Yet another RC Guide Forum

[the_pakalypse]

Some background: I scored a 180 on the June 2013 LSAT after nearly a year of prep, analysis and over-analysis. Was looking to get back into LSAT tutoring recently so I was going through TLS and realized I had some quality posts hidden away in some of the older LSAT retaker threads. Anyways, I hope this is helpful -- feel free to ask any questions. I miss the LSAT!

*in blue are some minor PrepTest 69 spoilers. You can skip ahead if necessary.
-------------------------------

RC Part 1: The Passage

RC, RC, RC. The bane of our existence. There are no magic bullets here. I can describe my process a bit, and hopefully you get something out of it.

First, a little bit of a disclaimer: I like to read. I think this is important. You can't go into the RC section dreading it or hating or whatever. You have to be a bit curious -- it's cool to learn about something new. Sometimes I think the author is an idiot, sometimes I think it's kinda cool, sometimes I'm pretty neutral about the passage. The one consistent part is that I don't think I've ever been bored. Maybe that's me being lucky because I have such varied interests (science undergrad, took anthro, econ and some other humanities as electives), but I definitely do think you can become more interested in things by exposing yourselves to them more. I used to hate enviro sci passages -- then I read "The World Without Us" and I realized nature is awesome (PS totally recommend this book). Before everything, you have to be curious - you have to believe the author has something valuable to say. If you're active on reddit, maybe spend some more time on r/truereddit/ and r/foodforthought than r/adviceanimals.

I know some people like to have a completely mechanical approach in RC (only focus on structure), but I think if you can understand where the author is coming from, it helps a ton. Using PT69 as an example, I got extremely lucky because those passages were more interesting than usual for me. I remember having the following thoughts during the passage (Oh cool, co-ops.. I learned about this kind of stuff in high school. I'm familiar with this), 2 (haha, silly hipsters and their photography), 3 (Oh didn't Google buy Motorola just to get that patent deterrent) and 4 (Oh animal needs to digest seed before it germinate. That reminds me of that expensive-ass coffee which requires an animal to shit it out). All of these were kind of involuntary, fleeting thoughts and I definitely didn't spend more than a second on them - they just kind of happened - but that's what I mean by being engaged with the passage. If you're sufficiently engaged, then this kind of stuff CAN happen.. not always, but when it does you're in a good place. It gives you confidence as well.

But WHAT IF this doesn't happen? What if you get to the end of the passage and you're like WTF. This definitely has happened to me as well. A few times I was expecting the passage to develop in a certain way, and I get something out of left field. What can you do to fix this?

1) Read slower! Try varying your reading speed and see how it affects your comprehension. I don't know where the hell I got this ridiculous idea that I needed to finish my passages ASAP (I'm a fast reader and I pushed myself for under 1:30), but it was terrible. Absolutely terrible. I would skim the passage and then spend forever on questions. Ultimately I slowed the hell down, making sure I got at least WHY the paragraph was there (Even if I couldn't get what the paragraph meant).

2) Become systematic in your approach. We all would love passages that fit with our interests and that we understand completely, but more often than not, it simply doesn't happen. To combat this, you need to develop an approach which allows you to take away the major points -- something which you can rely on as a tool in case reading straight through doesn't work. I used a form of notation. I think it was Voyager's method, combined with something else.. but basically you underline some essential things. Honestly you just have to be flexible with it and develop your own rhythm. Underlining just allows you to become more active and be like "yeah, I acknowledge this is important". Here is what I thought was important:

Author's attitude (which can be as small as the author using the word "obviously" somewhere): so, so freaking important. It allows you to answer those attitude questions relatively quickly if they pop up. Even if they don't, they really help with main point questions and primary purpose questions as well. The best part about underlining this is that it saves you a shit-ton of time later on.

Any comparisons/analogies/long quotations: There is almost always a question on these if they show up.

Characteristics of something being described: Ripe material for analogies and/or application questions.

