Hello Everyone,
Long story short, after studying for the LSAT for a long time I decided a couple months ago to postpone the June LSAT and restart my studying the "proper" way (following Jefforts 3 phase advice). Since I went back to the basics and began doing VERY SLOW motion drilling, I have been able to improve my accuracy dramatically and finally feel like I am really beginning to understand the test. My scores seemed to plateau previously around 155, but my last two tests have been 160/163. My issue is that the TIME is killing, particularly on the logical reasoning section. Does anyone have any advice they can provide that can maybe aid me with my timing issues? For the most part I am fine with RC (depending on the overall difficulty, subjective to what I am comfortable reading) and I am totally fine with LG. But for some ODD reason, the logical reasoning section timing kills me. I cannot finish the first 10 questions in 10 minutes, I always seem to get bogged down on one or two which leads to me finishing the first 10 in around 12-14 minutes. I am not really seeking any trivial advice like do the first 15 in 15 minutes or you just have to cut your losses and pick answers faster or learn to skip questions. What I am seeking is any advice that can be used to help get me through this timing issue while either improving or at least maintaining my accuracy. My fear is that if I bump my speed up on those first 10, then I will likely get some wrong answers. I don't know. At this point I am having severe issues with completing and bubbling within 35 minutes. Any assistance is greatly appreciated and I thank all of you in advance for your help!
Need help with my progress! Forum
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lsatkillah
- Posts: 76
- Joined: Fri Jun 13, 2014 1:09 am
Re: Need help with my progress!
How many PTs worth of LR questions have you done? Perhaps you aren't familiar enough with question types and their respective answers to nail the easy questions in a short amount of time. At such a level, you would often be able to choose the correct answer (on easy questions) with 100% certainty the moment you come across it, without reading all the other choices. I struggled with timing on LR as well -- I found acing those easy questions in record time helped tremendously with getting in LR mode on the section to finish the more difficult questions within the 35 minutes.
Another consideration: are you rereading the stimuli multiple times, whether before you even get to the question choices or during elimination/choosing of the answers? I find best comprehension when reading through LR passages with the same focus I use to read RC essays thoroughly on a first read.
Another consideration: are you rereading the stimuli multiple times, whether before you even get to the question choices or during elimination/choosing of the answers? I find best comprehension when reading through LR passages with the same focus I use to read RC essays thoroughly on a first read.
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chrijani
- Posts: 20
- Joined: Fri Apr 25, 2014 2:36 pm
Re: Need help with my progress!
Thank you for the advice, I really appreciate it. I have probably done around 3-5 timed tests, so about 6-10 timed LR sections. I haven't moved on to 5 section tests since I am still struggling keeping up with time. I must say that I agree with you, I must not be as familiar with the questions as much as I thought I was. So,I guess i'll take some time to review certain question types. Also, since you mentioned re-reading the stimulus, I can recall that I do quite often on more difficult question re-read the stimulus and the question stem multiple times. I guess I will have to try and catch myself to fix that issue.
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lsatkillah
- Posts: 76
- Joined: Fri Jun 13, 2014 1:09 am
Re: Need help with my progress!
Definitely practice more using timed whole sections! I went through around 15 4-section PTs before I found myself sped up enough with LR to finish all the questions in 35 min. I didn't find nearly as much improvement in reviewing question types by reading through my prep book and doing the few practice questions offered in there (I used Powerscore LR) as I did in straight up attempting to complete PTs under timed conditions. You'll get there!chrijani wrote:Thank you for the advice, I really appreciate it. I have probably done around 3-5 timed tests, so about 6-10 timed LR sections. I haven't moved on to 5 section tests since I am still struggling keeping up with time. I must say that I agree with you, I must not be as familiar with the questions as much as I thought I was. So,I guess i'll take some time to review certain question types.
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Jeffort
- Posts: 1888
- Joined: Wed Jun 18, 2008 4:43 pm
Re: Need help with my progress!
Since you're just entering phase 3, a couple of things are important for how you proceed. First thing is that going from phase 2 to phase 3 is really a transition of emphasis but you never really leave phase 2. Taking timed PTs in phase 3 is mainly to give you a frequently updated assessment of your weaknesses/vulnerabilities and a roadmap for what to specifically focus on again with more phase 2 type focused drilling/review.
The most important purposes of taking timed PTs are to determine your current performance range/skills and most importantly for deep review purposes to determine your current weaknesses/mistakes/vulnerabilities/issues that need additional attention in order to figure out things to do to fix the issues/improve your methods/skills. Blind review is a very important and helpful method. It involves re-doing and reviewing questions after taking the timed PT BEFORE ever checking the answer key. Use the forum search feature for threads about it, a link to a page where 7Sage describes it has been posted in a bunch of threads or you can just google it.
