taking LSAT for 3rd time. how do you practice RC? Forum

[peeker82]

hey everyone,

sadly enough i decided to go through lsat hell one more time. for those of you taking the lsat for the 3rd time, or that took it 3 times. how did you practice reading comp leading up to the lsat? after having done every lsat out there twice, i remember the vast majority of the passages. any suggestions?

[jonas586]

Are you planning on February or June?

[ps494]

hey everyone,

sadly enough i decided to go through lsat hell one more time. for those of you taking the lsat for the 3rd time, or that took it 3 times. how did you practice reading comp leading up to the lsat? after having done every lsat out there twice, i remember the vast majority of the passages. any suggestions?

The only thing you can do is retake them. Even if there are earlier tests that you have not taken, I would still suggest using the newer tests, because of how much RC has changed in recent years.

[peeker82]

retaking in february - 2 weeks.

[jonas586]

retaking in february - 2 weeks.

Personally, since you don't have much time to prepare, I wouldn't experiment too much with new approaches or techniques. Like ps494 said, retaking a lot of the newer RC passages, and any older ones that you haven't done or found tricky, can at least keep your mind sharp until the test.

Timing was always my problem, so I made sure to only give myself 32 minutes for each section I was doing over. Also, doing two RC sections back to back is a good way to build up endurance before the test.

[Marisa5252]

hey everyone,

sadly enough i decided to go through lsat hell one more time. for those of you taking the lsat for the 3rd time, or that took it 3 times. how did you practice reading comp leading up to the lsat? after having done every lsat out there twice, i remember the vast majority of the passages. any suggestions?

The only thing you can do is retake them. Even if there are earlier tests that you have not taken, I would still suggest using the newer tests, because of how much RC has changed in recent years.

IMHO - you should take tests that you haven't taken if there are any - even if they're old. If you already know what you're looking for it's not nearly as helpful. Regardless of how much the section has changed the reading skills necessary are still pretty similar I think. You have to be able to read quickly but thoroughly enough so that you get the main ideas/know where to find examples.

[ps494]

hey everyone,

sadly enough i decided to go through lsat hell one more time. for those of you taking the lsat for the 3rd time, or that took it 3 times. how did you practice reading comp leading up to the lsat? after having done every lsat out there twice, i remember the vast majority of the passages. any suggestions?

The only thing you can do is retake them. Even if there are earlier tests that you have not taken, I would still suggest using the newer tests, because of how much RC has changed in recent years.

IMHO - you should take tests that you haven't taken if there are any - even if they're old. If you already know what you're looking for it's not nearly as helpful. Regardless of how much the section has changed the reading skills necessary are still pretty similar I think. You have to be able to read quickly but thoroughly enough so that you get the main ideas/know where to find examples.

I see where you're going, but it seems like what's most beneficial is not actually taking the test, but the review in which you can see patterns. For this, I think the most recent tests would be better. Your scores may not be indicative of your actual potential, but I think it'll help. You might want to shave five minutes off these sections to better simulate the actual test. Also, I forgot to mention this, but I would also read a lot of "LSAT type" articles (i.e. The Economist).

OP - Can you really remember the passages that well? I'm also retaking, and while I can somewhat remember the topics, I'm finding that I don't totally remember the passage or the questions. However, it has been about three or four months since I read them.

Do you have the same problem with LR and LG?

[palarmon]

I just read and answer the questions lol.... honestly its a technique worth trying, I missed 4-5 on the practice RC I did yesterday... just read through it thoroughly and you'd be surprised what your mind can pick up and remember.

[thickfreakness]

I retook and attacked RC from a basic "read the passage and answer the questions" perspective. I think the key to improving on this is to just work as many RC sections as possible under strict timing conditions. You'll learn to read naturally for argument and structure, and you'll hopefully be able to retain some of the salient details in the passage so that you can move through the questions efficiently. For me, marking up the passage and trying to deconstruct and diagram stuff was a big slowdown, and I consistently scored -2 to -0 on my practice RCs after abandoning those strategies (up from -5 avg). On test day I hit a -2 on December's RC, both questions missed on the notorious sculptor passage.

[ps494]

I retook and attacked RC from a basic "read the passage and answer the questions" perspective. I think the key to improving on this is to just work as many RC sections as possible under strict timing conditions. You'll learn to read naturally for argument and structure, and you'll hopefully be able to retain some of the salient details in the passage so that you can move through the questions efficiently. For me, marking up the passage and trying to deconstruct and diagram stuff was a big slowdown, and I consistently scored -2 to -0 on my practice RCs after abandoning those strategies (up from -5 avg). On test day I hit a -2 on December's RC, both questions missed on the notorious sculptor passage.

So you don't mark up passages at all? I've done this before and it seemed to work alright, but I stopped because everyone on TLS (and one of my professor) stress the mark up strategy.

[thickfreakness]

I retook and attacked RC from a basic "read the passage and answer the questions" perspective. I think the key to improving on this is to just work as many RC sections as possible under strict timing conditions. You'll learn to read naturally for argument and structure, and you'll hopefully be able to retain some of the salient details in the passage so that you can move through the questions efficiently. For me, marking up the passage and trying to deconstruct and diagram stuff was a big slowdown, and I consistently scored -2 to -0 on my practice RCs after abandoning those strategies (up from -5 avg). On test day I hit a -2 on December's RC, both questions missed on the notorious sculptor passage.

So you don't mark up passages at all? I've done this before and it seemed to work alright, but I stopped because everyone on TLS (and one of my professor) stress the mark up strategy.

Nope. I found the process of marking the passages up wasted a lot more time and caused me to lose focus of the argument and structure of the passage and instead focus on details that, while important, weren't really what the questions centered on.

[peeker82]

OP - Can you really remember the passages that well? I'm also retaking, and while I can somewhat remember the topics, I'm finding that I don't totally remember the passage or the questions. However, it has been about three or four months since I read them.

Do you have the same problem with LR and LG?

Actually, I really do remember some passages well. I just took the PT48 and got a -0, which is nice, but definitely not representative of my usual RCs. I've been taking some of the suggestions on this post, been trying to do them in 32 mins and that's helped with speed.

I don't find this problem as bad in LR and LG. Although I do remember well some of the harder LR's and LG's that I went over several times in trying to figure out the first and second time around. I'm solid in LR and LG for the most part too, so not too worried about those. It's RC that kills me (sculptors passage owned me in Dec with a sweet -8). Got stuck on it, got a ton wrong on that passage and killed me in time for the last 5-question passage.

I'll try reading the Economist. I have a few that I haven't read due to LSAT prep. So I'm assuming that reading the Economist would help if I try to read it as if it was an LSAT passage?