Suggestions for time problems? Forum

[wsag826]

Hi all - I am taking the Sept. 2014 test for the first time and while I have been studying for a few months, I'm only now starting to do timed practice tests and sections. As I expected, I am having quite some difficulty with time. For example, on the 'diagnostic' I tried taking this weekend, my LR time was up and I had not answered 11 questions. That coupled with the LR questions I did miss created a very ugly situation from the get-go. I tried not to get discouraged and continued on to the LG section, but similarly, time ran out with 9 minutes left.

It's hard for me to pinpoint any one specific area that takes too much time or that I should be skipping. It just feels like I am taking way too much time to identify key aspects of each of the questions. Regardless of whether the question is easy or hard. I feel like it just takes me an incredible amount of time to get through problems. And taking a practice 'diagnostic' isn't helpful when you're not getting to answer 20 questions off the bat.

So I was wondering if anyone might have any advice - if you've struggled with and overcome time problems before, or if you are in the same boat as me and trying to get faster so you can finish as many problems as possible. I've read a lot of Section Strategy and Time Management sections, but they don't seem to get to my problems. They say skip problems that you come to learn as hard - such as a Parallel Reasoning question, or a question you spend a lot of time on - but if you are spending a lot of time on all of the questions, that's really not a great way to identify possible timesavers.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks so much!

[WilliamStrong]

I started LSAT with a combine of 15-20 wrong choices combined and running out of time in LR sections of a full LSAT test to now 4-8 wrongs, no timing issue, and usually 2 minutes before my 35 minutes is up. My LG was equally bad, with 10+ wrongs, and now it is less than 3.
LSAT is basically a skilled test that tests a language that is very different from what we speak every day, and you should approach LRs like you are studying for a foreign language. The speed will not increase unless you are well versed in the logical languages tested in LSAT, and it will naturally increase once your skills have been developed. So, in the beginning of the practice, the only time pressure that I would keep in mind is not doing the LR questions too fast. I would approach each question with care, trying to develop all the skills necessary. I would first try to understand everything in the stimulus (what is the conclusion, what are the premises, how does each sentence relate to the others, if I diagrammed the conditional statements correctly, if there are any subtle distinctions that I need to pay attention of [number vs. amount vs. percentage, etc]). After fully evaluating the stimulus, I would read the question and try to fully grasp what each question asks (whether if the question asks for a necessary condition, a sufficient condition, or a condition that helps, etc). Then I would approach each answer choice, and my job is not only to identify the right one from the wrong ones, but to fully understand why the correct answer is right and why the wrong answers are wrong (whether if it made the error of A-->B then notA--->notB, or the error B-->A). After all this, I would move on to the second question. As you can see, this can take a lot of time, so try not to do more than 25 questions per hour in the beginning.
The most important thing for LR is to understand the arguments in the stimulus, therefore you can never do enough argument evaluations. This means the parallel reasoning questions, each containing a total of 6 different arguments, are very valuable and need special care. I would spend at least 4-5 minutes per parallel reasoning question just to evaluate what the argument structures are and exactly why they are good or bad.
Also to help with argument evaluation, I would also spend the same amount of time as parallel reasoning questions on flawed methods of reasoning questions. These questions, asking you to describe in abstract terms what the flaws committed in each argument is, literally give you the outline of every single LR stimulus that is an argument. Understanding what every single answer choice of a flawed method reasoning question holds the key to understand the entire LR stimulus that is not a list of facts.
I would also try the guide books from Manhattan or Powerscore, where they divide questions to types. Although the most important thing for LR is to understand the stimulus, it also helps to have an attack plan for different question types.
And if you do the practices and develop your skills slowly and consistently, your speed and accuracy will increase on its own.
For LG, it is almost the same thing. LG sections are sometimes designed where there will be one game that will absolutely require anyone 10-12 minutes to solve. This means for some other games, as it happens almost every single time when this occurs, you need to (and can, with practice), finish 1-2 games in 5-7 minutes. Without enough practice, you will not only not be able to finish these games accurately and within 5-7 minutes, you will not even begin to crack the hard ones and thereby losing all the points there. So, for the games, I would apply the same care in the beginning, doing each question slowly, fully diagram and deduct everything that is available to you, and develop the skills of drawing inferences and deductions. Once you are good at doing these deductions, your speed will increase and your accuracy will jump dramatically, because now you can not only finish the easy questions, but are now able to crack the hard ones.