Deep thorough review of every timed PT is where you get the most value from taking one if you put in the proper amount of time and effort to do it properly. Properly reviewing a timed PT should take at least/around three times the amount of time it took to take it timed. You need to review your entire step by step thought and decision making processes you actually applied to each question very thoroughly, not just the ones you got wrong. This means going far beyond just making sure you understand the reasons why the correct answer is correct and the wrong one you picked is wrong. Figuring those things out is just the starting point/tip of the iceberg for doing deep thorough review of the type you'll get enormous benefits from. It means not just reviewing and making sure you fully understand the logic of each question and all the answer choices, but that you also examine/review how you actually attacked the question, step by step, with whatever you actually thought and did that lead you to selecting whichever answer you did, whether correct or incorrect. It's important to do that in order to figure out weaknesses in your application of proper methods so you know what to work on more with further review, drilling and more review.
In short, learn everything you can from every PT with deep review of your entire actual step by step approach/thought processes/decision making process of what you actually did with each question and compare that during review to how you could have handled it differently in a more efficient and effective way.
It's important to thoroughly review all questions, meaning ones you got right too, especially the easy ones, with the purpose of figuring out how you could have solved them faster. Just because you got questions correct doesn't mean you did it the most efficient way or even a logically valid way. Basically, focus a big part of your PT review on looking for ways you could have been more efficient/faster with questions by refining/fine tuning your methods/processes.
Also keep in mind that right after pretty much only during slow motion phase 2 drilling and review, the first few timed PTs you do to transition into phase 3 are typically a bit rough and disappointing. That's normal and nothing to stress about since it takes a few just to get used to the time pressure and start building up full timed test endurance. Those scores are not and should not be used as any type of predictor/indicator of your ultimate test day score. The sheer nerves and pressure of watching the clock while trying to put everything together fast on the fly takes a bit of practice to get used to so that it doesn't cause you to throw as many of the proper steps/methods you should have done out the window cuz was in a hurry.
A big part of your review should also include specifically identifying all the times/places/questions where you skipped steps/didn't follow the proper set of step by step methods you know you should do because of the time pressure and write down a detailed list of every instance and every thing you did to cut corners that contributed to missing questions or making some take longer than they should have.
The act of taking a timed PT doesn't really do much to improve your skills other than for building endurance and testing out time management adjustments. The skills building/score range improvement benefits during phase three come from what you learn about yourself and your actual thinking process and actual application of what you learned patterns of reactions/behaviors you actually do with your knowledge once put into full timed PT conditions. It's a big self examination/introspection process where you examine your own thinking processes, decision making processes and actual reactions/behavior (whether conscious or subconsciously caused) to the materials with the knowledge you have when under time pressure conditions.
Done properly involves many many pages of you writing a lot of detailed stuff down about the questions, the logic, your approach to the questions, an error log, etc. It's a lot of time consuming work, which is why many people don't do it and instead just do the churn and burn materials wasting routine that usually keeps people stuck in a score range while just wasting fresh PTs. Don't give into the temptation to focus on quantity/doing a bunch of timed PTs like a 3 a week schedule or something and sacrifice quality and depth of review to do it. The tedious time spent doing detailed review and taking action with the knowledge you gain from reviewing is how you put everything together better and better to drive your efficiency, accuracy and score range up.
Also, something I recommend when transitioning into phase 3 is to do a few time PTs timed, but not time capped. That means you start a count-up timer (keep track of time that has elapsed, don't focus on countdown/time remaining counting) but don't limit yourself to 35 minutes. You still work at timed PT rate with the hope you'll finish in time, but you don't preoccupy yourself with having to finish in 35 minutes. Basically time yourself and work as if under timed conditions but are allowed a little extra time if needed so you don't worry about constantly checking the clock or changing your approach to questions based on time elapsed/Q# benchmarks for fear of running out of time. Just focus on accuracy and going through all the proper steps of analysis for each question before selecting final answer so that you're confident in your answers and not cutting corners just to beat a deadline that is distracting your mind. You can still check the clock occasionally and should take note of when 35 mins has passed if you're still working so you can mark where you were at, but keep going till you finish. Make sense?
