How to speed up? Need 1 hour for each section now Forum

[huiyaogeorge]

I have read all PS Bibles, and I'm doing preptests.

It usually takes me 1 hour for each section, LG/LR/RC. And I typically miss 10+. How to speed up? Is there anything I can do besides taking more and more preptests?

[MadwomanintheAttic]

I would stop taking preptests. Read the bibles and then drill. Reinforce the methods you've learned by drilling and then start preptesting. If you're missing 10+ consistently every sesction it means you don't have a strong grasp of the fundamentals of each question type,,or you're not comfortable with each question type. Speed will eventually come, but with familiarity and growing comfortable with question types. Drill. Become comfortable with the test then start taking full preptest.

[mephistopheles]

yeah, not much sense in speeding up if you're getting that many wrong

[KDLMaj]

I've got some stuff here that might help you. (Horrid formatting, I'm so sorry. But bear with it)

LR: https://cloud.box.com/s/ku1i5qyrchwmnptxylar
RC: https://cloud.box.com/s/1kcm44eli9fczsnpizj3
LG: https://cloud.box.com/s/xytz1hgyrqw3e2kllgev

But here's what's really going on:


1) You're giving yourself an hour. You can't expect yourself to finish in 35 minutes if you don't actually force yourself to do it. You have to draw a line in the sand and practice under real timing constraints. I promise you that as long as you're saying "Self, just go through and do your best no matter how long it takes" you're never going to get better.

2) You're trying to do every question. Stop. The LSAT has an extremely forgiving "curve". You can miss almost 20% of the questions on a given test and be a top 10% scorer. Your job on the LSAT is to hop around and grab the questions that are quick and easy, skipping the hard stuff. You can bother with the time-consuming stuff later *if* you have time at the end.

3) I guarantee you're reading every answer choice in the questions. Stop. If you want to play a fun game- go through the answer choices in an RC section. Count the number of words in them. Most RC sections have more words in the answers than the passage. I'm guessing you're thinking to yourself, "I can't finish these passages in just a few minutes!"- so how're you going to get through all of the answers? Predict for every question you can- if you let the answers do the work for you, it's not going to be in your favor.

4) For LR- if you just did the first 15 questions (the easiest set on the whole for most tests) and got them all right while guessing on the rest, you'd statistically pull a 68% of it. Start with that. Then slowly but surely start adding more questions as you get more efficient.

5) For LG and RC- every game/passage has easier questions and harder questions. Ever notice how in a game you'll have a few questions that go REALLY fast, and then all of a sudden you run into a question and it feels like you've just smacked right into a wall? That's by design. Scan your questions in each passage/game, jump into what looks easier and faster. Ignore the rest. If you have extra time at the end, you can start worry about them again. But right now- you don't. So stop wasting your time on questions that aren't likely to reward you.

Think of it this way: Say you only have 5 minutes left to tackle the following questions:

Q1- will take 1 minute
Q2- will take 3 minutes
Q3- will take 2 minutes
Q4- will take 1 minute

If you do all of those questions in order, you'll get two points. Q1 and Q2. You'll run out of time before you get through Q3.

If you're smart and skip the stuff that looks remotely time consuming, you'll get 3 points (Q1, Q3, and Q4).

This is the reality of the LSAT. Be smart about what you're investing your time in.

[huiyaogeorge]

Thank you every much everyone!

I can now finish each section in 45 min, doing every question and missing 10-15 in one PT. I'll report again after 2 weeks.

[lsatkillah]

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