Different people being mentioned: Helps keep them distinct in your head

ANY strong relationships or language (conditional, causation etc): This is important! For those general types of inference questions, it can be really helpful to look at the underlined relationships and see if anything is pertinent. Right off the bat I can remember numerous PT passages where I remember struggling with an inference question.. before realizing, holy crap, it's just a combination of those two relationships I underlined before.

I might be forgetting something else.. but experiment with it and see what works for you. Remember, use the notation as a TOOL. Don't become a slave to notating and don't stress if you don't notate some things. It's all good.

I'd also recommend pausing after paragraphs and understanding the purpose of the paragraph and doing a very quick summary. Again, this helps with the active reading part.

People love asking about how to tackle RC questions, but often overlook how to approach the passages -- which is just as important. Even when reviewing, let me emphasize this, LOOK AT HOW YOU READ THE PASSAGE. LOOK AT HOW YOU NOTATED. WHAT SHOULD YOU HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY? This way you can understand what to notate next time, or what you need to notate less. It can also give you a wake-up call if your mental paragraph summaries are shitty.

One thing to always keep in mind with the LSAT is that NOT ALL THINGS ARE EQUAL PRIORITY! Just like not all logic games are of the same difficulty, neither are all the passages! Some are easier than others. What this means is that if you get the feeling a passage is (relatively) straightforward, you HAVE to press on and get that sense of urgency to finish it (don't rush though!). If you can snap up these opportunities, you'll have more time to digest and work through more difficult passages/questions.

RC Part 2: The Questions

"RC is sooooo subjective. RC is annoying. Blah, blah, blah."

Yes, we get it. RC is not as an exact of a science as the other sections. But there definitely is rhythm and reason within RC. Don't let your pursuit of some elusive exact understanding deter you from a more broader, flexible understanding.

There is always one correct answer in RC. And even if the text does not conclusively prove an answer choice, as long as it gives you to reason to believe that it more likely -- and no other answer choice is suitable -- then it's good enough. Knowing what "good enough" is important. And you have to take enough tests to understand the type of leeway you can give the LSAT for RC. Expecting too much or too little from the answer choices can be disastrous.

Having said that, here are some other things I found helpful to keep in mind when doing the questions:

Analogy questions: PREPHRASE. Oh for the love of god, PREPHRASE. It is so, so tempting to read the question stem, see it's an analogy q, get some shitty-intuitive description of what you want and go to the answer choices... only to find that, without a solid understanding of what you are looking for, EVERYTHING looks tempting! Prephrase, prephrase, prephrase. Get a solid description of what you are looking for. Again, analogies are all about relationships -- so focus on how entities relate to each other and then transfer that relationship onto something else. Answers may not always be perfect, but they fit more than anything else.

Inference questions: I touched on this before but if you underline strong language/relationships in the passage, it becomes easier to do SOME inference questions. Of course you are going to get some questions that draw some random-ass inference from the middle of nowhere. The best way to approach this is to do quick summaries of paragraphs while you read.. just so you have some vague recollection of where the information is mentioned. If not, try skimming the passage. Generally you want to rely on the first option -- see how important reading the passage in a systematic manner can be? Some shitty inference questions are quite broad and may not have specific in-text references -- in a few cases, it may make sense to look at the structure/primary purpose/main point of the passage and see if that lends any credibility to one of the answer choices. But this is rare. For the most part, you always want to base your answer choice off SOMETHING.

One mistake I kept making with inference questions was treating them like Must be True questions from LR instead of Most Strongly Supported. You have to be flexible. Just because X isn't mentioned doesn't mean its automatically out of scope (whereas this is almost always true for LR MBT questions!!). You have to see how X RELATES to things mentioned in the passage.

Author's attitude: Underline it when you see in the passage. Rinse, repeat.

Comparative passage questions: I used to hate these, but I love them now. When notating your passages, you want to underline anything that is mentioned in both passages. These passages are essentially testing is your ability to see how two passages interact. Thus, most of the questions revolve around understanding the similarities/differences in the positions taken. Be flexible in your approach though because not all comparative passages are one side pro, one side con -- they can be both on the same side... or one can be general and one can be that situation applied etc. Whenever you finish reading these passages, you want to think quickly of what the relationship between the passages is, and use that as a tool for answering questions.