Most of my students that have tried this and been able to work fast without being preoccupied with the 35 min deadline end up finishing sections right about on time or just a little over AND with a high level of accuracy early in phase 3 compared to PTs where they are stressed out about not finishing in time and make all sorts of dumb decisions to try to cut corners along the way while frequently checking the clock and modifying approach and how thorough they are with questions based on artificial time/Q# benchmarks they focus on trying to hit. Being constrained by all those thoughts gets in the way of just purely focusing on the material and simply just going through the right steps thoroughly enough with each question to be confident about an answer choice and ready to move on.
Timing should be dictated by your logical certainty level and how much analysis it takes for each question to get to a high enough confidence level in what the CR is to 'know' it's the CR so you can move on and by recognizing when you're stuck and wasting time (like going back and forth on two answers for like a minute doing nothing productive). Since the difficulty level and amount of analysis needed per question isn't organized in a pure linear increasing from easy to hard order, proper timing has to flex and bend question by question due to the variations in complexity and difficulty level of each question. The days of almost all of the first 10 LR questions being mainly easy to medium easy difficulty level/much simpler questions than the rest are long gone. LSAC has been shifting around the distribution of the different difficulty levels of the questions per Q# range per section compared to older tests. The December 2013 LSAT PT71 is a perfect example. There were a few really easy LR question scattered in the mid-high teens range on one section and a few harder than usual questions early in the section. Things like this have been happening on recent LR sections, so the section pacing 'flow' feels different than older PTs and freaks some people out on test day by messing up their rigid timing benchmarks strategy. Working fast doesn't have to also include being 'in a hurry'. Being in the 'in a hurry' mindset is one of the main causes of costly careless and various other types of mistakes that look dumb/stupid in hindsight.
Anyway, this turned into my long pretty much stream of consciousness thoughts, hope they help. Please ask for clarification or follow up questions if necessary since I just kinda barfed a bunch of thoughts into this post!
The most important purposes of taking timed PTs are to determine your current performance range/skills and most importantly for deep review purposes to determine your current weaknesses/mistakes/vulnerabilities/issues that need additional attention in order to figure out things to do to fix the issues/improve your methods/skills. Blind review is a very important and helpful method. It involves re-doing and reviewing questions after taking the timed PT BEFORE ever checking the answer key. Use the forum search feature for threads about it, a link to a page where 7Sage describes it has been posted in a bunch of threads or you can just google it.
Deep thorough review of every timed PT is where you get the most value from taking one if you put in the proper amount of time and effort to do it properly. Properly reviewing a timed PT should take at least/around three times the amount of time it took to take it timed. You need to review your entire step by step thought and decision making processes you actually applied to each question very thoroughly, not just the ones you got wrong. This means going far beyond just making sure you understand the reasons why the correct answer is correct and the wrong one you picked is wrong. Figuring those things out is just the starting point/tip of the iceberg for doing deep thorough review of the type you'll get enormous benefits from. It means not just reviewing and making sure you fully understand the logic of each question and all the answer choices, but that you also examine/review how you actually attacked the question, step by step, with whatever you actually thought and did that lead you to selecting whichever answer you did, whether correct or incorrect. It's important to do that in order to figure out weaknesses in your application of proper methods so you know what to work on more with further review, drilling and more review.
In short, learn everything you can from every PT with deep review of your entire actual step by step approach/thought processes/decision making process of what you actually did with each question and compare that during review to how you could have handled it differently in a more efficient and effective way.
It's important to thoroughly review all questions, meaning ones you got right too, especially the easy ones, with the purpose of figuring out how you could have solved them faster. Just because you got questions correct doesn't mean you did it the most efficient way or even a logically valid way. Basically, focus a big part of your PT review on looking for ways you could have been more efficient/faster with questions by refining/fine tuning your methods/processes.
Also keep in mind that right after pretty much only during slow motion phase 2 drilling and review, the first few timed PTs you do to transition into phase 3 are typically a bit rough and disappointing. That's normal and nothing to stress about since it takes a few just to get used to the time pressure and start building up full timed test endurance. Those scores are not and should not be used as any type of predictor/indicator of your ultimate test day score. The sheer nerves and pressure of watching the clock while trying to put everything together fast on the fly takes a bit of practice to get used to so that it doesn't cause you to throw as many of the proper steps/methods you should have done out the window cuz was in a hurry.
A big part of your review should also include specifically identifying all the times/places/questions where you skipped steps/didn't follow the proper set of step by step methods you know you should do because of the time pressure and write down a detailed list of every instance and every thing you did to cut corners that contributed to missing questions or making some take longer than they should have.
