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Does anyone have any advice/tricks they use when they are doing RC? I am consistently missing 14 on them

Have you gone through any RC prep book? Missing more than half consistently kinda indicates to me that you haven't.

If that's the case, pick one up. I can't vouch for any in particular, because I'm one of the lucky few that does really well on RC by just "getting it" to some extent. I wish I knew better what that meant.

The only advice I can give you is to read for comprehension at all cost, even if that means re-reading (and re-re-reading) a paragraph you don't understand. Do that until you are confident you know what the author, or authors, are trying to say. Imagine you're telling your friend a 20 second summary of what you learned. You want to have a firm grasp on that level of understanding before going to the questions. Until you can consistently get questions right untimed I wouldn't worry about the clock.

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SirArthurDayne wrote:Get the LSAT Trainer for starters. Read some of what Mike Kim, the book's author, has to say about RC in this thread http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 3&t=209573

One you gone through the book, drill, baby, drill! Get RC Cambridge packets and start going through them. I will say that you may be tempted to not emphasize the review for RC, but it's absolutely essential that you put in the time to understand each passage. If you are consistently missing -2 or more on a passage untimed, it means you should still focus on fundamentals and not worry about timing yet.

Can you explain exactly what you mean when you say review for RC? Is it like blind reviewing for LR in that you circle questions you're not sure of and go over the question and stimulus/entire passage slowly?

Keep in mind that, for a lot of the questions, the answers are explicitly in the text. So a way I checked my answers was to look and identify specifically in the text where I'm basing the answer on. That is, I would justify my answer by pointing at its basis In the text.

This technique does not work as well with main idea questions and the like.

This was my weakest section too but I know why. First thing I would recommend is to have fun while reading the passages. You don't have to literally enjoy the material but just tell yourself you do in whatever way works for you. Every time I enjoyed the topic of the passage I did much better on its questions.

Second, trust your gut reaction to the answer choices. It is the easiest (IMO) in RC to convince yourself that some slightly wrong choice is correct if you think about a question for too long. Drilling will help you have confidence with your first thoughts.

Finally, just read as much as you can. Read prep books for strategies to learn and apply them to things like news articles or literature. I think the value of reading a lot is why social science majors tend to be better at RC without as much prep.

Having read just about all the guides, I find myself only really referring people to Manhattan LSATs reading comp guide. I'd pick it up, and practice practice practice. Aim to do 45 sections timed before your test and review them thoroughly and I guarantee your score will go up. Too many students don't dedicate enough time to rc because one it's boring, and two it just takes more time

I love the Manhattan guide

Dcc617 wrote:Keep in mind that, for a lot of the questions, the answers are explicitly in the text. So a way I checked my answers was to look and identify specifically in the text where I'm basing the answer on. That is, I would justify my answer by pointing at its basis In the text.

This technique does not work as well with main idea questions and the like.

+1

I'd even go so far as to physically underline the very line that supports your answer choice—at least at the beginning of your studying when you're not worried about timing yet. (And you shouldn't be until you're getting close to the score you want untimed first!)

If you happen to run out of LSAT RC passages, I actually think some of the SAT RC questions have a similar gist. But take that with a grain of salt as I didn't use SAT passages when I studied; the LSAT just strongly reminded me of the SAT.

thanks for the good tips.. on a good day i can get -4 on RC, and i've noticed that a lot of the times (not always, but enough times for me to notice a trend), those wrong answers will be the last question/one of the last questions of the passage. do other people notice that the last question for each passage seems to be harder/trickier in some sense? I'm having a hard time believing i tend to get the last one wrong simply by coincidence.

by comparison, the last question of an LG set may throw in a rule substitution question that forces you to think about the passage in a different angle. does RC have anything similar to this that might explain why i tend to get the last question in every set wrong? I can't seem to pinpoint any explanations.

trqdor wrote:thanks for the good tips.. on a good day i can get -4 on RC, and i've noticed that a lot of the times (not always, but enough times for me to notice a trend), those wrong answers will be the last question/one of the last questions of the passage. do other people notice that the last question for each passage seems to be harder/trickier in some sense? I'm having a hard time believing i tend to get the last one wrong simply by coincidence.

by comparison, the last question of an LG set may throw in a rule substitution question that forces you to think about the passage in a different angle. does RC have anything similar to this that might explain why i tend to get the last question in every set wrong? I can't seem to pinpoint any explanations.

The trend highly suggests you have a stamina weakness. That's actually a good thing because by getting used to dense reading more you should be able to have a bump in this section.

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The last question or two usually aren't just found in the text. They usually are harder questions...