Reading Extracurricular Material: Helpful? Forum

[CyanIdes Of March]

I'm getting downright desperate on RC. I've taken 4 full length RC sections (2 in PTs, 2 alone) and I've scored -5 on every single one of them. The 20 - 30 or so that I've taken in total aren't much different, average being about 5. I'm running low on sections to practice and I'm seeing absolutely no improvement. I've seen some suggest reading the NY Times, The Economist, etc etc to supplement practice but I'd like to hear from people who actually took this advice and ask them if they thought it actually helped any. It's just incredibly frustrating for me to see so much improvement on LR and LG and see every PT I take trashed because I can't get through a section without missing at least one each time.

Help would be greatly appreciated :\.

EDIT: Sorry, didn't realize someone had posted a nearly identical thread 30 minutes before me.

[DSman]

I'm getting downright desperate on RC. I've taken 4 full length RC sections (2 in PTs, 2 alone) and I've scored -5 on every single one of them. The 20 - 30 or so that I've taken in total aren't much different, average being about 5. I'm running low on sections to practice and I'm seeing absolutely no improvement. I've seen some suggest reading the NY Times, The Economist, etc etc to supplement practice but I'd like to hear from people who actually took this advice and ask them if they thought it actually helped any. It's just incredibly frustrating for me to see so much improvement on LR and LG and see every PT I take trashed because I can't get through a section without missing at least one each time.

Help would be greatly appreciated :\.

Same for me. I usually get around around 4-5 wrong. Its always something that I immediately recognize was false. I've tried to review why I make the mistakes but it just happens.

As for your question, I did read some Economist and other magazines earlier in the prep and I noticed no real difference. I think it would be beneficial if you still had a while before the LSAT. I'm writing in October (6 weeks) so I'm not going to bother. I'll just do more passages and do more questions. But if you still have a few months to go, then consistently reading more sophisticated magazines would probably help. You would have to do it for a longer period though. And consistently.

[kaseyb002]

I am also hovering around 4 to 5 wrong per section. It's almost always a fetch question, or some implied question that requires you to remember or re-read a really specific phrase from the passage. I suppose for these questions I should just make the time investment to find it precisely but I never feel like I have enough time for that.