how to speed up in timed practice

[shirando21]

In a timed LR practice section, I still have two-three questions in the last five questions that I can't finish.

What can I do to improve the speed in order to finish them all???

[ohthatpatrick]

A few thoughts:

1. Speed up on the easy stuff so you have more time for the later stuff.

We all know that the earlier LR questions are easier:
- they're typically more readable
- they often cause us to predict an answer (that will actually be in the answer choices)
- they don't usually have tempting incorrect answers

So we have to capitalize on easier problems by moving more aggressively.

The typical drill for practicing this is to try doing the 1st 10 Q's in LR in 10 mins.

If you can do 10 in 10 without sacrificing your normal accuracy, then start trying to do the 1st 12 in 12 ... see if you can get it to where you can do the 1st 15 in 15 mins.

This drill is all about moving briskly, picking up on familiar patterns/tendencies, and trusting your instincts when it comes to the correct answer (don't necessarily read all the choices thoroughly if you think you've already found the answer).

If we succeed in doing the 1st 15 in 15mins, then we have 20 minutes for the final 10 questions. 2min/Q, which is about right for some of the dense questions.

Speaking of dense questions ...

2. Save dense questions for last

If you're in the habit of just going through the section in linear fashion, then you're going to fight a lot of painful battles in the 14-21 range. Meanwhile, the last few problems normally aren't as bad as the worst of the 14-21 range.

So get in the habit of skipping 2-3 questions in the teens. Most of us choose to skip really long Matching questions, or really dense, scientific looking Strengthen/Weaken, or really long complicated Inference questions. But you should figure out for yourself which questions you struggle the most with so that you can potentially save those for last.

3. When you review LR questions, try to find the "Fact Pattern"

Law-students are trained to read a case brief and extract, from the specific details of the case, the general fact-pattern of evidence and judgment.

This should be our goal as well when we review our LR questions. For example, I might look back at a question as say to myself, "Okay ... this was a strengthen question. The author used an analogy as evidence for his conclusion. We strengthen an analogy by making the 2 sides more "fair to compare", and, yup, the correct answer made them seem more similar."

"This was a weaken question. The author had a statistic as his premise. We weaken an argument based on a statistic by either suggesting an alternative interpretation of the statistic or by pointing out a difference between the statistic and the author's interpretation of it."

"This was a Main Conclusion question. I know that the conclusion is rarely found in the last sentence. It's most commonly found in the middle after a but/yet/however. In this case, it was in the middle, and I should have seen that the sentence after it started with the premise trigger 'After all'. That should have told me the previous sentence was the conclusion."

You're trying to teach your brain how to be more masterful when it comes to type of question, type of evidence, and function of correct answer.

The better you get at this, the quicker you'll be at LR overall.

You won't be able to use patterns/tendencies throughout the whole LR section (because there will always be wrinkles and curveballs that force you to think on your feet) ... but being able to use them on the 65% of the section that IS typical stuff will buy you the extra time you need.

Good luck!

[shirando21]

Thank you.

But should I just skip the question types that I get wrong more easily after figuring out the type or
should I read the argument first, if I don't have feel for it, then move on, which would be more time consuming but I am really skipping the ones that are truly almost impossible for me to get right?

[ohthatpatrick]

It'll be a combination of both those things.

A really long looking Match the Reasoning question you might skip preemptively because you see the column of text is as tall as the page.

An Inference or Strengthen/Weaken question you might start reading and then decide that subject matter / density / word choice etc. is making it hard for you to understand ... leading you to cut your losses and move on.

I would generally intend to attempt each question, but cultivate the flexibility to skip something if it looks too long or quickly seems to become too hard to understand.

Good luck.

[shirando21]

Great, thanks.