doing poorly in LR Forum

[naillsat]

After finishing reading the LR and LG bibles by Powerscore, I started doing some PTs from #7 to #18 (the first 10 PT book), and the the test was not so strictly timed - I gave myself ~40 minutes per section instead of 35 minutes. I found myself doing consistently well in LG sections (ranging from -4 to 0 miss per section), however, I have been doing consistently poor with LR sections (missing -10 to -3 per section). As of RC, I think it could be better as well -- I miss -8 to -3 per RC section.

I was wondering what I should do in order to improve my performance on LR quickly? Should I go over the LR bible again? or I just need to do more LR and figure out why the wrong answers are wrong and why the right ones are right? What else would be more effective strategies?

by the way, I'm aiming at the December 2011 LSAT test, so I still have roughly 2 months for prep. Thank you!

[dietcoke0]

First off find out which questions you are messing up on. Guessing you are a Dec+ LSAT taker, so that is what you need to find out first. I had similar problems, but after making a spreadsheet of question types, and correctness percentages, I found out I got 90-95% right on weaken, resolve the paradox and main point type questions, then less than 70% in strengthen, flaw in reasoning, method in reasoning questions. Obviously I needed to go back over them, and drill those better.

Games are good, and I was same way. I average -1 on them, and by the third chapter in the LGB, had them just about down.

RC sucks ass, and it's just finding a method between speed and accuracy that works for you. What I've gone down to is slowing down, taking about 3:30 a passage, taking notes to help me stay engaged and remember quicker, and just hoping the questions don't have dumbass words that trick me up.

[totaltest.milan]

Yeah, at this point you need to see what you're getting wrong and why you're getting it wrong as opposed to simply doing a bunch of questions (though there's gonna be a time for that too). Have you done any of the argument question types in isolation? Meaning did you ever just do a bunch of say weaken questions, untimed, as opposed to doing sections. If not, then that's what you should do first. You might want to do about 25 - 50 questions for each question type (if there are any that you feel aren't a problem then skip those types) just so that you get a hang of the approach for each one and the different variations. Do them untimed and then when you're done go over the ones that you got wrong. This is key, don't just review the question quickly; the point is to see why the correct choice is correct and why the incorrect choices are incorrect, where you messed up, and how not to mess up again. Then redo those questions. You'll remember the correct answer for some of them but that's not the point, the point is to see why the correct answer is correct and why the incorrect answers are incorrect. Then repeat if you've still made some mistakes.

Then go on to doing timed sections using the same method. Review then redo. This time try to redo the incorrect questions in under 1m 30s (that's roughly how much time you'll have per question on the test). You can use the same approach for the reading comprehension section.