Speed Forum

[ang683]

I am trying to improve my reading speed for LR and RC. I am completing 19 questions and my accuracy is good. What do you guys recommend me getting to improve my speed? I know there are couple of books, software products, and reading classes etc but I just don't know what would be the best option

[dowu]

I am trying to improve my reading speed for LR and RC. I am completing 19 questions and my accuracy is good. What do you guys recommend me getting to improve my speed? I know there are couple of books, software products, and reading classes etc but I just don't know what would be the best option

First ten questions in ten minutes

First 15 questions in 15 minutes.


Go practice this.

[Pneumonia]

Speed follows accuracy. Drill the Cambridge packets untimed for a while and see where that gets you. Speed reading classes are bunk.

[Aurelius85]

Speed follows accuracy. Drill the Cambridge packets untimed for a while and see where that gets you. Speed reading classes are bunk.

That makes a lot of sense. My accuracy is great but my timing is not what I want it to be at the moment. Nevertheless, the more I drill RC the better my timing has gotten, and overall my accuracy has stayed consistent. Problem I'm encountering now is that I've just about finished Volume 2 and I don't want to use Volume 1 and Volume 3 of the Cambridge packets since I'd like to save those questions for the PTs I'll be taking later.

[Christine (MLSAT)]

One thing to remember is that you're not really going for speed, but rather efficiency.

Thinking in terms of SPEED will just cause you to rush, kill your accuracy, and generally have feelings of anxiety. I often make the analogy of trying to get across Times Square as quickly as possible. You wouldn't just start running at top speed - that would be crazy, AND it actually would not end up being that fast. You'd run into people, fall over - it would be a disaster. Instead, the most *efficient* way to get across Times Square is to look for an opening in the crowd, find one, and go a few feet; look for another good opening, find it, take it; etc. You want to treat the reasoning process somewhat the same way: zero in on the best next step, take it, repeat.

You want to think about taking the correct process (that you should already be doing) and tightening it up. You want to make each individual decision faster, so there's less dead time between steps of the process. That's why "accuracy before speed" is so important. How can you tighten up a good process, when you don't yet have a good process?

And, while accuracy is necessary for eventually working up efficiency, it's not sufficient. If you are simply reading a stimulus over and over and over until it "clicks", there's no good way to tighten that up - because it's not a PROCESS, it's just rereading it until things trigger a gut instinct. So, if you find yourself struggling to tighten up, take a really hard look at your process, even if your accuracy is high.

[KDLMaj]

This is some ugly stuff I wrote up a long time ago as an LSAT Instructor. Sorry for the crappy formatting on some of this- I can't find the shiny copies. But they give you a gist of some things you can do:

RC:
Section Management: https://cloud.box.com/s/1kcm44eli9fczsnpizj3
RC At-Home Exercise: --LinkRemoved--
RC Passage Types (if you learn these, you will be MUCH faster): https://cloud.box.com/s/bi80az2gpy5ht0b8ompg
RC Passage Type Breakdown (Visual): https://cloud.box.com/s/7wy79v6p59ffg8zu1w5g (NOTE: You should be ignoring the first column stuff. Focus on the second and third column)

LR:
LR Section Management: https://cloud.box.com/s/ku1i5qyrchwmnptxylar

Not sure if this helps at all, but you're welcome to any of it.