170+ How to improve reading comp (no notations) Forum

[SunDevil14]

Early on I discovered that I did the best on reading comp without notating. At that point, and since then, I have been averaging -3. The score did not bother me because I was in the 160's. Now that I am starting hit 170+ (meaning -0, -1, -2 in other sections), the consistent -3 is starting to bother me and becoming more of a weakness.

For those in the no notation, and or very minimal notation camp what would be the best way to improve to a minus -0 or -1?

Unfortunately the majority of the prep material I have and a great deal of information on the subject is not very useful to me because I do not notate. I am open to making small notes in the margins if that will help me improve, but at this point I am not looking for an approach to advocates really marking up the passage.

As for the questions I get wrong, they tend to be more on the subjective/inference spectrum rather than the main and the explicit points of the passage. A lot of the time I will narrow it down to the correct and most attractive trap answer and pick the latter.

For several of the LR question types there a different reliable trends, shortcuts, and tricks. Are there any useful ones for reading comp?

[RamTitan]

Redo passages. Do them over and over again. Once you understand a few passages, you'll understand them all.

[Mikey]

Redo passages. Do them over and over again. Once you understand a few passages, you'll understand them all.

Are you referring to repeated structure?

[Voyager]

Early on I discovered that I did the best on reading comp without notating. At that point, and since then, I have been averaging -3. The score did not bother me because I was in the 160's. Now that I am starting hit 170+ (meaning -0, -1, -2 in other sections), the consistent -3 is starting to bother me and becoming more of a weakness.

For those in the no notation, and or very minimal notation camp what would be the best way to improve to a minus -0 or -1?

Unfortunately the majority of the prep material I have and a great deal of information on the subject is not very useful to me because I do not notate. I am open to making small notes in the margins if that will help me improve, but at this point I am not looking for an approach to advocates really marking up the passage.

As for the questions I get wrong, they tend to be more on the subjective/inference spectrum rather than the main and the explicit points of the passage. A lot of the time I will narrow it down to the correct and most attractive trap answer and pick the latter.

For several of the LR question types there a different reliable trends, shortcuts, and tricks. Are there any useful ones for reading comp?

Hardcore, friend!

Obviously, I sit at the other end of the spectrum on this one.

That said, IF I were trying it with no notes, I suppose I would try one of the following 2 approaches:

1) get very good at identifying the key pieces of information as I read the passages and then memorizing it so I could immediately answer the questions

2) get very good at identifying the key pieces of information as I read the passages and then memorizing WHERE IN THE PASSAGE to refer back to find it

Then I would practice the crap out of the chosen approach.

As you are already down to -3, have you tried looking for patterns in the errors you make? I don't suppose you tend to miss certain types of questions over others?

Or is it a matter of not being able to nail the more difficult RC passages?

Mind if I ask why you are so opposed to notes? The whole point of them is to ensure consistent, high accuracy rate. I missed 1 RC question on the real thing and that was because I misbubbled (and my wife continues to hold her 175 over my 174 to this day... curses!!!)

[RamTitan]

Redo passages. Do them over and over again. Once you understand a few passages, you'll understand them all.

Are you referring to repeated structure?

Yes, but it also helps with answering detail questions. For example, you'll begin to notice that the answers to detail questions are located in similiar places for passages.

[Mikey]

Redo passages. Do them over and over again. Once you understand a few passages, you'll understand them all.

Are you referring to repeated structure?

Yes, but it also helps with answering detail questions. For example, you'll begin to notice that the answers to detail questions are located in similiar places for passages.

Hmm.. Good to know, thanks!

[SunDevil14]

Redo passages. Do them over and over again. Once you understand a few passages, you'll understand them all.

Are you referring to repeated structure?

Yes, but it also helps with answering detail questions. For example, you'll begin to notice that the answers to detail questions are located in similiar places for passages.

Hmm.. Good to know, thanks!

Interesting point. Is the same true for the questions, which is to a say certain ways in that answers are worded tend to be more indicative or a right or wrong answer? The nature of RC lends itself to a lot of Must be true or most strongly supported questions by virtue of test reading comprehension. It seems that questions of these types don't yield themselves to many helpful heuristics in reasoning, though I may be overlooking something.

