The LSAT is one damn hard test: time is short, the language dense and deceiving, and the answer choices deliberately designed to throw you off.

As if those challenges weren’t difficult enough, imagine taking it in a foreign language. This is the challenge that non-native English speakers (ESL) students taking the LSAT face.

Our friends over at Law School Podcaster recently did one of their excellent podcasts on this very topic in their most recent show Tackling the LSAT As An ESL.

The show features our own Noah Teitelbaum, as well as Steve Schwartz from the popular LSAT Blog. Featured also is first-person testimony from an ESL test-taker (and former Manhattan LSAT student) who rocked the LSAT on exam day to the tune of 169 (97th percentile).

When you’re looking for a necessary assumption, remember that you’re looking for what must be true, and what must be true doesn’t necessarily “fill the

Barry's suit & briefcase disguise: necessary, but not sufficient

whole gap,” as we say. It could be a small piece of the puzzle, but a critical one. Imagine a bridge supported by several buttresses, each of which is necessary (you knock it down and the bridge falls) even though it could never support the bridge on its own. Therefore, the buttresses are necessary, but certainly not sufficient, for supporting the bridge.

For these reasons, you generally want to be wary of answer choices that seem sweeping—words like “always” and “never” are tip-offs. (This isn’t to say those answers are never right, though. If the argument is extreme, there can be a necessary assumption that is, too.)

A good rule of thumb is that the conclusion caps how “strong” the necessary assumption can be. If the conclusion is on the milder side of the spectrum

—“Jenn will probably choose cake over pie” or “Jim is likely to find the suit distasteful”—it wouldn’t make sense to choose answers that read, respectively, “Jenn will always choose cake over pie” and “Jim will definitely find the suit distasteful.” These wrong answers push the arguments beyond their scope, which has already been set.

This isn’t a new concept but simply another way of thinking about the same old idea. The conclusion caps off the argument, and at the cap, it stops assuming.

When it comes to Orientation questions, always let the rules be your guide

The first question on a logic game often asks for a possible ordering (or assignment, or grouping) of the elements. We call these Orientation questions, and they can usually be answered by simply applying the rules, one by one, to the answer choices. For example, if there is a rule that Sam arrives fourth (yay, simple rules!), scan the answer choices to check for Sam. There’s almost certainly going to be one where he’s not fourth—get rid of that one.

While moving through the rules this way is, generally, a reliable and efficient approach for Orientation questions, we also teach that you can use your diagram. On some games, such as relative ordering, this is a good idea. It can be faster.
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Don't let your imagination run wild while filling in the blank

Fill-in-the-blank-line-at-the-end-of-the-argument questions have been known as Inference questions delivered in a fancy package. “These,” I tell students, “ask you to find a conclusion, but don’t start thinking creatively. Your task is still to find an answer that must be true.” This is easy to grasp, since something you can infer from a premise could also be called a valid conclusion. So that was that.

But there’s a different flavor of fill-in-the-blank questions creeping into the LSAT from time-to-time! For example, on PrepTest 63, Section 1, Question 1 and PrepTest 65, Section 4, Question 15, you’re asked to fill in the blank… with something that will strengthen the argument’s conclusion. “Wait!” you’re thinking, “We don’t strengthen conclusions on Inference questions…” That’s right. In fact, on Inference questions, there is no conclusion in the stimulus–your answer could be considered the conclusion. We can think of PT63, S1, Q1 and it’s comrade on PT65, therefore, as Strengthen questions–you want to make the conclusion inferable.
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As you can imagine, being an LSAT teacher carries great risks. What used to be good old fights about doing the dishes are now fights about doing the dishes AND the assumptions underneath the statement “When you leave the dishes on the sink, it makes me feel like you’re an a@#$&@(#!”

But, enough about dishes we have to wash, let’s talk about disposable dishes! Yesterday I went and bought a shredded chicken burrito (half-and-half spicy/mild) at Santiago’s, my second favorite Mexican restaurant. I also picked up a frosty soda to wash it down (“pop” for Midwesterners). It arrived in a lovely Styrofoam cup. Later, while waiting in line (“on line” for New Yorkers), I satisfied my need to be constantly doing something (“ADHD” for you youngins) by reading the cup. I faced these two statements:
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This is part 3 of Mary Adkins’ series on improving LSAT Reading Comprehension ability. You can check out part 1 here: Why (and How) LSAT Reading Comprehension Can Be Improved and part 2 here: LSAT Reading Comp Is a Bad Play: Advice for Sub-text Sleuths

A red herring smells too good to be true

Watch Out for Reading Comp Red Herrings

When you start a reading comp passage, you’re reading for the central argument, or what our curriculum/books like to call “the scale.” On easier passages, the two sides are laid out for you immediately. For example, in the Reader Response Theory passage—PrepTest  43, Passage 3—the two sides of the argument (RR Theory on one hand and Formalism on the other) are given to us in the first paragraph. As a result, few students in our courses have trouble identifying the two sides of the scale.

