Discussion

Give me your best RC tips

I go from -0 to -5 on the hardest passages, independent of subject matter. I literally have no idea why any of these variations happen. I can usually BR them -0 or -1. Ugh help me.

yifeiwang926 said: Honestly, I think you're probably at the stage where general advice won't be of any use to you. You have to get scientific about your approach now. Start dividing your passages into subcategories, such as genre (science, arts, law, etc), difficulty, and style (educational, confrontations, back and forth, referential, etc). Especially for the hard passages, try to understand how the style is different and label them. I am in a similar situation to you, and had trouble finding how to improve more. Recently, I have identified that history and law passages correlated with lower scores, because there are terms or ideas I don't understand, and that highly referential and back and forth passages are harder for me because I lose track of what the MPs and purposes are. Simply having this knowledge has given me the ability to try to fix it; after all, the first step to fixing a problem is knowing the problem. I don't know any specific advice on how exactly to do it, but I simply did more of them, and in the last two PTs, have reduced the errors in my RC sections by 2. So maybe give that a try?

Good luck, hope this helps.

aviatedwings148 said: I agree with the above comments. Reading slower and mouthing some of the words (without actually saying them aloud) helps me. I also actively use my pencil to direct where I am in the reading. This combo seems to help with understanding and focus. I write shorthand notes in the margins (as does everyone) and make sure that I understand the main purpose of the passage (especially in comparative passages) before moving on to answering the questions. In addition to the shorthand notes, I make note of the author's use of any analogies, studies, and examples since these may pop up in the questions. Also, reading more literature outside of LSAT helps.

These tips may be a rehash of what others have already said but it's what works for me!

@davidtye7sage96 said: Have you tried the RC webinars on here?

@ctsoucalas903 said: Can you point to some?

https://classic.7sage.com/webinar/active-reading/

The Active reading Webinar is great because it applies to LR as well.

nikitamunjal950 said: I try to find generally one or two sentences per paragraph that sum up what the purpose of the paragraph is. It's generally stated in the paragraph itself, and so I would condense that and make it my low-resolution summary.

redentore3337783 said: Read Slower.

That helped me a lot. Read slower, and read like a Planet Earth narrator, or like you're an Anchorman/Anchorwoman. This has helped to put extra stress on what I'm reading and has helped me understand the passage better. Really, that has helped, and then personally for me, minimal notation, just writing next to each paragraph whether it's a support passage, whether it's introducing a hypothesis, or counter argument, that way, you can easily go back to the passage when you need to for the questions because you know the structure of it.

davidtye7sage96 said: I personally read the passage twice before jumping into the questions. For me, I get another level of understanding by reading twice that I just can't get from reading once, no matter how I do it. Give it a try and see if it helps you out!

ctsoucalas903 said: Just to make sure. VIEWSTAMP is from the PowerScore Reading Comp Bible. It stands for View = the different viewpoints in the structure, S = structure of the passage, T = tone of the passage, A = arguments in the passage, MP = main point.