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LSAT Reading Comp Made Easy
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It's not easy to learn to read faster because you've been reading your whole life, you're not going to suddenly change your reading ability completely, but there are some tricks you can use to read faster. Specifically, there are two tools for reading comp that I love. One is called spreeder.com. The other is phrase reader.com. I know they're not paying me to make this video. I just really like these tools. Basically, what they do is they let you put yourself on an LSAT reading comp treadmill where you can copy paste in difficult dense text like what you see in LSAT reading comp passages and you can display that text to yourself at different speeds to train yourself to evaluate it at any speed that you would like. Now, on the LSAT, you get 35 minutes per section with standard timing that works out to eight minutes and 45 seconds per passage and the associated questions. Now, I recommend getting through the passage itself in roughly two to three minutes so that you have enough time to solve the questions associated because if you take eight 45 minus three minutes, you've only got five minutes and 45 seconds left with seven or eight questions associated. That's already less than one minute per question. You certainly don't want to have to get through the questions any faster than that. Now, how do you get through the passage so quickly? Only two to three minutes. It's because you don't do a ton of note taking. It takes time to write things down and it takes time to read things. And I find the students who do best on LSAT reading comp are those who mark very little or not even at all. Now, I know a lot of prep companies have really overcomplicated note taking strategies and that may have worked better for the paper LSAT than it does for the LSAT now that it's online. But actually, I'm not convinced those strategies ever worked that well to begin with because the LSAT is strictly timed. What worked for you in college, what works for your leisure reading may not work for a strictly timed test like the LSAT. Now, I know a lot of the topics on the LSAT can be really, really boring, especially for me, at least the science passages. If you know the riddle basins of attractions passage, one of the hardest ones of all time, incredibly difficult for most students to get through and that's by design. It's because the LSAT test makers deliberately choose topics with which you are not likely to have a lot of prior familiarity. And so you've got to fake it till you make it pretend to be interested. And maybe you actually can become more interested. I love to caricature or exaggerate the different viewpoints presented in the passage to make them more relatable. Maybe it's old viewpoint versus new viewpoint. Maybe it's liberal viewpoint versus conservative viewpoint. Whatever it might work for you to help you get through the passage more easily and help you better distinguish between the different viewpoints expressed in the passages. Now, some students will ask me, how do you avoid going back to the passage on harder questions? My question is, why avoid it? The passage is available to you. Make use of it. When you read the passage, I would recommend walking away with the main idea, the primary purpose, the author's opinion, aim to walk away with that. If you capture anything else, great. But those general global ideas, like main idea, primary purpose, and so on, will help you solve all the general global questions, which are also main idea, primary purpose. Knock out those questions first. Then for the detail oriented questions, it's totally fine to go back to the passage. That's what it's there for. And you don't want to get bogged down on your initial read in all of the details and lists and examples and evidence, rather just capture the main idea, which is equivalent to the conclusion, like in logical reasoning, then go back for the evidence to solve the specific questions. And finally, the last questions that require a bit more reading between the lines, those are going to be the toughest anyway. You definitely get to want to go back to the passage for those. And of course, save those for last. Now, occasionally, some students will ask me, should I read the questions first to help me know what to look for in the passage? And my thought is, you're going to capture the main idea of this passage and all seven or so questions in your initial read and hold all that in your heads simultaneously. That is going far beyond the limits of normal short term working memory. Just read the passage, get the main idea, solve those main idea questions, then the other questions, you're going to want to go back to the passage anyway, to help you solve those. And that's okay. During your review process, you want to be able to substantiate or support any given answer choice with specific lines from the passage to prove that you actually have the support for that answer choice. But don't go crazy trying to memorize everything. It just is not doable again, especially with topics that you don't really have any prior familiarity with. You want to make sure that this is more than just a 30 second process where you look at the answer key and say, Oh, I get it now, how could I have been so dumb? And move on to the next, you want to make sure that you are getting the full value out of your review process to that, you can make sure you can avoid making the same mistake again. Now, I have developed a process for this called the Socratic review method. It's a cornerstone of my LSAT courses. I might want on one LSAT coaching programs. You can check out the links below the video to find out more and to book a call with me and my team, we'd be glad to help you out. And in the meantime, I wish you all the best and take care.