Purpose/function of word/sentence questions: I don't know what the hell I was thinking but I made these questions way more complicated than they needed to be. They are actually probably some of the easiest questions out there. All you need to do is look around the word/sentence and understand the context. Almost always the line preceding it, or the line following it will have enough contextual cues for you to understand what the purpose of the phrase was. Prephrasing is also important here. My biggest confusion was that sometimes I'd think "oh well.. this phrase COULD be interpreted in a way as to support answer choice B".. guess what? It doesn't matter if it could be. Look at how it ACTUALLY was used through those contextual cues.

Developing an approach for each question type is important. It takes a while to get comfortable. One way I gauged my progress was to do a passage COMPLETELY untimed and type out ALL my thoughts while reading the passage and doing qs. Anything my mind said, I typed out. This allowed me to see where my time was being wasted, where I wasn't prephrasing and just generally work out any kinks and see what areas needed attention.

I was able to score consistently -2 or under with these methods.. not perfect, but hey RC is just like that. Game day, however, I was able to pull off that -0. I think a lot of it was due to the fact that I really trusted my process. I didn't have to do anything special, I didn't have to hope for an easy passage, I just had to do what I had been doing. Because I trusted my instincts so much, I think naturally the adrenaline on game day was beneficial.

[flash21]

great, RC has been killing me lately. will read this over a few more times later

[alexrodriguez]

Definitely will be looking at this in detail tomorrow.

[Jeffort]

Some background: I scored a 180 on the June 2013 LSAT after nearly a year of prep, analysis and over-analysis. Was looking to get back into LSAT tutoring recently so I was going through TLS and realized I had some quality posts hidden away in some of the older LSAT retaker threads. Anyways, I hope this is helpful -- feel free to ask any questions. I miss the LSAT!

*in blue are some minor PrepTest 69 spoilers. You can skip ahead if necessary.
-------------------------------

RC Part 1: The Passage

RC, RC, RC. The bane of our existence. There are no magic bullets here. I can describe my process a bit, and hopefully you get something out of it.

First, a little bit of a disclaimer: I like to read. I think this is important. You can't go into the RC section dreading it or hating or whatever. You have to be a bit curious -- it's cool to learn about something new. Sometimes I think the author is an idiot, sometimes I think it's kinda cool, sometimes I'm pretty neutral about the passage. The one consistent part is that I don't think I've ever been bored. Maybe that's me being lucky because I have such varied interests (science undergrad, took anthro, econ and some other humanities as electives), but I definitely do think you can become more interested in things by exposing yourselves to them more. I used to hate enviro sci passages -- then I read "The World Without Us" and I realized nature is awesome (PS totally recommend this book). Before everything, you have to be curious - you have to believe the author has something valuable to say. If you're active on reddit, maybe spend some more time on r/truereddit/ and r/foodforthought than r/adviceanimals.

I know some people like to have a completely mechanical approach in RC (only focus on structure), but I think if you can understand where the author is coming from, it helps a ton. Using PT69 as an example, I got extremely lucky because those passages were more interesting than usual for me. I remember having the following thoughts during the passage (Oh cool, co-ops.. I learned about this kind of stuff in high school. I'm familiar with this), 2 (haha, silly hipsters and their photography), 3 (Oh didn't Google buy Motorola just to get that patent deterrent) and 4 (Oh animal needs to digest seed before it germinate. That reminds me of that expensive-ass coffee which requires an animal to shit it out). All of these were kind of involuntary, fleeting thoughts and I definitely didn't spend more than a second on them - they just kind of happened - but that's what I mean by being engaged with the passage. If you're sufficiently engaged, then this kind of stuff CAN happen.. not always, but when it does you're in a good place. It gives you confidence as well.

But WHAT IF this doesn't happen? What if you get to the end of the passage and you're like WTF. This definitely has happened to me as well. A few times I was expecting the passage to develop in a certain way, and I get something out of left field. What can you do to fix this?

