LSAT Tips for People Who Can't Speak English Very Well Forum

[nicole1994]

What do you think was helpful to you in learning lsat and not understanding English well. I personally feel that the lsat is a structural test, and that the toughest challenges are in understanding reasoning structure, since even people who understand English cant comprehend what the test asks of them ..

Hello everyone!

I’m a new LSAT Tutor at Cambridge Coaching (https://www.cambridgecoaching.com/tutors/songhoon) and at Blueprint.

Let me begin this introduction by admitting to something that I think no other student newly admitted to Harvard Law School’s JD Program would admit to: I find English incredibly hard.

(See above for post)
Edited by tlsadmin3 to cut out repeated text

[hendersonzzz]

Wow. That's a lot to respond to.
All that I know is that people who had average SAT scores can study the LSAT and do better than 99.5% of their peers. It's a very "learn-able" test. I would never have thought that to be true, but it is.

[LSATWiz.com]

I'd add that formal logic is particularly helpful for those who speak English as a second language because the notion of definitive, formulaic rules (e.g. "If crime x -> elements 1, 2, 3") is universal and dates back to the very first writings that have ever been unearthed, which indicates that formal logic likely predates written language. The better someone is at reducing arguments and blocks of text to their basic logical assertions, the less reliant they need to be on language.

[nicole1994]

Yea..i think you articulated what I couldn't at the moment. I asked my question on the basis that because the LSAT is a logic based test, I assumed that acing it would be easier to do for a non native English speaker who might be good at math/engineering/philosophy vs a native English speaker who wasn't as good at those skills.

In other words, I was assuming that learning English for LSAT might be a surface level challenge relative to the challenge of mastering the logical/structural concept(I.g. if I had to solve word proboems in Spanish, translating the problems wouldn't be the hard part but applying the math would) .

Not saying that is accurate , but I just brought it up to see if there was anythunf, if at all, that he had to say about that .

I'd add that formal logic is particularly helpful for those who speak English as a second language because the notion of definitive, formulaic rules (e.g. "If crime x -> elements 1, 2, 3") is universal and dates back to the very first writings that have ever been unearthed, which indicates that formal logic likely predates written language. The better someone is at reducing arguments and blocks of text to their basic logical assertions, the less reliant they need to be on language.

[hendersonzzz]

"I read U.S. Supreme Court Opinions and I seriously have no idea what they’re talking about." (above post)

It's ok, many students don't know what the Justices are talking about.

Clarence Thomas is usually more understandable. He called diversity in college admissions "a faddish theory".

[Cambridge_Songhoon]

What do you think was helpful to you in learning lsat and not understanding English well. I personally feel that the lsat is a structural test, and that the toughest challenges are in understanding reasoning structure, since even people who understand English cant comprehend what the test asks of them ..

Hello everyone!

I’m a new LSAT Tutor at Cambridge Coaching (https://www.cambridgecoaching.com/tutors/songhoon) and at Blueprint.

Let me begin this introduction by admitting to something that I think no other student newly admitted to Harvard Law School’s JD Program would admit to: I find English incredibly hard.

(See above for post)
Edited by tlsadmin3 to cut out repeated text

For me, short-cuts. LSAT is a standardized test. Every LSAT essentially tests the same skills (with different reading passages).
I think deciphering the patterns really helped.

[yuant]

Yea..i think you articulated what I couldn't at the moment. I asked my question on the basis that because the LSAT is a logic based test, I assumed that acing it would be easier to do for a non native English speaker who might be good at math/engineering/philosophy vs a native English speaker who wasn't as good at those skills.

In other words, I was assuming that learning English for LSAT might be a surface level challenge relative to the challenge of mastering the logical/structural concept(I.g. if I had to solve word proboems in Spanish, translating the problems wouldn't be the hard part but applying the math would) .

Not saying that is accurate , but I just brought it up to see if there was anythunf, if at all, that he had to say about that .

I took LSAT, got a >99% score, and English is also my second language. Just adding my own experience here. For LG that's completely true, as long as my English is good enough to comprehend the conditions in the questions, the rest is pure logic. For LR the tricky part is actually the time. I'd say I'm quite used to reading English articles already but I certainly read much faster in my native language, and I found time constraint to be the most challenging part of LSAT. Especially whenever there are several words outside of the range of my vocabulary, it doesn't preclude me from understanding and solving the question, but inevitably slows me down. For RC it's even more so, sometimes it's just several keywords I'm not familiar with, but it feels really annoying. If it's outside of the test room I'd simply look it up in an online dictionary and it won't really affect my understanding of the structure and the major points of the articles, but in the test room, it just impacts the flow of reading. Usually, I could only barely get through the RC questions within the time frame, without any time to check my answers or think through questions I was not certain about - which I usually can do in for LR and LG. I'd say the difference there is really because of the English language.

[paisma]

In the article it mentions analysing conclusions and premises for scope certainty and quantity. What do you mean by this and how do you go about zeroing in on the phrases that fulfil these criteria?