What's your RC strategy? Forum

[tigersaresexy]

I tried voyagers for a little while but my score isn't improving significantly, I've tried a few others by myself too but not really finding one that's working for me.

What do you do? I'm hoping to find something that works for me, RC is my only obstacle to a fantastic score in October. I need to work on my accuracy and timing, I occasionally miss the last few questions in the last passage and often get 3-5 questions wrong.

Is the Powerscore RC bible worth investing in?

[cahwc12]

http://top-law-schools.com/forums/viewt ... 7#p5957074

[wtrc]

It took me soso long, but I finally feel like I've conquered RC. I had the usual -4 or -5 that I've gotten down to 0 to 2 now, so I feel way more confident on it. I'm typing this on my phone now, so can't make such a detailed post, but a few points:

The LSAT Trainer is solid for RC. Mike (the author) breaks down a good way to look at passages. Some of this below is paraphrased from him, some from others on here and elsewhere, and some that I came up with:

--- fuck the details. Seriously. Read through and the details, at first read, don't matter much. What matters is what the author believes, why he believes it, and how strongly he believes it. In harder passages, figuring this out is considerably more challenging. Whenever there is a word indicating what the author believes, circle or underline it. Examples= incredibly, surprisingly, sadly, unfortunately, demonstrates, convincing/ convincing evidence.

--- While at first it may seem like an overwhelming amount of details in each passage, it's really not. Despite how much they try, RC is limited in words and paragraphs per passage. Pretty much all passages go along the lines of "situation A, viewpoint Y, viewpoint Y sucks, here's viewpoint Z, viewpoint Z rocks, the rocking of viewpoint Z is qualified somewhat for one factor. Sometimes they will say X AND Y aren't ideal so viewpoint Z is a new one or reconciles the differences, but the structure is the same.

Break it down. Find this structure in the passages. That's mostly what the questions will ask.

--- For answer choices, when you are stuck between two or three, the following almost always gets it down to one:
A) read every single word closely. LSAC loves making two seemingly decent choices--- but one is way too broad or general. "Evolutionary psychology theory" is different than "evolutionary theory in general," is a more challenging example from a recent test.

--- if stuck, choose the weaker answer. It's rare for an LSAT passage to have "unbridled enthusiasm" (that in particular shows up in a lot of answer choices and I don't think was ever correct). "Guarded acceptance" or "questioned skepticism" is usually the way to go.

So ya, break it down to the simplest possible structure, don't obsess over details, choose the weaker answer choice, analyze each word. It's working for me.

Sorry for the typing errors btw.

[neprep]

--- if stuck, choose the weaker answer. It's rare for an LSAT passage to have "unbridled enthusiasm" (that in particular shows up in a lot of answer choices and I don't think was ever correct). "Guarded acceptance" or "questioned skepticism" is usually the way to go.

Credited. 180. And hear it from the horse's mouth: Stephen Luebke and James Lorié, who are current memebers of LSAC's Test Development and Research Team, say this about creating RC questions (or "items"):

As a possible description of the author’s stance, “unbridled enthusiasm” is extreme,
almost silly. The problem that this [incorrect AC] illustrates is that while the reading skill involved in
identifying an author’s attitude is fairly complex, our ability to write the kind of solid, plausible
distractors that would make for a hard multiple-choice attitude item is limited by the inherently
“soft” nature of the question type: attitudes and stances are entities that are, by their very nature,
hard to articulate with great precision. The result is that distractors that are close enough to the
correct response to be attractive are probably unsound.

In the item being discussed, almost any distractor that combines a positive overall attitude
with some sort of qualification is liable to be a problem. For example, try “restrained
enthusiasm” instead of “unbridled enthusiasm”: is that a demonstrably worse answer than
“qualified approval?” It is arguably not any less accurate as a description of the author’s stance.
In fact, even responses that do not directly indicate that the author has reservations...but merely
leave open the possibility—for example, “general enthusiasm,” or “overall
enthusiasm”—are hard to defend. They are not demonstrably incorrect. And if it is that difficult
to write one distractor that is both positive and close enough to the correct response to be
attractive, imagine trying to write four.

Source: http://www.testpublishers.org/assets/do ... l%2013.pdf

[Fianna13]

this is golden. How did you manage to find paper? I can't wait to read and analyze it tonight.

[vuthy]

http://www.testpublishers.org/assets/do ... l%2013.pdf

The author's attitude toward Bloom's Taxonomy can best be described as:

(A) unchecked exuberance
(B) scholarly appreciation
(C) guarded optimism
(D) reasoned disapproval
(E) categorical rejection

[neprep]

this is golden. How did you manage to find paper? I can't wait to read and analyze it tonight.

I think initially I was just trying to see what kind of name "Luebke" was and then one thing led to anther, haha. It's not a long read, and it isn't math heavy like so many other papers whose subjects are interesting but then get too technical.

[KingofSplitters55]

http://www.testpublishers.org/assets/do ... l%2013.pdf

The author's attitude toward Bloom's Taxonomy can best be described as:

(A) unchecked exuberance
(B) scholarly appreciation
(C) guarded optimism
(D) reasoned disapproval
(E) categorical rejection

Are you referring to his attitude towards Bloom's Taxonomy itself as a concept or to how the LSAC used the concept in developing the LSAT's RC section?

Just wanted to clarify.

[DEO3029]

I must add to the positive reviews on the Trainer for reading. I think it iis only $40 on Amazon now & the RC section alone is worth that.