[Voyager]

Hey. A third way to do it:

Read the questions first and answer them as you read the passage.

I reiterate, though, that all 3 of the ideas I've proposed are likely to be more difficult than simply taking notes. Remembering the content of 8 questions while reading a passage is actually harder than it sounds. You will be jumping back and forth a ton.

[20170322]

I just want to add that this is highly dependent on the person.

I've gone from -6 per RC section to -0/-1, largely by notating. I underline each important name or date, write down the function of each paragraph, star the author's opinion, and write the main concept of any particularly challenging section. It's not a lot, but it helps me organize my thoughts and refer back to the text.

[somethingElse]

Read shit that is way denser than LSAT passages in your free time.

[Barack O'Drama]

Early on I discovered that I did the best on reading comp without notating. At that point, and since then, I have been averaging -3. The score did not bother me because I was in the 160's. Now that I am starting hit 170+ (meaning -0, -1, -2 in other sections), the consistent -3 is starting to bother me and becoming more of a weakness.

For those in the no notation, and or very minimal notation camp what would be the best way to improve to a minus -0 or -1?

Unfortunately the majority of the prep material I have and a great deal of information on the subject is not very useful to me because I do not notate. I am open to making small notes in the margins if that will help me improve, but at this point I am not looking for an approach to advocates really marking up the passage.

As for the questions I get wrong, they tend to be more on the subjective/inference spectrum rather than the main and the explicit points of the passage. A lot of the time I will narrow it down to the correct and most attractive trap answer and pick the latter.

For several of the LR question types there a different reliable trends, shortcuts, and tricks. Are there any useful ones for reading comp?

If you are only missing -3 I don't think now is the time to change your approach. -3 is actually pretty damn good. I think you should examine the questions you are missing and try to understand exactly what is causing you to miss them. It sounds like you are essentially using the 7Sage memory method which I advocate over anything I've read. (The exception being The LSAT Trainer and Manhattan LSAT Prep's RC)

[LikelyThrowaway]

I got a -0 on the June test, never notated (in fact, never even knew people notated that section). I never did any of the books or whatever, just practice tests, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt because it's just how I understood the test. I very well may state the obvious, since I don't really know what people read in those powerbibles and whatnot. I did get 175+ on my first try though (just to establish bona fides).

The way I see it, the questions all either refer to a specific piece of the text, or the passage's general meaning. If the question refers to a specific line or couple of sentences, just go find that part and see what answer matches it. If the question refers to general meaning, well, one reason I don't like the advice to read the questions then go back and read the passage is because if you read the passage all at once, you understand the meaning, but if you're hunting answers the whole time your getting a fragmented understanding. So read the passage through once to get the meaning (that's how you'll answer those general questions), then go back and hunt for the specific excerpts you need for the specific-type questions. I guess you need to be kind of a fast reader to do it that way, but I really don't think it's that inefficient.

I definitely may have just stated the obvious there, but hopefully it's at least slightly helpful. Good luck y'all!

Edited: thought I had gotten a -1 on it, but I just checked and RC was the one section I didn't make a mistake on.

[SunDevil14]

I got a -0 on the June test, never notated (in fact, never even knew people notated that section). I never did any of the books or whatever, just practice tests, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt because it's just how I understood the test. I very well may state the obvious, since I don't really know what people read in those powerbibles and whatnot. I did get 175+ on my first try though (just to establish bona fides).

The way I see it, the questions all either refer to a specific piece of the text, or the passage's general meaning. If the question refers to a specific line or couple of sentences, just go find that part and see what answer matches it. If the question refers to general meaning, well, one reason I don't like the advice to read the questions then go back and read the passage is because if you read the passage all at once, you understand the meaning, but if you're hunting answers the whole time your getting a fragmented understanding. So read the passage through once to get the meaning (that's how you'll answer those general questions), then go back and hunt for the specific excerpts you need for the specific-type questions. I guess you need to be kind of a fast reader to do it that way, but I really don't think it's that inefficient.