The act of taking a timed PT doesn't really do much to improve your skills other than for building endurance and testing out time management adjustments. The skills building/score range improvement benefits during phase three come from what you learn about yourself and your actual thinking process and actual application of what you learned patterns of reactions/behaviors you actually do with your knowledge once put into full timed PT conditions. It's a big self examination/introspection process where you examine your own thinking processes, decision making processes and actual reactions/behavior (whether conscious or subconsciously caused) to the materials with the knowledge you have when under time pressure conditions.
Done properly involves many many pages of you writing a lot of detailed stuff down about the questions, the logic, your approach to the questions, an error log, etc. It's a lot of time consuming work, which is why many people don't do it and instead just do the churn and burn materials wasting routine that usually keeps people stuck in a score range while just wasting fresh PTs. Don't give into the temptation to focus on quantity/doing a bunch of timed PTs like a 3 a week schedule or something and sacrifice quality and depth of review to do it. The tedious time spent doing detailed review and taking action with the knowledge you gain from reviewing is how you put everything together better and better to drive your efficiency, accuracy and score range up.
Also, something I recommend when transitioning into phase 3 is to do a few time PTs timed, but not time capped. That means you start a count-up timer (keep track of time that has elapsed, don't focus on countdown/time remaining counting) but don't limit yourself to 35 minutes. You still work at timed PT rate with the hope you'll finish in time, but you don't preoccupy yourself with having to finish in 35 minutes. Basically time yourself and work as if under timed conditions but are allowed a little extra time if needed so you don't worry about constantly checking the clock or changing your approach to questions based on time elapsed/Q# benchmarks for fear of running out of time. Just focus on accuracy and going through all the proper steps of analysis for each question before selecting final answer so that you're confident in your answers and not cutting corners just to beat a deadline that is distracting your mind. You can still check the clock occasionally and should take note of when 35 mins has passed if you're still working so you can mark where you were at, but keep going till you finish. Make sense?
Most of my students that have tried this and been able to work fast without being preoccupied with the 35 min deadline end up finishing sections right about on time or just a little over AND with a high level of accuracy early in phase 3 compared to PTs where they are stressed out about not finishing in time and make all sorts of dumb decisions to try to cut corners along the way while frequently checking the clock and modifying approach and how thorough they are with questions based on artificial time/Q# benchmarks they focus on trying to hit. Being constrained by all those thoughts gets in the way of just purely focusing on the material and simply just going through the right steps thoroughly enough with each question to be confident about an answer choice and ready to move on.
Timing should be dictated by your logical certainty level and how much analysis it takes for each question to get to a high enough confidence level in what the CR is to 'know' it's the CR so you can move on and by recognizing when you're stuck and wasting time (like going back and forth on two answers for like a minute doing nothing productive). Since the difficulty level and amount of analysis needed per question isn't organized in a pure linear increasing from easy to hard order, proper timing has to flex and bend question by question due to the variations in complexity and difficulty level of each question. The days of almost all of the first 10 LR questions being mainly easy to medium easy difficulty level/much simpler questions than the rest are long gone. LSAC has been shifting around the distribution of the different difficulty levels of the questions per Q# range per section compared to older tests. The December 2013 LSAT PT71 is a perfect example. There were a few really easy LR question scattered in the mid-high teens range on one section and a few harder than usual questions early in the section. Things like this have been happening on recent LR sections, so the section pacing 'flow' feels different than older PTs and freaks some people out on test day by messing up their rigid timing benchmarks strategy. Working fast doesn't have to also include being 'in a hurry'. Being in the 'in a hurry' mindset is one of the main causes of costly careless and various other types of mistakes that look dumb/stupid in hindsight.
Anyway, this turned into my long pretty much stream of consciousness thoughts, hope they help. Please ask for clarification or follow up questions if necessary since I just kinda barfed a bunch of thoughts into this post!
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chrijani
- Posts: 20
- Joined: Fri Apr 25, 2014 2:36 pm
Re: Need help with my progress!
@lsatkillah, Thank you for the support. I guess it is still to early for me to tell how severe my timing issues are since I have not taken enough tests.
@Jeffort, Thank you SO much for the response. What's funny is that by reading the forums I stumbled upon your 3 phase method and when I read it, it described me to a tee. I was the churn and burn, capped at mid 150's test taker. I took your advice from that post and began my studying with a completely different mindset to do slow and thorough review, aiming for quality over quantity. I guess the humour is that since I started phasing in to phase 3, I am seeing myself starting to fall into the same trap that kept me stagnant before.
