Drastic drop in Reading Comprehension performance? Forum

[Thelaw23]

Hey guys!

So I've been studying since June. I read a lot, and I quickly found out that Reading Comp. was my best section. I flipped through the RC sections during prep, and when I did the prep tests I would only get 0-3 wrong on my RC sections. This was both newer and older tests. In September I finally got to 169/170, and my RC was still nearly perfect. I focused on LG and LR.

Now, in November, my LR and LG are almost perfect with 1-2 wrong on each section, but I'm bombing the RC sections out of nowhere. New prep tests or old, I'm getting 4 wrong on the RC. I'm making mistakes on a wide range of the question types as well.

I'm worried as my LSAT is in December. If I get my RC back down to what it was I will be in my target range.

I feel like me zoning in and developing the techniques to do LR and LG is backfiring on me in RC or something.

I never focused on RC's, but I have taken about 30 prep tests with an RC section in it. I'm taking a prep test a day now, I'm about to start doing all the older RC sections everyday as practice as well?

Do you think the 'strategies' or 'advice' that you read in prep test books about RC are helpful? I mean, it's RC. I feel like you read it, you get it, and you answer the questions. Which is why it's so frustrating to see how much worse I am doing than I was before.

Any advice on improving RC would be helpful. This is like some sort of karma. Everybody would always say RC is hardest to improve on, and I would laugh at that as I seemed to have great aptitude for it at the beginning.

[Blueprint Mithun]

Hey guys!

So I've been studying since June. I read a lot, and I quickly found out that Reading Comp. was my best section. I flipped through the RC sections during prep, and when I did the prep tests I would only get 0-3 wrong on my RC sections. This was both newer and older tests. In September I finally got to 169/170, and my RC was still nearly perfect. I focused on LG and LR.

Now, in November, my LR and LG are almost perfect with 1-2 wrong on each section, but I'm bombing the RC sections out of nowhere. New prep tests or old, I'm getting 4 wrong on the RC. I'm making mistakes on a wide range of the question types as well.

I'm worried as my LSAT is in December. If I get my RC back down to what it was I will be in my target range.

I feel like me zoning in and developing the techniques to do LR and LG is backfiring on me in RC or something.

I never focused on RC's, but I have taken about 30 prep tests with an RC section in it. I'm taking a prep test a day now, I'm about to start doing all the older RC sections everyday as practice as well?

Do you think the 'strategies' or 'advice' that you read in prep test books about RC are helpful? I mean, it's RC. I feel like you read it, you get it, and you answer the questions. Which is why it's so frustrating to see how much worse I am doing than I was before.

Any advice on improving RC would be helpful. This is like some sort of karma. Everybody would always say RC is hardest to improve on, and I would laugh at that as I seemed to have great aptitude for it at the beginning.

I'm not totally sure why your RC performance went down, but I've had students in the past who found themselves "mysteriously" getting worse at one section. Have you been taking the more recent preptests lately? I believe the general consensus is that RC has gotten more challenging in the last 15 or so PTs.

When approaching RC, it's important to look out for certain aspects of the text during your initial read-through in order to save time. Your first reading of the passage should ideally be careful and thorough, so that you can minimize the time spent going back and forth once you get to the questions. The Blueprint method is built around identifying the main point, author's attitude, and structure/intent (primary purpose), because these three elements will always factor into the questions.

Do your best to identify what's holding you back and leading you to lose those points consistently. Do you feel as if you're running out of time? Missing certain question types consistently? Struggling with certain subject matter? The appropriate study plan will be different depending on your individual weaknesses.

[scone]

Are you sure you're not burning out? I personally found my RC scores closely correlated to how much sleep I was getting, how much I was working outside the LSAT, how stressed I was etc.

[ihenry]

Are you sure you're not burning out? I personally found my RC scores closely correlated to how much sleep I was getting, how much I was working outside the LSAT, how stressed I was etc.

I'm pretty sure this is true. I didn't sleep well the night before, was taking a full time internship with real work, and felt quite stressed for the test. I failed to understand an entire RC passage as a result and did worse than I ever had done.