I definitely may have just stated the obvious there, but hopefully it's at least slightly helpful. Good luck y'all!

Edited: thought I had gotten a -1 on it, but I just checked and RC was the one section I didn't make a mistake on.

Do you recall how typically how fast you read the passage?

For what reason, the more I try to focus on the section and use different strategies the worse I seem to do, especially lately. (-3 is over a large sample, a lot of which is from when I was not prepping/drilling RC).

I will be doing much more RC prep/drilling in the next week. For now I will employ a Just Read method. Basically just read the passage as fast as I can without skimming, thus giving myself the most time possible to answer the questions. Roughly a 1:30 to 7:15 spread.

[LikelyThrowaway]

I got a -0 on the June test, never notated (in fact, never even knew people notated that section). I never did any of the books or whatever, just practice tests, so take what I'm saying with a grain of salt because it's just how I understood the test. I very well may state the obvious, since I don't really know what people read in those powerbibles and whatnot. I did get 175+ on my first try though (just to establish bona fides).

The way I see it, the questions all either refer to a specific piece of the text, or the passage's general meaning. If the question refers to a specific line or couple of sentences, just go find that part and see what answer matches it. If the question refers to general meaning, well, one reason I don't like the advice to read the questions then go back and read the passage is because if you read the passage all at once, you understand the meaning, but if you're hunting answers the whole time your getting a fragmented understanding. So read the passage through once to get the meaning (that's how you'll answer those general questions), then go back and hunt for the specific excerpts you need for the specific-type questions. I guess you need to be kind of a fast reader to do it that way, but I really don't think it's that inefficient.

I definitely may have just stated the obvious there, but hopefully it's at least slightly helpful. Good luck y'all!

Edited: thought I had gotten a -1 on it, but I just checked and RC was the one section I didn't make a mistake on.

Do you recall how typically how fast you read the passage?

For what reason, the more I try to focus on the section and use different strategies the worse I seem to do, especially lately. (-3 is over a large sample, a lot of which is from when I was not prepping/drilling RC).

I will be doing much more RC prep/drilling in the next week. For now I will employ a Just Read method. Basically just read the passage as fast as I can without skimming, thus giving myself the most time possible to answer the questions. Roughly a 1:30 to 7:15 spread.

Pretty quickly, I usually ended up with around seven minutes left after I'd answered all the questions. But I'm gonna do one right now and see how long it takes. ... I read two passages, one took me 2m45s, the other 2m15s.

[SunDevil14]

Wow that's impressive. With the September test approaching I have decided to cut my losses and focus elsewhere.

One important thing I did notice was that guessing upfront between 2 answer choices to a tough question, can be dividends on later passages. What I am mean by this is that lets say you guess on 2 questions up front (50/50%), which results in you have an extra few minutes on the final 2 passages. Typically the time is more beneficial on the back end allowing you to get 2 difficult/time wasting questions questions on the back end that you otherwise would have missed. The result is that you net one correct answer.

Obviously the Lsat is not as cut and dry, tough the point is the same: tougher/more time consuming passages on the back so you want more time for those. Rather than 8:45 X 6, something like 8, 8, 9, 10 tends to workout a bit better.

[RamTitan]

Read shit that is way denser than LSAT passages in your free time.

This can work, but realistically not in the way most people on this site prep. Regardless, people should get used to be able to read quickly for long stretches of time.

I do think people should approach reading any materials outside of the LSAT in their RC frame of mind just to continue to use to be in that mindset when reading. And while a lot of people recommend reading The Economist and other publications, you could get away with rereading RC passages. Just make it a daily habitual thing.

[SunDevil14]

Read shit that is way denser than LSAT passages in your free time.

This can work, but realistically not in the way most people on this site prep. Regardless, people should get used to be able to read quickly for long stretches of time.

I do think people should approach reading any materials outside of the LSAT in their RC frame of mind just to continue to use to be in that mindset when reading. And while a lot of people recommend reading The Economist and other publications, you could get away with rereading RC passages. Just make it a daily habitual thing.