Anyways, I appreciate the response. I took notes on it, that I hope will aid me in future studies, such as the count up timer. One thing I can say for certain is that my review has been lacking. After I finish the PT, I do the blind review and additional review, but I don't actually give it the emphasis it requires. I more or less, check to see where I went wrong, see why the CR is right and quickly try to go to the next question, making notes on particularly hard questions to come back to. When in essence, I shouldn't move on until I know the question inside and out. Another thing you pointed out that hit me hard was the fact that I do try to cut corners. I can see going through my LR sections that I don't eliminate 4 wrong answers most of the time, I skim and pick on way to many without definitively knowing why the other answers are incorrect. Lastly, I am glad to hear that the LR sections are not following the first 10 in 10 mins approach because I noticed that if I try that approach, I focus more on the "rush" and it screws up my approach since I care more about getting to the Q11 by 10-11 mins rather than trying to actually answer questions properly.
I will keep in touch over the next couple of weeks to let you both know how I have been improving! I appreciate all the help!
PS: Jeffort do you do private tutoring?
@Jeffort, Thank you SO much for the response. What's funny is that by reading the forums I stumbled upon your 3 phase method and when I read it, it described me to a tee. I was the churn and burn, capped at mid 150's test taker. I took your advice from that post and began my studying with a completely different mindset to do slow and thorough review, aiming for quality over quantity. I guess the humour is that since I started phasing in to phase 3, I am seeing myself starting to fall into the same trap that kept me stagnant before.
Anyways, I appreciate the response. I took notes on it, that I hope will aid me in future studies, such as the count up timer. One thing I can say for certain is that my review has been lacking. After I finish the PT, I do the blind review and additional review, but I don't actually give it the emphasis it requires. I more or less, check to see where I went wrong, see why the CR is right and quickly try to go to the next question, making notes on particularly hard questions to come back to. When in essence, I shouldn't move on until I know the question inside and out. Another thing you pointed out that hit me hard was the fact that I do try to cut corners. I can see going through my LR sections that I don't eliminate 4 wrong answers most of the time, I skim and pick on way to many without definitively knowing why the other answers are incorrect. Lastly, I am glad to hear that the LR sections are not following the first 10 in 10 mins approach because I noticed that if I try that approach, I focus more on the "rush" and it screws up my approach since I care more about getting to the Q11 by 10-11 mins rather than trying to actually answer questions properly.
I will keep in touch over the next couple of weeks to let you both know how I have been improving! I appreciate all the help!
PS: Jeffort do you do private tutoring?
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mornincounselor
- Posts: 1236
- Joined: Sun Apr 21, 2013 1:37 am
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Last edited by mornincounselor on Mon Nov 09, 2015 1:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Jeffort
- Posts: 1888
- Joined: Wed Jun 18, 2008 4:43 pm
Re: Need help with my progress!
Thanks!mornincounselor wrote:What a great informative post, Jeffort!
I realize I've been slacking with my LR blind review. I look for the questions I've missed and only thoroughly review them. I look to the Manhattan boards and then write out a sentence or two next to the questions regarding what I did incorrectly on the question.
You mention going back over the exact process you used to answer the questions during the timed run-through. Does this require blind reviewing immediately after taking the test timed? Would doing LR questions "stop-and-go" (where we time each individual question then pause the clock to write out how we went about solving the question under timed conditions) be helpful? I do that for RC drilling (after each passage) and I'm finding it really helpful.
P.S. chrijani -- I'm pretty sure Jeffort does offer private tutoring, you should PM him.
The stop-and-go method you described is pretty much how at least the second half of phase two should be done. So yeah, keep doing that, it's one of the important parts of drilling for forming good habits and getting rid of bad ones.
Blind review of full timed PTs is best done shortly after taking the test if possible but still can be done effectively the next day. The sooner you do it, the better your memory of what happened with each question will be, but keep the stop and go method for phase 2 type drilling review mixed in phase 3 between PTs and/or during phase 2 before phase 3.
The better you Get to Know Yourself with what actually 'happens' when you approach problems under timed conditions, the better you can make proper adjustments to increase efficiency and accuracy. Figuring out and then weeding out bad habits and replacing them with better ones is a big part of continuing to improve your score range, and doing that properly depends 100% on deep thorough 'play by play' review kinda like instant replay with sports.
It's tedious and much less ego fulfilling that just taking more timed PTs, which is why many people neglect it, so you just gotta make sure to put in the time and effort and you'll get rewards from it way faster than just burning through more PTs with mediocre review.
It's very much about quality of prep time and what you learn from each question over quantity of Qs you do for practice.
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h3jk5h
- Posts: 95
- Joined: Thu Jan 01, 2009 9:56 pm
Re: Need help with my progress!
Thanks Jeffort, you pretty much answered the same questions on the other threads well.