In more difficult passages, however, the central issue doesn’t appear until later—maybe at the end of the first paragraph, or even in the second. In PrepTest 27, Passage 1 on jury impartiality, for example, the real issue doesn’t come up until the end of the last paragraph.

How do you figure out, then, what is truly the central issue? Here are two tips—one “Don’t,” and one “Do.”

DON’T Marry the First Dichotomy That Walks in the Door

 If you’re presented with two conflicting views in the first sentence, odds are that they’re the two sides of the argument, but they might not be. If they passage changes direction and starts discussing something else, you need to be able to adjust.

The key is to be flexible. Don’t assume that whatever central argument you spot in the first sentence or paragraph is absolutely what the passage is about.

DO Follow the Author

So how to be sure? Follow the author’s voice. Whatever the scale, the author is going to have an opinion about it—you will be able to place him or her on one side or the other. (One exception: passages that are just informative, but these are rare.)

In the PrepTest 27 passage I mentioned above, the one about jury impartiality, the way to identify the true scale (which again, appears at the very end of the passage) is to realize that’s where the author gives us a solid opinion. Because the opinion isn’t what we expect, we have to shift our scale.

Only when you have a full picture of how the author views what he/she is discussing can you feel confident that the central argument you’ve identified is correct.

Many LSAT takers find the Logic Games section of the exam to be the most challenging. Why?

It’s because “Analytical Reasoning” (aka Logic Games) is the section of the test that is most unique to the LSAT. Sure, maybe you’ve done a few logic riddles or Sudoku puzzles in your free time, but outside of the Manhattan LSAT geek squad, I know very few people who spend time solving Logic Games ‘just for fun’.

Mastering this unfamiliar section of the exam requires a lot of time and practice, but there’s good news: Logic Games are extremely learnable! With proper preparation, you can actually develop in to a good enough player of Logic Games to count on this section to boost your score.

Regular readers of this blog will have picked up some helpful hints about how to tackle games (see below):

• Necessary v. Sufficient: The Flash Mob Example
• Logic Games: The LSAT is Not Two-Toned
• Binary Grouping: Is It or Isn’t it?
• Could Be a List v. List of What Could Be
• Rule Equivalency Logic Games Questions

So how does one get good at these things, aside from picking up some free nuggets of advice on our blog? While practicing as much as possible is important, it’s equally important to practice well. Pick up a book (I personally favor the Manhattan LSAT Strategy Guides, of course) and learn how to think about organizing the different elements that games are constantly throwing at you. Learning the proper strategy to practice will make the hard work that you put in to mastering Logic Games that much more effective.

If games seem to be your main bugaboo heading in to October, consider signing up for the Free Trial Class for our upcoming  Games Intensive Online Summer Course taught by, Brian Birdwell. This class will focus exclusively on Logic Games and how a 170+ test taker goes about deconstructing them.

This is part 2 in Mary Adkins’ series on improving LSAT Reading Comprehension ability. You can check out part 1 here: Why (and How) LSAT Reading Comprehension Can Be Improved

If you paid attention in literature class, happen to write plays in your spare time, or appreciate a good night of theater, you probably know what subtext is.

Believe it or not, relationships can be a lot trickier than LSAT reading comp

Subtext means exactly what it sounds like: what’s underneath the text. It is not referring to what a character says but what a character (or author) doesn’t say.

In fact, a play in which characters say exactly what they mean is generally considered a bad play, since human beings don’t work that way.

Identifying sub-text gets you ‘A’s in college lit courses and trouble in relationships (“I know what you really meant when you said the apple wasn’t very crunchy!”). It also gets you in trouble on the LSAT.
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If I had a dollar for every time I heard, “Reading comprehension isn’t really something I can improve on much, right?” I would probably have cable.

Unlike octopuses, humans are perfectly capable of acquiring and improving literacy!

When I start working with a new student, one of the first things I tell him or her is that the LSAT is a very learnable test. It’s not an opaque and mysterious arbiter of natural intelligence, nor is it an unpredictable obstacle course for which no one truly knows how to prepare. Sure, the LSAT isn’t easy, but it tests real skills that can be improved upon through hard work.

Usually, after our first logic games lesson, students get what I mean. They are, by learning the test, learning that the test is learnable. But when we begin to discuss reading comprehension, spirits fall. Someone who is missing 40% of the questions on reading comp thinks she’s doomed to do the same on test day.
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Don't just role the dice. Consider your situation and make a smart decision about when to start prepping.

Now that June LSAT scores are in, there are a number of you who are planning to re-take the test in October. It’s almost the middle of July, and you’re asking yourself when you need to resume studying—now? August? September? It depends on how prepared you were for June. Which category do you fall into?

1. You were totally prepared. You took a course, had a tutor, or studied on your own, but regardless, you were confident for good reason. You were consistently hitting your goal score on full-length, timed prep tests, and you’re pretty sure the reason for your unsatisfactory score on the June LSAT has more to do with anxiety or an external factor (bad proctor, bad fish, bad break up) than confusion about the difference between “necessary” and “sufficient.”
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