LR study struggle: When is ENOUGH? Forum

[Rebecca&Fiona]

I have a question about the ubiquitous advice "Go through the correct answer along with wrong answers on LR to improve.”

When they say this, do they give themselves credit for one review?
Or some people make detailed notebook and writes out everything Manhattan LSAT forum explains?

I am not quick witted and can never trust my brain. Even though I understand 100% of the questions, I feel like I have to do them more than 100 times.
So, I made notebooks and I’ve gone over several times on same questions, yet I worry that I might make mistakes on the real LSAT.

How do you give yourself 100% certainty that you will never make mistakes on questions that you have reviewed?

I have already taken 3 times LSAT and there are only 4 untouched LSAT PTs left and I don’t want to do them yet (plan to take on Dec 2014).

Part of the reason I worry is that since I’m veteran on studying LSAT, I mostly remember the correct answers.

Given these conditions, how do I spice up my confidence and learn LR effectively.
Thanks in advance.

[brooklynboy]

This is a tough one.

A lot of people advise to understand not just why the right answer is right, but also why the 4 wrong answers are wrong. But what fewer people emphasize, and what I believe is truly the key to improvement, is to go further -- to understand what you thought at the time that led you to pass over the correct answer and to get sucked in to a trap answer.

Getting a question wrong can happen for several reasons. My advice is to ask yourself these questions, in this order, to help figure out where in your process you went wrong.

1. Did I understand what the question asked me to do? (e.g. find a flaw, weaken the reasoning, identify what must be true, etc.)
If no, go over the wording of that question stem a few times until you feel confident that you understand it. Question stems on LR are among the most predictable aspects of the test, so hopefully you can get the hang of them, and this won't be your issue.

2. Did I understand the stimulus? (e.g., did I correctly identify whether it is a merely factual or contained a conclusion?, was I able to break down the argument core, identifying the conclusion and its support?, if the stim contained an argument, did I identify the gap in reasoning/flaw/assumption it made?)
From my experience, we can all improve on step 2, even if we are scoring very highly. By doing more and more problems, and revisiting old problems (the latter is more key imo), we can more quickly identify common reasoning structures and flaws that the LSAT presents.

3. Did I understand the answer choices?
If no, go over them a few times until you feel confident you understand what they express.

4. Did I understand the implications of the answer choices?
There is a big difference between semantically understanding what a choice is saying, and being able to apply it to the stimulus.

In going over the questions you got wrong, look for whether one of these steps seems to be the culprit more often the others. If so, you might need to adjust the time you spend at each step of the process so that you are devoting relatively more time to the weak step in your process!

I would say "enough" of this is when you look at a problem again, feel confident about each of these steps, and get the question right.

I'm confident that if you think about process (and not just why one particular attractive answer was wrong), you will start to trust yourself more! Doing well on this test isn't about how "quick-witted" you may be or feel when you initially see a question of a certain type, but how well you can learn from reviewing your mistakes over time. I'm sure you can do it!

[Lying Lawyer]

Can you get any more tests? Some of the older ones? Use some of them for practice. Don't worry so much about taking tests as you should be worrying about honing your skills. I got the Cambridge packets to drill by question type. I'm going through each chapter in the Bibles and then working on a bunch of questions regarding that section. I am not even worrying about PTs right now.

[Rebecca&Fiona]

This is a tough one.

A lot of people advise to understand not just why the right answer is right, but also why the 4 wrong answers are wrong. But what fewer people emphasize, and what I believe is truly the key to improvement, is to go further -- to understand what you thought at the time that led you to pass over the correct answer and to get sucked in to a trap answer.

Getting a question wrong can happen for several reasons. My advice is to ask yourself these questions, in this order, to help figure out where in your process you went wrong.

1. Did I understand what the question asked me to do? (e.g. find a flaw, weaken the reasoning, identify what must be true, etc.)
If no, go over the wording of that question stem a few times until you feel confident that you understand it. Question stems on LR are among the most predictable aspects of the test, so hopefully you can get the hang of them, and this won't be your issue.

2. Did I understand the stimulus? (e.g., did I correctly identify whether it is a merely factual or contained a conclusion?, was I able to break down the argument core, identifying the conclusion and its support?, if the stim contained an argument, did I identify the gap in reasoning/flaw/assumption it made?)
From my experience, we can all improve on step 2, even if we are scoring very highly. By doing more and more problems, and revisiting old problems (the latter is more key imo), we can more quickly identify common reasoning structures and flaws that the LSAT presents.

3. Did I understand the answer choices?
If no, go over them a few times until you feel confident you understand what they express.

4. Did I understand the implications of the answer choices?
There is a big difference between semantically understanding what a choice is saying, and being able to apply it to the stimulus.

In going over the questions you got wrong, look for whether one of these steps seems to be the culprit more often the others. If so, you might need to adjust the time you spend at each step of the process so that you are devoting relatively more time to the weak step in your process!

I would say "enough" of this is when you look at a problem again, feel confident about each of these steps, and get the question right.

I'm confident that if you think about process (and not just why one particular attractive answer was wrong), you will start to trust yourself more! Doing well on this test isn't about how "quick-witted" you may be or feel when you initially see a question of a certain type, but how well you can learn from reviewing your mistakes over time. I'm sure you can do it!

Thanks for the detailed advice.
I feel it's almost OCD to be this anal.
But, probably if I change the method, I might be able to loosen up a bit. I'll try.