I was wondering if anyone has any tips on shorthand for conditional phrases in LR passages. I've tried shortening the thing being abbreviated to maybe one letter or two, but some of the tricker passages are so nitpicky, that doing this sometimes presents problems. Another thing I have done is to go through the passage and write "A" "B"..etc next to the conditionals and then use basic conditionals for the logic. This sometimes can get confusing too though, although I feel as though this might work best in the long run for me. Does anyone have any other tips or tricks that they like to use?
Sorry if this is confusing to anyone. It's a tad late and I'm a tad burnt out. Also, if anyone has any other helpful tricks on conditionals (in LR especially), I'd appreciate it. I think these are one of the things on the LSAT that you can just flat out ACE if you put in the time (correctly) and identify your mistakes. I guess I just need to put in the time.
Thanks everyone,
Good luck in October!
Shorthand for LR Conditionals Forum
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05062014
- Posts: 432
- Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 11:05 pm
Re: Shorthand for LR Conditionals
my friend, i am burnt out as well. feel ur pain.
I felt the exact way you felt two weeks ago about the promise of perfection by employing conditionals effectively and efficiently in LR section. I found out a couple of things these past few days:
1) The test makers seem to use words such that abbreviations make the conditions fairly indistinguishable from one another. -->Solution:
2) Write out the conditions IN FULL and drill formal logic LR Q's like they're the girl of your dreams (if you're a girl, I apologize for sayin this). Don't time yourself, just trust your formal logic and write it all out. You will consume so much time doing this that your brain will be forced to fully and completely understand question stimuli.
After drilling Questions for quite a few days I began to internalize the conditional statements! Not even in actual diagrams in my brain, just like, my intuition-gut-whatever you wanna call it became compatible with the formal logic. I found that with time constraints internalizing formal logic was the key to being a boss on LR.
I think you should follow what I did and go into hiding with a booklet of formal logic questions and put the time in. Eventually diagramming will slow you down more than anything, in my opinion. You can always check difficult MBT or parallel q's with a written out version of the stimulus later.
hope this helps, goodluck bud
I felt the exact way you felt two weeks ago about the promise of perfection by employing conditionals effectively and efficiently in LR section. I found out a couple of things these past few days:
1) The test makers seem to use words such that abbreviations make the conditions fairly indistinguishable from one another. -->Solution:
2) Write out the conditions IN FULL and drill formal logic LR Q's like they're the girl of your dreams (if you're a girl, I apologize for sayin this). Don't time yourself, just trust your formal logic and write it all out. You will consume so much time doing this that your brain will be forced to fully and completely understand question stimuli.
After drilling Questions for quite a few days I began to internalize the conditional statements! Not even in actual diagrams in my brain, just like, my intuition-gut-whatever you wanna call it became compatible with the formal logic. I found that with time constraints internalizing formal logic was the key to being a boss on LR.
I think you should follow what I did and go into hiding with a booklet of formal logic questions and put the time in. Eventually diagramming will slow you down more than anything, in my opinion. You can always check difficult MBT or parallel q's with a written out version of the stimulus later.
hope this helps, goodluck bud
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cc.celina
- Posts: 601
- Joined: Fri May 25, 2012 1:17 pm
Re: Shorthand for LR Conditionals
Contrary to previous poster I thought writing out conditionals made me much faster (granted, I didn't drill them as hard as he did, but I didn't get any wrong on test day.) It also allowed me to be surer of my answer on complex parallel reasoning questions, and it saved time when I was coming back to check my answers.
I just got used to abbreviating things with a few letters or a word. "Good for society" becomes GSoc. "Not justified" becomes ~J. etc etc. Just make them easy to distinguish from one another, and, like poster above me said, drill. Cambridge LSAT's LR by type are really helpful for this sort of thing. Deff worth the money, imo.
I just got used to abbreviating things with a few letters or a word. "Good for society" becomes GSoc. "Not justified" becomes ~J. etc etc. Just make them easy to distinguish from one another, and, like poster above me said, drill. Cambridge LSAT's LR by type are really helpful for this sort of thing. Deff worth the money, imo.
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05062014
- Posts: 432
- Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 11:05 pm
Re: Shorthand for LR Conditionals
If shes good for society, then goodness is socialcc.celina wrote:Contrary to previous poster I thought writing out conditionals made me much faster (granted, I didn't drill them as hard as he did, but I didn't get any wrong on test day.) It also allowed me to be surer of my answer on complex parallel reasoning questions, and it saved time when I was coming back to check my answers.
I just got used to abbreviating things with a few letters or a word. "Good for society" becomes GSoc. "Not justified" becomes ~J. etc etc. Just make them easy to distinguish from one another, and, like poster above me said, drill. Cambridge LSAT's LR by type are really helpful for this sort of thing. Deff worth the money, imo.
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05062014
- Posts: 432
- Joined: Fri Jul 06, 2012 11:05 pm
Re: Shorthand for LR Conditionals
Just messin with you. I guess bein a lefty, and thus having terrible handwriting (i'd rather blame that than poor muscular coordination or w.e) made internalizing favorable to scribbling it all out. to each their own. i enjoy LR, specifically LR timed now. I will admit I need to see how my gut treats me under intense pressure of the real thing and with more practice exams.
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bp shinners
- Posts: 3086
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Re: Shorthand for LR Conditionals
I usually write out two letters to represent either adjective noun, or noun verb. That usually covers the intricacies that they try to trip you up with.
That being said, after doing a lot, you get a feel for which adjectives/verbs are going to be what they switch up to trip you up on a close-but-no-cigar answer. Generally, the more specific a certain word's definition is, the more likely they're going to change it to trip you up. So 'happy' is probably not going to be switched, since it's a very generic word and easy to find synonyms for. 'Defenestration', however, has a very specific meaning, so they might try to trip you up with a word that means almost the same thing.
That being said, after doing a lot, you get a feel for which adjectives/verbs are going to be what they switch up to trip you up on a close-but-no-cigar answer. Generally, the more specific a certain word's definition is, the more likely they're going to change it to trip you up. So 'happy' is probably not going to be switched, since it's a very generic word and easy to find synonyms for. 'Defenestration', however, has a very specific meaning, so they might try to trip you up with a word that means almost the same thing.
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totaltest.milan
- Posts: 84
- Joined: Mon Feb 14, 2011 9:45 pm
Re: Shorthand for LR Conditionals
The primary thing is to make sure that you understand what's going on in the argument. You're not always going to see the same words repeated so simply shortening the words or taking the first letters can get you in trouble when looking for connections.
That being said I find it helpful to locate the key word, generally the noun or verb in the clause and simply to take the first letter or first couple of letters. If it's more intuitive to take a couple of words together then I take the first letters of both words. The point is to have a reference to something that encapsulates the point of the clause.
That being said I find it helpful to locate the key word, generally the noun or verb in the clause and simply to take the first letter or first couple of letters. If it's more intuitive to take a couple of words together then I take the first letters of both words. The point is to have a reference to something that encapsulates the point of the clause.
