My Review of the Powerscore Reading Comprehension Bible
Posted: Fri Sep 05, 2008 3:49 pm
UPS dropped it off yesterday and I just finished reading it.
Cliff Notes summary: There's nothing earth shattering here, but it's worth reading if you've got the time and money.
This book is about 360 pages with at least half of it being reprints of RC passages from past LSATs and then a solution set following it, written in a similar style to their Deconstructing the LSAT books. The good news is that the solutions are pretty good. The bad news is that 1) they pull passages and passage snippets from all over the place (mostly from recent preptests) so those passages will be tainted if you go to do the preptests afterwards, and 2) the solutions are written from an after-the-fact sort of perspective so if you're someone who has trouble finishing in 8:45, the answers will always seem obvious afterwards but not so helpful when you're under the gun for time and have passage concepts all jumbled up in your head.
Chapter 1 is an introduction to the LSAT and is pretty much the same as the start of the LR and LG bibles.
Chapter 2 covers the basics of reading comprehension. Basically they tell you to read the passage first, read actively and perform a mental analysis. You should be reading the passage with an eye to keeping track of the viewpoints in the passage, the structure, the tone, main arguments and the main point. The book gives you some pointers about how to do this. Some of these are common sense and others, like how to recognize arguments, are just stuff that's repeated from the LR bible.
I can't really disagree that keeping track of viewpoints, their beliefs and the strengths of these beliefs is the key to mastering RC. I think where people (me included) have trouble is that when you have only 2.5-3 minutes to read and mark a passage, with a particularly difficult passage, it is difficult to keep all of these things tracked and you end up forgetting some and then you have to go back and re-read, which takes time and ultimately, it's all about memory and time management. So, while it's nice that they mention these things, doing it in real time is the hard part.
Chapter 3 is about passage elements and formations like what kinds of things the test writers can use to make the passage difficult. The book mentions things like challenging topic, challenging writing style, multiple viewpoints, difficult questions/answers, order of presentation. They talk about some elements that appear in the passage like definitions, dates and numbers, examples, lists, etc and how you should note them. The chapter ends with some pitfalls to avoid: similarities and distinctions, related ideas that are separated in the passage, unrelated ideas that are close together, inserting a viewpoint within another, tricky chronology.
Chapter 4 is about how to diagram. They advocate using underlining, circling, boxing, bracketing and notations. Ultimately, everyone ends up with their own style of marking so while the book suggests a method, I imagine most people end up using it as a jumping off point to come up with something they are comfortable with.
Chapter 5 is about the question types. They basically categorize the questions by locality (is it global, local, concept related) and type (must be true, strengthen. weaken, etc.).
Not really much new here I thought. I've never thought this was where people have trouble so enumerating the question types is nice, but not really that helpful.
Chapter 6 are two example passages and solution sets from recent LSATs.
Chapter 7 is about comparative reading. In short, the book says that comparative reading is like the regular passages except that similarities and differences will play a much more major role in the questions so you might want to track similarities/differences as you read. Be forewarned that the book reproduces all of the currently available real LSAT comparative reading passages so after going through the book, you will have done them all.
Chapter 8 talks about some common passage types and then gives an example/solution set for each. The types they go into are things like author neutral passages, author advocacy passages, passages with a timeline, passages with cause/effect, diversity passages, law, science.
Chapter 9 is called Section Strategy and Management and is very similar to the analagous chapter in the LRB and LGB.
Chapter 10 is the June 08 RC section followed by a solution set.
Will it help you on RC? Well, I still think that to master RC, you just need to understand the passage. You need to "get" it. I know it's easier said than done but if you don't understand what you're reading, nothing will help you answer the questions. So, if you're someone who has trouble with the riddled basins passage or the maize passage, will this book help you? Well, I don't think so really.
The book repeats things to avoid like: wrong answers are those that are out of scope, or are a shell game answer or exaggerated. A correct answer must agree with the text, etc. Well, I think everyone knows this. The problem is that when you are reading the answers, one incorrect choice seems correct and so you have to debate the choice and this sucks up time. In my opinion, until/unless you can decrease the time debating wrong answers, your RC score will suffer.
So overall, I think it's an ok book but there's nothing new or mind blowing here. It's all been mentioned before in other books and in people's posts here. But it's nice to have it all in one place and I think it's a best RC book out there. Powerscore is good at trying to deconstruct the LSAT and peel away the crap and show you what's left.