1) Read slower! Try varying your reading speed and see how it affects your comprehension. I don't know where the hell I got this ridiculous idea that I needed to finish my passages ASAP (I'm a fast reader and I pushed myself for under 1:30), but it was terrible. Absolutely terrible. I would skim the passage and then spend forever on questions. Ultimately I slowed the hell down, making sure I got at least WHY the paragraph was there (Even if I couldn't get what the paragraph meant).

2) Become systematic in your approach. We all would love passages that fit with our interests and that we understand completely, but more often than not, it simply doesn't happen. To combat this, you need to develop an approach which allows you to take away the major points -- something which you can rely on as a tool in case reading straight through doesn't work. I used a form of notation. I think it was Voyager's method, combined with something else.. but basically you underline some essential things. Honestly you just have to be flexible with it and develop your own rhythm. Underlining just allows you to become more active and be like "yeah, I acknowledge this is important". Here is what I thought was important:

Author's attitude (which can be as small as the author using the word "obviously" somewhere): so, so freaking important. It allows you to answer those attitude questions relatively quickly if they pop up. Even if they don't, they really help with main point questions and primary purpose questions as well. The best part about underlining this is that it saves you a shit-ton of time later on.

Any comparisons/analogies/long quotations: There is almost always a question on these if they show up.

Characteristics of something being described: Ripe material for analogies and/or application questions.

Different people being mentioned: Helps keep them distinct in your head

ANY strong relationships or language (conditional, causation etc): This is important! For those general types of inference questions, it can be really helpful to look at the underlined relationships and see if anything is pertinent. Right off the bat I can remember numerous PT passages where I remember struggling with an inference question.. before realizing, holy crap, it's just a combination of those two relationships I underlined before.

I might be forgetting something else.. but experiment with it and see what works for you. Remember, use the notation as a TOOL. Don't become a slave to notating and don't stress if you don't notate some things. It's all good.

I'd also recommend pausing after paragraphs and understanding the purpose of the paragraph and doing a very quick summary. Again, this helps with the active reading part.

People love asking about how to tackle RC questions, but often overlook how to approach the passages -- which is just as important. Even when reviewing, let me emphasize this, LOOK AT HOW YOU READ THE PASSAGE. LOOK AT HOW YOU NOTATED. WHAT SHOULD YOU HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY? This way you can understand what to notate next time, or what you need to notate less. It can also give you a wake-up call if your mental paragraph summaries are shitty.

One thing to always keep in mind with the LSAT is that NOT ALL THINGS ARE EQUAL PRIORITY! Just like not all logic games are of the same difficulty, neither are all the passages! Some are easier than others. What this means is that if you get the feeling a passage is (relatively) straightforward, you HAVE to press on and get that sense of urgency to finish it (don't rush though!). If you can snap up these opportunities, you'll have more time to digest and work through more difficult passages/questions.

RC Part 2: The Questions

"RC is sooooo subjective. RC is annoying. Blah, blah, blah."

Yes, we get it. RC is not as an exact of a science as the other sections. But there definitely is rhythm and reason within RC. Don't let your pursuit of some elusive exact understanding deter you from a more broader, flexible understanding.

There is always one correct answer in RC. And even if the text does not conclusively prove an answer choice, as long as it gives you to reason to believe that it more likely -- and no other answer choice is suitable -- then it's good enough. Knowing what "good enough" is important. And you have to take enough tests to understand the type of leeway you can give the LSAT for RC. Expecting too much or too little from the answer choices can be disastrous.

Having said that, here are some other things I found helpful to keep in mind when doing the questions:

Analogy questions: PREPHRASE. Oh for the love of god, PREPHRASE. It is so, so tempting to read the question stem, see it's an analogy q, get some shitty-intuitive description of what you want and go to the answer choices... only to find that, without a solid understanding of what you are looking for, EVERYTHING looks tempting! Prephrase, prephrase, prephrase. Get a solid description of what you are looking for. Again, analogies are all about relationships -- so focus on how entities relate to each other and then transfer that relationship onto something else. Answers may not always be perfect, but they fit more than anything else.

