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And I still suck at it. Badly. Today I finished the last of my RC sections that aren't part of recent PTs and scored a pitiful -8. ~5 months of studying, all the advice anyone could ask for, several different strategies attempted... and nothing. Still doing just as bad as I always did.

Is it time to accept that I'm bad at this section and hope that I luck out on test day? I can ace LRs and LGs with a pretty good degree of consistency but RC is what is going to keep me from getting a good score. Anyone else want to talk about how they've done 200+ passages and seen no significant gain?

Whining, I know, but this is just very demoralizing.

I suck at RC too. Just do your best on the exam. There isn't really anymore time for substantial improvement. You could maybe look over a few of the pts and see if there is something you always seem to get wrong so you know what to look for on the exam.

Otherwise, don't let it hurt your confidence. That can make things worse. If you are good on the other sections, maybe you'll get an easier RC and end up with a great score.

Sometimes, it helps to remind yourself that the test makers are (trying to, at least) test for some specific skill set. In terms of RC, they are trying to test you to understand content, structure of the passage, structure of the argument and the intent of the author. Even with my screen name, I just accepted getting a max of -5 wrong as average as part of my overall strategy and just try to concentrate on LG and LR to maximize my score. At a certain point, all you can do is your best, be confident and let the rest of your application speak for itself. Best of luck!

I feel your pain, I am so inconsistent on RC, actually its more like im just consistently bad. I've gotten as low as -1 a few times and as high as -8. Really sucks. All I can really do is hope the passages click for me on Saturday.

After months of restudying for a retake, my volatile RC range is -3 to -12. I am hoping for divine intervention on test day lol.

I tend to miss a good 5 on average on the RC. It sucks, it drags my score down unnecessarily. I hope to improve my December, but still, it sucks!

I used to be nasty at RC. Never more than -1 on a section for like my first 25 PT's when I studied in Feb. Now I'm retaking Saturday and I have been crushing LG and LR but getting 4-6 wrong in RC. But whenever I go back and look at the questions I see the right answer immediately. So I got that going for me.

Seems like a lot of people are in the same boat. The problem is I feel like RC study is almost a waste of time after a certain point, at least that's what my results have shown. LG and LR I can feel myself getting better at them and I can learn from my mistakes. RC, it's nearly always 1 of 2 things going wrong: I picked the wrong answer after eliminating down to 2 or I hit a passage that was so confusing that my mind goes into blur mode and I'm guess based off what answer looks like it probably would be the answer.

This -8 was mostly due to a combination of the 2 and I guess just random bad luck since I missed a lot of the 50/50 guess questions. Best I've ever done was -1 (1 time), usually -4 to -5. Guess it's just going to come down to a little bit of luck... at least I've got 3 attempts at this.

I usually begin high. The first passage I tend to knock out pretty well. The second I do okay, by the third and fourth I start running into problems. I feel like the readings are getting harder but in fact its probably my resolve and concentration breaking. Sometimes they sneak in some complex scientific or legal theory reading in that third and fourth and boom, I read the whole thing and feel like I only read words.

CyanIdes Of March wrote:Seems like a lot of people are in the same boat. The problem is I feel like RC study is almost a waste of time after a certain point, at least that's what my results have shown. LG and LR I can feel myself getting better at them and I can learn from my mistakes. RC, it's nearly always 1 of 2 things going wrong: I picked the wrong answer after eliminating down to 2 or I hit a passage that was so confusing that my mind goes into blur mode and I'm guess based off what answer looks like it probably would be the answer.

This -8 was mostly due to a combination of the 2 and I guess just random bad luck since I missed a lot of the 50/50 guess questions. Best I've ever done was -1 (1 time), usually -4 to -5. Guess it's just going to come down to a little bit of luck... at least I've got 3 attempts at this.

How are you reviewing your RC? What's your strategy for answering inference questions or detail questions? What's going through your head when you read a passage?

There's probably something systemically wrong.

I am in the exact same boat. I was thinking about opening a thread for this but didnt want to write yet another RC - how do you get better message.

I get sections where I am hardly get any mistakes and others where I feel completely lost. On top of that, English is not my first language and my K-12 was out of the US, so it all adds to these hit or miss expriences.

I am wondering - can you really get better? I am taking the exam on Wed (non-sat test taker) and at this point I really think it will come down to the passages I get. I will either read them, and understand them or I will read them and kind of understand them. I find this section so frustration since although I read and implemented many great advices here, I am still unsure (unlike with LR and LG) how this portion of the test is learnable, escpically when you're ESL.

any thoughts or takeaway before I face it Wednesday?

thanks!

Here's a personal technique that I started doing fairly recently and it seems to have helped. Since starting, I've boosted my typical score from 6-10 wrong to about 2-4 wrong on average.