Yeah I re-reading sections a few days later and comparing results. It's illuminating to see where you went wrong on a redo and where you should have been focusing before.

[RamTitan]

Read shit that is way denser than LSAT passages in your free time.

This can work, but realistically not in the way most people on this site prep. Regardless, people should get used to be able to read quickly for long stretches of time.

I do think people should approach reading any materials outside of the LSAT in their RC frame of mind just to continue to use to be in that mindset when reading. And while a lot of people recommend reading The Economist and other publications, you could get away with rereading RC passages. Just make it a daily habitual thing.

Yeah I re-reading sections a few days later and comparing results. It's illuminating to see where you went wrong on a redo and where you should have been focusing before.

I've done a decent amount of passages 5 or 6x, and I highly recommend it

[SunDevil14]

Read shit that is way denser than LSAT passages in your free time.

This can work, but realistically not in the way most people on this site prep. Regardless, people should get used to be able to read quickly for long stretches of time.

I do think people should approach reading any materials outside of the LSAT in their RC frame of mind just to continue to use to be in that mindset when reading. And while a lot of people recommend reading The Economist and other publications, you could get away with rereading RC passages. Just make it a daily habitual thing.

Yeah I re-reading sections a few days later and comparing results. It's illuminating to see where you went wrong on a redo and where you should have been focusing before.

I've done a decent amount of passages 5 or 6x, and I highly recommend it

5 or 6x seems excessive, unless you are really spacing them out. Do you not remember almost all the answers by the 5th or 6th time you read the passage. On my second read I remember few. I'd except you would get diminish returns after 3 or 4 attempts unless each attempt is really spaced out.

[RamTitan]

Read shit that is way denser than LSAT passages in your free time.

This can work, but realistically not in the way most people on this site prep. Regardless, people should get used to be able to read quickly for long stretches of time.

I do think people should approach reading any materials outside of the LSAT in their RC frame of mind just to continue to use to be in that mindset when reading. And while a lot of people recommend reading The Economist and other publications, you could get away with rereading RC passages. Just make it a daily habitual thing.

Yeah I re-reading sections a few days later and comparing results. It's illuminating to see where you went wrong on a redo and where you should have been focusing before.

I've done a decent amount of passages 5 or 6x, and I highly recommend it

5 or 6x seems excessive, unless you are really spacing them out. Do you not remember almost all the answers by the 5th or 6th time you read the passage. On my second read I remember few. I'd except you would get diminish returns after 3 or 4 attempts unless each attempt is really spaced out.

It's definitely spaced out; we're talking about months at a time here (I've been studying for over a year, so I've had the opportunity to do this).

With that said, when redoing a passage, I'm not using it as a barometer for questions I get right. I'm mostly working on deconstructing the passage like a puzzle and seeing where all the parts are, as well as where answers for questions are in these passages. I've found that doing this has helped me get questions right in other passages.

[SunDevil14]

I hear you, I tend use the same process though a few days after an initial read. I have only been at it for 3 months, so I presume I would return to passages more the longer I studied.

[mjsjr]

Early on I discovered that I did the best on reading comp without notating. At that point, and since then, I have been averaging -3. The score did not bother me because I was in the 160's. Now that I am starting hit 170+ (meaning -0, -1, -2 in other sections), the consistent -3 is starting to bother me and becoming more of a weakness.

For those in the no notation, and or very minimal notation camp what would be the best way to improve to a minus -0 or -1?

Unfortunately the majority of the prep material I have and a great deal of information on the subject is not very useful to me because I do not notate. I am open to making small notes in the margins if that will help me improve, but at this point I am not looking for an approach to advocates really marking up the passage.

As for the questions I get wrong, they tend to be more on the subjective/inference spectrum rather than the main and the explicit points of the passage. A lot of the time I will narrow it down to the correct and most attractive trap answer and pick the latter.

For several of the LR question types there a different reliable trends, shortcuts, and tricks. Are there any useful ones for reading comp?