Cliff Notes summary: There's nothing earth shattering here, but it's worth reading if you've got the time and money.
This book is about 360 pages with at least half of it being reprints of RC passages from past LSATs and then a solution set following it, written in a similar style to their Deconstructing the LSAT books. The good news is that the solutions are pretty good. The bad news is that 1) they pull passages and passage snippets from all over the place (mostly from recent preptests) so those passages will be tainted if you go to do the preptests afterwards, and 2) the solutions are written from an after-the-fact sort of perspective so if you're someone who has trouble finishing in 8:45, the answers will always seem obvious afterwards but not so helpful when you're under the gun for time and have passage concepts all jumbled up in your head.
Chapter 1 is an introduction to the LSAT and is pretty much the same as the start of the LR and LG bibles.
Chapter 2 covers the basics of reading comprehension. Basically they tell you to read the passage first, read actively and perform a mental analysis. You should be reading the passage with an eye to keeping track of the viewpoints in the passage, the structure, the tone, main arguments and the main point. The book gives you some pointers about how to do this. Some of these are common sense and others, like how to recognize arguments, are just stuff that's repeated from the LR bible.
I can't really disagree that keeping track of viewpoints, their beliefs and the strengths of these beliefs is the key to mastering RC. I think where people (me included) have trouble is that when you have only 2.5-3 minutes to read and mark a passage, with a particularly difficult passage, it is difficult to keep all of these things tracked and you end up forgetting some and then you have to go back and re-read, which takes time and ultimately, it's all about memory and time management. So, while it's nice that they mention these things, doing it in real time is the hard part.
Chapter 3 is about passage elements and formations like what kinds of things the test writers can use to make the passage difficult. The book mentions things like challenging topic, challenging writing style, multiple viewpoints, difficult questions/answers, order of presentation. They talk about some elements that appear in the passage like definitions, dates and numbers, examples, lists, etc and how you should note them. The chapter ends with some pitfalls to avoid: similarities and distinctions, related ideas that are separated in the passage, unrelated ideas that are close together, inserting a viewpoint within another, tricky chronology.
Chapter 4 is about how to diagram. They advocate using underlining, circling, boxing, bracketing and notations. Ultimately, everyone ends up with their own style of marking so while the book suggests a method, I imagine most people end up using it as a jumping off point to come up with something they are comfortable with.
Chapter 5 is about the question types. They basically categorize the questions by locality (is it global, local, concept related) and type (must be true, strengthen. weaken, etc.).
Not really much new here I thought. I've never thought this was where people have trouble so enumerating the question types is nice, but not really that helpful.
Chapter 6 are two example passages and solution sets from recent LSATs.
Chapter 7 is about comparative reading. In short, the book says that comparative reading is like the regular passages except that similarities and differences will play a much more major role in the questions so you might want to track similarities/differences as you read. Be forewarned that the book reproduces all of the currently available real LSAT comparative reading passages so after going through the book, you will have done them all.
Chapter 8 talks about some common passage types and then gives an example/solution set for each. The types they go into are things like author neutral passages, author advocacy passages, passages with a timeline, passages with cause/effect, diversity passages, law, science.
Chapter 9 is called Section Strategy and Management and is very similar to the analagous chapter in the LRB and LGB.
Chapter 10 is the June 08 RC section followed by a solution set.
Will it help you on RC? Well, I still think that to master RC, you just need to understand the passage. You need to "get" it. I know it's easier said than done but if you don't understand what you're reading, nothing will help you answer the questions. So, if you're someone who has trouble with the riddled basins passage or the maize passage, will this book help you? Well, I don't think so really.
The book repeats things to avoid like: wrong answers are those that are out of scope, or are a shell game answer or exaggerated. A correct answer must agree with the text, etc. Well, I think everyone knows this. The problem is that when you are reading the answers, one incorrect choice seems correct and so you have to debate the choice and this sucks up time. In my opinion, until/unless you can decrease the time debating wrong answers, your RC score will suffer.
So overall, I think it's an ok book but there's nothing new or mind blowing here. It's all been mentioned before in other books and in people's posts here. But it's nice to have it all in one place and I think it's a best RC book out there. Powerscore is good at trying to deconstruct the LSAT and peel away the crap and show you what's left.