Basically, I force myself to speed read through the passage and I accomplish this by whispering under my breath to myself as I read. Barely audible even to myself and not loud enough to bother other test takers (I did this on today's LSAT with a person on either side of me and in front of me and no issues).

What I've found is that by actually verbalizing the words as I read them, I'm able to both continually read the passage more thoroughly and I retain more information. I will still underline things I think are likely to be important as I read them, based on experience from doing dozens of RCs, but getting through all of the information quickly and on the first time has been the biggest help.

Assuming you don't already use this exact technique, I'd recommend giving it a try for 3 or 4 RCs and see how you like it.

HawgDriver wrote:Here's a personal technique that I started doing fairly recently and it seems to have helped. Since starting, I've boosted my typical score from 6-10 wrong to about 2-4 wrong on average.

Basically, I force myself to speed read through the passage and I accomplish this by whispering under my breath to myself as I read. Barely audible even to myself and not loud enough to bother other test takers (I did this on today's LSAT with a person on either side of me and in front of me and no issues).

What I've found is that by actually verbalizing the words as I read them, I'm able to both continually read the passage more thoroughly and I retain more information. I will still underline things I think are likely to be important as I read them, based on experience from doing dozens of RCs, but getting through all of the information quickly and on the first time has been the biggest help.

Assuming you don't already use this exact technique, I'd recommend giving it a try for 3 or 4 RCs and see how you like it.

Thanks! This is helpful. I am doing that right now with most of my LRs, in addition to going with my pencil across each line as I learned this helps me as well. I am taking another PT tomorrow morning so I'll give it a try. I am just at a point with this section where I'll try anything
Thanks again! Hoping for a decent read this coming Wed...

Have you tried the post-it method? Velocity makes you do it as part of RC studying and it helped me really GET that the answers are always in the passage. Always. One answer is always right and that answer is always right in front of me.

You put a post-it over the answer choices for each question and write out what you think the answer will be. Even if it's a question like "would most agree" you make yourself write down key things related to the topic that the author would agree with. It's time consuming and really irritating but I do think it helped. I did 3-4 full RC sections like this total.

annet wrote:Have you tried the post-it method? Velocity makes you do it as part of RC studying and it helped me really GET that the answers are always in the passage. Always. One answer is always right and that answer is always right in front of me.

You put a post-it over the answer choices for each question and write out what you think the answer will be. Even if it's a question like "would most agree" you make yourself write down key things related to the topic that the author would agree with. It's time consuming and really irritating but I do think it helped. I did 3-4 full RC sections like this total.

Thanks! I still have a few days so I'll give this a try as well. I took TM but I didn't have a real takeaway from their methodology for RC.

5 months of Study? How many pcs have you done? Did you Repeat? Considering if you only use pt 1-45 to practice, you should have 180 pcs. And if you practice them at least twice, that makes 360 pcs. You have got plenty to practice before you start to use the recent ones. I am in the process of reapting every RC pc from PT 1-45 and still improving. I might repeat them a third time just to get perfect on every pc. And I plan to repeat every RC pc from PT 45-67 at least twice as well. I feel all this hard work won't necessarily get me a perfect socre on the test day, but I might be able to reduce the errors to -2 to 4.
I won't accept a socre less than 170!

HawgDriver wrote:Here's a personal technique that I started doing fairly recently and it seems to have helped. Since starting, I've boosted my typical score from 6-10 wrong to about 2-4 wrong on average.

Basically, I force myself to speed read through the passage and I accomplish this by whispering under my breath to myself as I read. Barely audible even to myself and not loud enough to bother other test takers (I did this on today's LSAT with a person on either side of me and in front of me and no issues).

What I've found is that by actually verbalizing the words as I read them, I'm able to both continually read the passage more thoroughly and I retain more information. I will still underline things I think are likely to be important as I read them, based on experience from doing dozens of RCs, but getting through all of the information quickly and on the first time has been the biggest help.



Assuming you don't already use this exact technique, I'd recommend giving it a try for 3 or 4 RCs and see how you like it.

Hey HD:
THANK YOU *427 for this advice about whispering the words under my breath. I have no idea how exactly it made the difference but it most certainty did! my wong AC have gone down by at least 20% if not more! so I just wanted to thank you for this. I think of the RC as "free points" that are there for the taking, and that is partly why I get so frustrated by this section. All the answers are out there on page, no codes or logic. It can easily be the section where we pick up lost points from other sections.

Anyways, thanks again for the advice, I am going to carry it with me to test day on Wed. And the fact that I will most likely be the only one in the room (taking a non-sat LSAT in an area where others who have the same condition are pretty rare), I wouldn't really care about whispering it too low. For all I care, the proctore can read it along with me.

English is not my first language, and it has been the hardest for me to get beter at RC , and this is the first real improvement that I'v seen in a long long time.