Speed tips

[Duncanjp]

Greetings all. I'm registered for June 7, and I'm enrolled in a prep class that begins in two weeks and runs up to the day before the exam.

Among other prepwork and website logic games that I've explored, I've gone through the guide portion of the LSAC SuperPrep workbook carefully and I've taken Prep Test A. Tomorrow I'll work through Prep Test B. The questions I've seen so far are not rocket science. I find that I can answer them correctly a great majority of the time. But 35 minutes per section! Wow. That feels daunting. I would love to hear some observations and tips that I might use to increase my speed. Diagram your problems. Keep practicing. Think think think. Exercise. But where is that epiphany? Does anybody ever actually have an epiphany about the LSAT? Or does everyone feel like he or she is just slogging through it?

What I would really like to know is:

1. Should a test taker expect to be able to give a well-considered answer to every question in each section of the test? I ask because they give what seems to me to be a large number of questions and problems to solve in a mere 35 minutes.

2. Have you ever stumbled into a switch that turned on a light about this test? I'd sure like to hear about it.

Thank you kindly!

[DoubleAgent]

Great questions! I would really like to know the answers to these as well. *bump*

[Dr. Troy]

Obviously I can only speak from my experience (and the experiences of those close to me whom I observed preparing), but what I found to be the case was that improvements tended to come as both epiphany-type moments, as well as gradual increases that resulted from a lot of practice/exposure. That is, I'd learn a new diagramming skill or conditional reasoning idea and see it translate almost immediately into an improvement in rule representation in Grouping Games or on an LR question, and at the same time find myself simply becoming more familiar with the argumentation and language used as I kept studying (resulting in a greater sense of confidence and speed for the test as a whole). Clearly substantial practice plays a huge role in test success, as that's the only way to get truly comfortable with what you can expect to experience on test day.

The other thing that really helped me out was spending an almost inordinate amount of time going back over any work that I did to try to determine why I missed questions/inferences and how to avoid making similar mistakes in the future. I tried to be extremely detailed and specific in this, as well (not just "I missed this LR Weaken question with causality in it," but "I failed to recognize this causal relationship that was indicated by XYZ. Since I was asked to weaken it, what should I have prephrased to better anticipate the correct answer here? How can I avoid that next time I encounter it? Etc."). That lets you not only better understand how you're relating to the test, but it also allows you to get a very good sense of what to expect when you're faced with a similar set of circumstances on future LSATs. And, back to your original question, this type of thorough review led to a few of those "lightbulb" moments where I saw a pattern of mistakes and was able to efficiently remedy it/them.

I think too many people feel like the solution to their struggles is to just plow ahead and do more work. That extra work is certainly a necessity, but there's not much point in doing more if you're just going to continue doing it incorrectly. The intermediate step of understanding and really learning from your mistakes has to come before the next bout of practice. Otherwise you're only practicing skills that have shown to be ineffective in beating the test. Nobody improves much with that strategy, I promise. So work diligently, but review diligently too!

Hope this helps!

Christian

[widespreadLSATpanic]

Great points!

I think too many people feel like the solution to their struggles is to just plow ahead and do more work. That extra work is certainly a necessity, but there's not much point in doing more if you're just going to continue doing it incorrectly. The intermediate step of understanding and really learning from your mistakes has to come before the next bout of practice. Otherwise you're only practicing skills that have shown to be ineffective in beating the test. Nobody improves much with that strategy, I promise. So work diligently, but review diligently too!

The part in bold is so right on. Before I started my course, I thought I would take a bunch a practice tests to get ready. But the rep I spoke to explained a similar point, and convinced me to take only 1 test before my course started. She was right. After a few lessons I now actually have a clue what I'm doing, and therefore can spend my time taking tests and doing homework much more efficiently.

[DoubleAgent]

The other thing that really helped me out was spending an almost inordinate amount of time going back over any work that I did to try to determine why I missed questions/inferences and how to avoid making similar mistakes in the future. I tried to be extremely detailed and specific in this, as well (not just "I missed this LR Weaken question with causality in it," but "I failed to recognize this causal relationship that was indicated by XYZ. Since I was asked to weaken it, what should I have prephrased to better anticipate the correct answer here? How can I avoid that next time I encounter it? Etc."). That lets you not only better understand how you're relating to the test, but it also allows you to get a very good sense of what to expect when you're faced with a similar set of circumstances on future LSATs. And, back to your original question, this type of thorough review led to a few of those "lightbulb" moments where I saw a pattern of mistakes and was able to efficiently remedy it/them.

Thanks for the great tips Doc!

[Duncanjp]

Thank you for the informative post, Christian. You make an important point about discovering why when we get an answer wrong. I do think I'm being conscientious on that point. I spend more time reviewing my answers than actually working problems. Most of the time, the moment I see that I answered incorrectly, the right answer jumps out - and why it's the right one is self evident. At least as far as the logical reasoning and the reading comprehension sections go. Less so for the analytical reasoning problems. The AR section is going to give me a run for my money, I suspect. I can solve the problems most of the time, but I feel terribly slow at it. Almost panicky slow.

I've noticed that when I diagram the problems out, my brain always wants to diagram the elements vertically. But the answer reviews invariably show horizontal diagrams. I don't know if that's just a publisher's way to save paper space or if it's actually an easier way to see and focus on the problem. But I'm going to start trying to plot horizontal diagrams and see how it goes.