Hey OP,

I read this and felt a sense of "oh, I've been there," so I'm going to share my thoughts. I scored in the 99th percentile and received a -0/-1 (can't remember which) on RC last year after improving from the -5 - -3 range. I also didn't make annotations. I don't think I wrote a single note on the real test, but maybe I circled one or two things. Anyhow..

I think it would be really beneficial for you to try slowing your reading down. I know many people will tighten their sphincters after reading that but it really helped me, and it helped one of my mentors who scored a 180. In short, you're already playing "the memory game" by not taking notes (you rely on your memory of the information to quickly and accurately pick correct answer choices instead of relying on notes)--so you're ability to retain the information in the passage is huge. Sure, you can refer back to the passage any time you please, but when you remember the information you cut down on loss of time all around by 1) not having to look back at the passage as often and 2) quickly locating information in the passage when you do have to refer to it. This is why reading slowly really helped me: by investing the time up front to make sure I really understood the information (understood in the "LSAT sense", ie., knowing how different parts related to each other, what the author thinks about certain things, what the central idea was, etc.), I could fly through the questions efficiently. After I was done reading the passage maybe two times, I typically didn't look at it again (especially with an easy passage). This takes some practice, and familiarity with the questions helps too because then you're more easily able to identify what sorts of answers are most often correct or not correct. Play around with how slowly you need to read to remember whatever you need to remember to get every question right. See how many times you need to read a passage to truly--in the LSAT sense-- understand it. Just give it a whirl one day. You might find that you really like it.

I'm about to go to class so I don't have time to see if you're writing in September. If you are, you're likely thinking "I don't want to completely change my method." You're probably wise in that respect. If you're taking the September LSAST, I would just immerse yourself in RC. I found that merely increasing my exposure to the way the LSAT views RC really helped me--just seeing what they consider write and wrong, seeing how all the questions interacted with various parts of the passage, etc, gave me that extra boost. I feel like people don't spend as much time on RC compared to the other passages and that's why they consider RC to be the hardest after they've finished LC and LG.

Good luck!

[pleasesendhelp]

Early on I discovered that I did the best on reading comp without notating. At that point, and since then, I have been averaging -3. The score did not bother me because I was in the 160's. Now that I am starting hit 170+ (meaning -0, -1, -2 in other sections), the consistent -3 is starting to bother me and becoming more of a weakness.

For those in the no notation, and or very minimal notation camp what would be the best way to improve to a minus -0 or -1?

Unfortunately the majority of the prep material I have and a great deal of information on the subject is not very useful to me because I do not notate. I am open to making small notes in the margins if that will help me improve, but at this point I am not looking for an approach to advocates really marking up the passage.

As for the questions I get wrong, they tend to be more on the subjective/inference spectrum rather than the main and the explicit points of the passage. A lot of the time I will narrow it down to the correct and most attractive trap answer and pick the latter.

For several of the LR question types there a different reliable trends, shortcuts, and tricks. Are there any useful ones for reading comp?

Hey OP,

I read this and felt a sense of "oh, I've been there," so I'm going to share my thoughts. I scored in the 99th percentile and received a -0/-1 (can't remember which) on RC last year after improving from the -5 - -3 range. I also didn't making annotations. I don't think I wrote a single note on the real test, but maybe I circled one or two things. Anyhow..

I think it would be really beneficial for you to try slowing your reading down. I know many people will tighten their sphincters after reading that but it really helped me, and it helped one of my mentors who scored a 180. In short, you're already playing "the memory game" by not taking notes (you rely on your memory of the information to quickly and accurately pick correct answer choices instead of relying on notes)--so you're ability to retain the information in the passage is huge. Sure, you can refer back to the passage any time you please, but when you remember the information you cut down on loss of time all around by 1) not having to look back at the passage as often and 2) quickly locating information in the passage when you do have to refer to it. This is why reading slowly really helped me: by investing the time up front to make sure I really understood the information (understood in the "LSAT sense", ie., knowing how different parts related to each other, what the author thinks about certain things, what the central idea was, etc.), I could fly through the questions efficiently. After I was done reading the passage maybe two times, I typically didn't look at it again (especially with an easy passage). This takes some practice, and familiarity with the questions helps to because then you're more easily able to identify what sorts of answers are most often correct or not correct. Play around with how slowly you need to read to remember whatever you need to remember to get every question right. See how many times you need to read a passage to truly--in the LSAT sense-- understand it. Just give it a whirl one day. You might find that you really like it.

