITING, we can mark it as incorrect.
B) All this says is that people who can read can also write. But that doesn't really do anything to the argument- it does not address the amount of people who could read before the printing press and the number of people who had the ability to read after its invention.
C) Is the correct answer. It correctly breaks down the passage's central assumption by suggesting that the same number of people were buying the same number of books- it casts doubt on the idea that there was a dramatic jump in the amount of people who had the ability to read.
D & E) Only give us information about the world after the invention of the printing press. They are useless in any comparison of that time to a previous era. We are not concerned with whether there were lots of readers after the invention of the printing press- we want to know whether there were MORE readers after the invention of the printing press than before.

[heyhowdyhey]

This post isn't going to help the OP at all, but I just wanted to say... -14 is a 165? Holy shit. That really sucks. Is that typical?

[stabiloboss]

Beautiful. Thanks a lot! I see what you're getting at, and I'll focus more on those quantifiers/verbs. Really helpful weaken question, because that's one of my weaker Q types.

[stabiloboss]

Yea June 2007 was a 92 raw score for a 170. Tough curve.

[pinedust]

Beautiful. Thanks a lot! I see what you're getting at, and I'll focus more on those quantifiers/verbs. Really helpful weaken question, because that's one of my weaker Q types.

I was actually reviewing weaken questions this morning- so it seemed like a good way to get the principles down while helping someone!

[Manhattan LSAT Noah]

You should probably remove the LSAT question from your post - LSAC doesn't look kindly upon that...