Inference questions: I touched on this before but if you underline strong language/relationships in the passage, it becomes easier to do SOME inference questions. Of course you are going to get some questions that draw some random-ass inference from the middle of nowhere. The best way to approach this is to do quick summaries of paragraphs while you read.. just so you have some vague recollection of where the information is mentioned. If not, try skimming the passage. Generally you want to rely on the first option -- see how important reading the passage in a systematic manner can be? Some shitty inference questions are quite broad and may not have specific in-text references -- in a few cases, it may make sense to look at the structure/primary purpose/main point of the passage and see if that lends any credibility to one of the answer choices. But this is rare. For the most part, you always want to base your answer choice off SOMETHING.

One mistake I kept making with inference questions was treating them like Must be True questions from LR instead of Most Strongly Supported. You have to be flexible. Just because X isn't mentioned doesn't mean its automatically out of scope (whereas this is almost always true for LR MBT questions!!). You have to see how X RELATES to things mentioned in the passage.

Author's attitude: Underline it when you see in the passage. Rinse, repeat.

Comparative passage questions: I used to hate these, but I love them now. When notating your passages, you want to underline anything that is mentioned in both passages. These passages are essentially testing is your ability to see how two passages interact. Thus, most of the questions revolve around understanding the similarities/differences in the positions taken. Be flexible in your approach though because not all comparative passages are one side pro, one side con -- they can be both on the same side... or one can be general and one can be that situation applied etc. Whenever you finish reading these passages, you want to think quickly of what the relationship between the passages is, and use that as a tool for answering questions.

Purpose/function of word/sentence questions: I don't know what the hell I was thinking but I made these questions way more complicated than they needed to be. They are actually probably some of the easiest questions out there. All you need to do is look around the word/sentence and understand the context. Almost always the line preceding it, or the line following it will have enough contextual cues for you to understand what the purpose of the phrase was. Prephrasing is also important here. My biggest confusion was that sometimes I'd think "oh well.. this phrase COULD be interpreted in a way as to support answer choice B".. guess what? It doesn't matter if it could be. Look at how it ACTUALLY was used through those contextual cues.

Developing an approach for each question type is important. It takes a while to get comfortable. One way I gauged my progress was to do a passage COMPLETELY untimed and type out ALL my thoughts while reading the passage and doing qs. Anything my mind said, I typed out. This allowed me to see where my time was being wasted, where I wasn't prephrasing and just generally work out any kinks and see what areas needed attention.

I was able to score consistently -2 or under with these methods.. not perfect, but hey RC is just like that. Game day, however, I was able to pull off that -0. I think a lot of it was due to the fact that I really trusted my process. I didn't have to do anything special, I didn't have to hope for an easy passage, I just had to do what I had been doing. Because I trusted my instincts so much, I think naturally the adrenaline on game day was beneficial.

Yes Yes Yes! Great advice. Everything in here is stuff I advocate and emphasize to my tutoring students since they are quality methods for mastering RC.

Focusing more on learning how to read and process the passage effectively to be better prepared for the questions instead of playing around with timing strategies looking for ways focused on trying to rush through the passage in less time (such as trying to read in 2 mins or less) is where the magic happens for skill level improvement. 3-4 minutes reading the passage provided you have a solid process with the right priorities and methods is not a bad thing like people obsessed with timing think, it's actually better than a 2 min read provided you use the 4 minutes effectively. The better you understand the passage and important aspects the questions are likely to be about, the easier the questions will be to answer quickly without having to go on a bunch of wild goose chases re-reading parts of the passage a bunch of times to compensate for having done a shitty job comprehending the passage on first read.

[BPlaura]

This is a fantastic guide and very similar to what I teach my students as well. Thanks for posting, and congrats on the 180!

[mornincounselor]

Post removed.

[cahwc12]

My only lament is that this will be tl;dr for some of those who are struggling the most in RC.

Looks like a great guide and a solid contribution to TLS. Thanks a lot for your posts.

[Straw_Mandible]

My only lament is that this will be tl;dr for some of those who are struggling the most in RC.

As a person struggling with RC, I will say that this rings true.

Great guide, Pakalypse! Thanks for spreading the love, and huge congrats on your 180.

[Deleterious]

tagging