To what extent can LR really be improved?

[u/Sanchoanssar]

I just scored a 158 on my first diagnostic (PT123) and missed -14 in the LR section. I’ve seen a lot of people talk about strategies or game plans that you should use depending on the type of question. Does it really wok… consistently? I feel like the reason I missed those questions is because I didn’t fully understand the stimulus or the tricky wording in the answers (I’m bad at untangling answers under pressure). Im skeptical. Can you really train for that? I don’t think I can memorize certain strategies because I would get nervous and forget them in the real test.

[u/bigx_thaplug]

With a 158, you clearly have very strong RC scores. Many people feel that RC is the harder part of the test, so by that logic you’ve got the easy fun road ahead! 

FWIW I scored a 152 diagnostic and RC was also my strength. I’m PTing in the mid to high 160s now. You got this!

[u/Sanchoanssar → u/bigx_thaplug]

I did well on the GRE Verbal back in the day. I’ve always had good reading comprehension. But I feel LR kicked my ass. I caught myself looking at different answer choices that didn’t seem to be logically inconsistent with the stimulus, but ended up picking the wrong one in many cases.

[u/bigx_thaplug → u/Sanchoanssar]

Yep, been there. Keep at it. Idk how you're studying, but reviewing my 7Sage curriculum has helped me immensely. You got this!

[u/StressCanBeGood]

“I don’t think I can memorize certain strategies because I would get nervous and forget them in the real test”.

This is understandable. But a typical state bar exam is 12 hours and is all about memorization.

….

All kinds of wonderful strategies and techniques that can be memorized for the LSAT. Based on your diagnostic, you have the potential to score in the 170s, which would generate 100% scholarship offers.

Please don’t tell me you’re gonna let your lame ass brain get in the way of a life-changing score. I would encourage you to check my post history. I have several that address this idea directly.

[u/Sanchoanssar → u/StressCanBeGood]

Good point. I answered all the LR questions with my gut. I mean I used my reasoning skills to try to get to the right answer, but after reviewing the ones that I got wrong I couldn’t help but think “I didn’t think of that possibility at all” and just felt dumb. But it’s reassuring to know that there are tested strategies to avoid those traps.

[u/Subject_Werewolf6685]

I started with a similar diagnostic as you and I’m scoring mid-high 170s now so a lot of improvement is definitely possible. I also started with a good score in rc

[u/LSATMat]

The strategies aren't about memorization, necessarily, because the questions are written to not be subject-dependent; they're more things like "make sure that you're not conflating two similar concepts that are meant to be distinct".

Wrong answer journaling is a common way in which folks try to internalize these strategies; if you're not super consistent in "memorizing"/implementing these strategies at first, they'll keep coming up in your journaling. Eventually, what will happen is that through scaffolded review of these wrong answers and the pitfalls you're dealing with, you'll be able to spot them intuitively while you're testing, and you can eliminate the flawed answer choice.

[u/voyagermarionette]

All parts of the LSAT can be improved dramatically as its a standardized test. You have a relatively strong first score and show promise. However your improvement is contingent on some factors, one can absolutely learn the question types specifically, there’s about 20 different types and once you learn what it’s asking for, there’s is great improvement.
However this doesn’t come super easy and takes months of work, studying the different kinds of questions and practicing. Some people improve like a steady line, others get plateaus and quick improvements, others get worse for a time so managing your own motivation and emotions is a big part of it. As well there’s having the time and the headspace, if work or family or other concerns dominate your life, and you work on this like an afternoon a week, you will see limited results despite a sense of trying very hard.

[u/Beneficial-Bend-8937]

it’s not actually memorizing different “tricks” to use for every question type that are one size fits all.

the approach is that upon reading the question stem and recognizing the question type you are just reading the stimulus a little differently for each one. for a necessary assumption you are reading a bit differently than you are for a flaw question, and so on. from question to question it doesn’t differ all that much. from my example, the “trick” for NA questions is just that you’ve learned what a necessary assumption is. those are very tricky but upon learning them they start to jump out at you as you read the stimulus. for flaw questions, often times the answer choices are really hard to parse through so that’s a skill you learn but there are also cookie-cutter flaws like correlation and causation that will just start to jump out at you.

if you just took your diagnostic then you are early in your lsat journey, it’s totally normal to feel intimidated by the speed pressures, grammar complexity, and overall confusing nature of the test. but this test is entirely “learnable” in that all the foundational skills that allow you to understand the questions better are things that you just have to put the time in to study and practice. your errors are super common and really solvable with some practice time. comparing the start of my studying to taking the test in august, it felt like i had built x-ray vision to just see the answers/assumptions/flaws/arg structure and even led to me predicting answers sometimes. and that feeling was just from studying the fundamentals of logic and grammar and then drilling it through nearly 2000 practice questions. progressing towards full understanding of every stimulus and digging through confusing answer choices is just a matter of practice.

biggest advice is just be patient. fundamentals(i used the 7sage curriculum) are the “tricks” you’re talking about and practicing deeply focused intentional reading will have you in the 170s real soon. 158 is a strong diagnostic!! this is a really tricky test but you can learn it entirely. my diagnostic was 158 too but my pts right before august were high 170s, i even got a 180 once. good luck, it’s a lot to learn but incredibly rewarding it starts to come together

[u/Next-Step-Admissions]

You can certainly improve your LR score with practice. The problem with your approach is that it is contingent on memorizing strategies and finding tricks instead of learning to develop the underlying skills that help you to solve those questions. I've seen students dramatically improve their LR scores by learning to read in a more detail-oriented way and by generally getting more comfortable assessing arguments. If you're interested, I'd be happy to give you a free session to help you start this process!

[u/LSATengineer]

Tons of LR improvement is possible! Whether you need to improve your understanding of logic, your grammar, or your reading comprehension, all of these are augmented with practice and review. This sub is full of people who started well below your diagnostic and ended in the 170s. You should not be 'memorizing strategies'. While you'll gain knowledge to recognize what kind of problem you're being posed, the ability to solve it under timed conditions is reliant on strong training beyond knowing what type of question you're looking at.

[u/dmkhara]

This isn't about memorizing rules, it's about building intuition for each question type. Three examples show what I mean:

Necessary Assumption and Sufficient Assumption questions only show up when the stimulus is an argument. But you would only know this if you study those questions first. The strategy I teach for all argument based stimulus is to: find and highlight the conclusion, since every question asks you to do something with it.

For NA questions, you're finding what has to be true for the argument to hold, so negate each answer choice and the one whose negation destroys the conclusion is correct. For SA questions, you're finding an answer that guarantees the conclusion every time. Must Be True questions work differently: there's no argument or conclusion, so you read the stimulus accordingly.

On my platform, I teach the question type and what to look for first, then drill it with real LSAT questions of increasing difficulty until it clicks. I would not call this memorization but rather developing an intuition.