I'm about to go to class so I don't have time to see if you're writing in September. If you are, you're likely thinking "I don't want to completely change my method." You're probably wise in that respect. If you're taking the September LSAST, I would just immerse yourself in RC. I found that merely increasing my exposure to the way the LSAT views RC really helped me--just seeing what they consider write and wrong, seeing how all the questions interacted with various parts of the passage, etc, gave me that extra boost. I feel like people don't spend as much time on RC compared to the other passages and that's why they consider RC to be the hardest after they've finished LC and LG.

Good luck!

^absolutely!

[SunDevil14]

Early on I discovered that I did the best on reading comp without notating. At that point, and since then, I have been averaging -3. The score did not bother me because I was in the 160's. Now that I am starting hit 170+ (meaning -0, -1, -2 in other sections), the consistent -3 is starting to bother me and becoming more of a weakness.

For those in the no notation, and or very minimal notation camp what would be the best way to improve to a minus -0 or -1?

Unfortunately the majority of the prep material I have and a great deal of information on the subject is not very useful to me because I do not notate. I am open to making small notes in the margins if that will help me improve, but at this point I am not looking for an approach to advocates really marking up the passage.

As for the questions I get wrong, they tend to be more on the subjective/inference spectrum rather than the main and the explicit points of the passage. A lot of the time I will narrow it down to the correct and most attractive trap answer and pick the latter.

For several of the LR question types there a different reliable trends, shortcuts, and tricks. Are there any useful ones for reading comp?

Hey OP,

I read this and felt a sense of "oh, I've been there," so I'm going to share my thoughts. I scored in the 99th percentile and received a -0/-1 (can't remember which) on RC last year after improving from the -5 - -3 range. I also didn't make annotations. I don't think I wrote a single note on the real test, but maybe I circled one or two things. Anyhow..

I think it would be really beneficial for you to try slowing your reading down. I know many people will tighten their sphincters after reading that but it really helped me, and it helped one of my mentors who scored a 180. In short, you're already playing "the memory game" by not taking notes (you rely on your memory of the information to quickly and accurately pick correct answer choices instead of relying on notes)--so you're ability to retain the information in the passage is huge. Sure, you can refer back to the passage any time you please, but when you remember the information you cut down on loss of time all around by 1) not having to look back at the passage as often and 2) quickly locating information in the passage when you do have to refer to it. This is why reading slowly really helped me: by investing the time up front to make sure I really understood the information (understood in the "LSAT sense", ie., knowing how different parts related to each other, what the author thinks about certain things, what the central idea was, etc.), I could fly through the questions efficiently. After I was done reading the passage maybe two times, I typically didn't look at it again (especially with an easy passage). This takes some practice, and familiarity with the questions helps too because then you're more easily able to identify what sorts of answers are most often correct or not correct. Play around with how slowly you need to read to remember whatever you need to remember to get every question right. See how many times you need to read a passage to truly--in the LSAT sense-- understand it. Just give it a whirl one day. You might find that you really like it.

I'm about to go to class so I don't have time to see if you're writing in September. If you are, you're likely thinking "I don't want to completely change my method." You're probably wise in that respect. If you're taking the September LSAST, I would just immerse yourself in RC. I found that merely increasing my exposure to the way the LSAT views RC really helped me--just seeing what they consider write and wrong, seeing how all the questions interacted with various parts of the passage, etc, gave me that extra boost. I feel like people don't spend as much time on RC compared to the other passages and that's why they consider RC to be the hardest after they've finished LC and LG.

Good luck!

I am leaning toward taking in December. 99% or bust. I will give this method a try. To clarify, read the passage as slowly as need to answer all questions without referring back to the passage?

[Rupert Pupkin]

Read shit that is way denser than LSAT passages in your free time.

^^ this helped me sooo much!