Reading Comprehension: Your Opportunity to Lap the Field
If you’re an LSAT forum poster/reader, you know that the good majority (almost all, in fact) of content-related LSAT posts focus on Logic Games and Logical Reasoning. This makes perfect sense. It’s easy to submit a post about a setup for a tough logic game, and it’s very easy to discuss the underlying logic present in one short LR question. LG and LR questions come in nice, neat packages. They are forum-friendly. Additionally, future LSAT test-takers seem to see and appreciate the immediate impact of a well-designed setup or a clever way to think about a piece of LR logic. The payoff is quick, and often immediate.
Reading comprehension, on the other hand, is messy. In order to have a serious, in-depth discussion about an RC passage, everyone in the conversation needs to be coming directly from a focused read of the passage. It doesn’t work to try to remember back to the passage, or to read a quick summary. For this reason, not many like to talk about it or ask about it. It’s inconvenient. Furthermore, there never seems to be a quick, easy payoff when it comes to RC. There’s not one inference that can be made to change confusion to understanding, there’s no quick gimmick that can be posted concisely to help someone become a better reader. There’s simply no quick fix, no immediate gratification. So why spend time on it? Most people don’t.
These are the people you are competing against. The better you do relative to them, the higher your LSAT score. Make their RC weakness your strength and you’ll put yourself in a position to gain upwards of 4 raw points on the field. Before you decide to make RC your LSAT version of a powerful forehand, you need to be in the right mindset.
1. Focus on the long-term, not the short-term. RC improvement does not come easily, and it certainly doesn’t come immediately. Be prepared for a long, tough slog. It may take 3 weeks, or 5 weeks, or 7 weeks, but if you’re diligent and focused, you CAN make significant improvements over the long-term.
2. Reading comprehension tests your ability to read. Go figure! This may seem obvious, but it’s something that most people don’t want to acknowledge. A lot of test-takers look for shortcuts, skimming techniques, or tricks in order to get better at RC (if they try at all). The problem with these approaches is that they intentionally avoid the part of reading comprehension that really matters: reading! It’s not about whether you read the questions first or the passage first, it’s not about the order in which you take the questions, and it’s not about coming up with some scheme to read only topic sentences and skip the rest to save time. It’s about reading well. You must confront this task head-on. If you are going to improve your RC score, you need to improve (and in many cases change) the way you read.
So, how do you become a better reader? As you evaluate your current reading skills, consider the following statements. Do any of these sound familiar?
1. I have difficulty absorbing all the information in the passage.
2. I have difficulty understanding all the details (especially all the science related details).
3. I have a difficult time deciding what to underline. Or, I end up with 80% of the passage underlined when I’m finished.
4. Reading the passage takes me way too long.
If any one (or more) of these defines your reading, you are most likely having trouble distinguishing the “important” information from the “unimportant” information. You are attempting to absorb everything instead of focusing on what really matters. If you can learn to make this distinction effectively and efficiently, that 4-point advantage will be yours for the taking.
I know what you’re thinking: “Tell me how!” If you’re looking for an easy answer here, you’re falling into the quick-fix trap. It’s going to take more than that. It’s going to take a sustained effort and focus. That said, here are a few ideas to get you started:
1. To figure out what’s “important” information and what’s not, consider the purpose of the LSAT. Why do law schools require you to take the LSAT? One reason: the LSAT is designed to predict how good of a law student you will be. It should not be surprising, then, that most LSAT reading passages are mini representations of the types of reading you will do in law school. Imagine for a second that you are a first-year law student and you’ve been assigned a case to read. Tomorrow, you’ll have to stand in front of your peers and your professor and distill the 100 plus pages of text you’ve read down to a succinct analysis of the case. Clearly, you won’t be able to regurgitate, or even remember for that matter, all 100 plus pages. How will you separate the important information form the unimportant? If you can figure this out, it should help you think about RC passages in a new way.
2. Become an active reader. You can’t read like you watch TV. The LSAT will not present information in commercial form, with a clear, ready-to-digest message. Rather, you’ll achieve success only if you read actively. Research shows that expert readers are active readers. They approach the text with a clear focus and purpose, they constantly evaluate their state of comprehension, and they constantly anticipate what might come next in the text.
So, learn to distinguish between the important and the unimportant information, and then read actively to pursue this information in the text. These are the first few steps on the path to RC success.
Are you ready to commit? Not many LSAT test-takers are, which is what makes RC the lowest hanging fruit on the exam.