So what's going on for you in Reading Comp? So I think the first thing is my reading speed is quite slow. And then also, I'm actually not really sure what's going on, but reading comprehension is my section with the lowest score. And I think sometimes I can get the inference right.
And also, I know I have to go back to the passage to find the detail, but usually I can find the right one to eliminate the run answers. OK. And what have you done for Reading Comp? In terms of passages and in terms of your initial approach.
So how many passages and what's your approach like? So my approach is like I have finished reading the passage and I go to questions. And then looking at the questions, I identify which type of question it is. And then decide if I need to go back to the passage to find a specific area to pick out which one is the right, correct answer.
Right. So you're reading the passage, going to the questions, going back to the passage and hunting for the information you need. But my question though is when you initially read the passage, what are you looking for? How are you going about it?
How many minutes are you taking? What are you looking for? Talk to me about that. So for one passage I was doing today, I took around five minutes and 30 seconds to read the whole passage.
It was a science passage. And I was looking for general structure. Like for example, that passage, the first sentence is about forest. It's blah, blah, blah, blah.
And it's about economic and the ecological interest the passage mentioned in the first. And I know this topic is about forest and about its economic interest. And then for the later, I look for its structure. For example, it brings up about two claims.
And then the second passage is discussing about the first claim. And third passage discussing about the second claim. And then I look for authors' attitude in the structure. I like that.
Yes, it is about the structure. It's about the attitude. It's not about the details. So when you say there are two claims, fantastic.
You're focusing on the way the passage author is going about laying out the passage. As you know, it's about forest, it's about economics. But it's also not really about those things. It's not really about the content.
You want to think about how certain are they in their claim? How broad is their claim? What is their tone? Are they skeptical?
Are they supportive? And how far in one direction or the other? So you're looking at the right things. But you also said to me, five minutes and 30 seconds just reading the passage.
Now, do you have extra time on the outside? Or are you limited to 35 minutes? 35 minutes? OK, so obviously you want to get that down, right?
So five 30 on the passage read gives you three minutes and change on average for about seven questions. So 30 seconds of question obviously isn't going to be enough. You're going to want to get that down. So your approach sounds pretty good in terms of what you're looking for.
But we've got to get it down further. OK. Now, the question is how? And part of that will simply be practice.
What other ways do you think you might be able to shave off time aside from simply practicing more? Maybe we are to go in different areas, like science, like humanities, different areas. Yeah, I hear that a lot, right? The economists, scientific American.
People are always saying that, right? What are you taking the LSAT? What's your turn to test aid? I'm taking it in September 2nd.
And then I'll take next one either in October or November. OK, so obviously September 2nd, just a few days away, we're not going to radically change anything between now and then, right? So I'm going to think more about OK, October, November, so a month or two from now. What could you do a month or two?
Over the course of the next month or two. Economists, scientific American. Those are more longer term strategies. That's what I would say to a college freshman who's saying, I'm taking the LSAT three years from now.
What should I be doing? And I'd say, OK, yeah, do some light stuff to build up. But mother to from now, you've got nearly 400 released passages. And how many have you done up to this point?
How many passages have you completed? I'm not sure. Maybe like 40, not much. OK, so you've done about 10% of all the passages out there.
So there's still a lot more available. I wouldn't be going to the economists. And considering that LSAT prep, I would focus on the actual passages. So practice is good.
Just reading those with certain key things in mind, like we said, structure. You could think about what's the tone, what's the main idea of those passages. And then read those almost casually, maybe with more time than you have on the LSAT. And then aim to simply walk away with, what's the main idea?
What's the author's opinion? And how fast can you read a passage and take that away? So you could give yourself 20 minutes. You could also give yourself two minutes.
Could you read a passage in two minutes and walk away simply with tone and main idea? And solve those specific questions. Do that 10 passages in a row, not even bother with the detailed ones. Because you said you've got to read them down in terms of going back and finding those details and quickly skimming for what you're looking for.
But are you always getting me an idea of questions right? Main idea is like orientation in logic games. It should be a warm up. It should be almost a gimme.
But if you're not getting tone and you're not getting a main idea, even on a tough passage, there's something to work on there. And also, there's another type of question called primary purpose. I sometimes get confused between them and the idea and primary purpose. There's pretty much no difference.
There's pretty much no difference between them. Maybe it's slightly different in how it's framed or phrased. But the idea is going to be the same for both. They're both general or global in nature.
Now, I said a lot here. So I want to invite others to chime in. Anyone who feels like they're pretty good on reading comp or has something they could support Hanyaywith. I want to invite you to just unmute yourself and chime in.
Hanyay, can everyone hear me? Yeah, good. Thank you so much for sharing. Yeah, I agree with Stephen that I think the focus should be more towards longer term prep since you're taking it either October or November.
What you're going to do in the next two days, I think just calm your mind, take deep breaths. But for RC, one thing that's helped me has been taking very light, very quick notes for each paragraph of the passages, not dissertation writing, but just really quick sketches of what each paragraph is trying to say. I think that gives me a sense of what the overall purpose of the argument is, or what the purpose of the passages are, how they compare if they're comparison passages. I'd also say for reading comp is to don't rush.
It's a bit like logic games in which you want to make sure you've digested the passage before going to the questions, unless you're running low on time, let's say you're five minutes after something, and you're just starting a passage. If you're five minutes after you're starting a passage, then just go straight for the specific questions or the questions that you can take off really quickly. But if you're just trying to get yourself started, I would say don't rush for the questions until you have a general understanding of what the passage is saying. Because if you don't understand the passage yet, then going to the questions isn't really going to help you.
At least that's what my experience has been. So I would say just give yourself enough time to actually digest it. I wouldn't spend more than three minutes reading per passage. But get yourself to the point where three minutes is enough to really understand.
And certainly I would say read over at least twice. I don't just read over once. And then just do the quick sketches. And then some sort of, did you mention logical reasoning?
Are you still building your skills that with logical reasoning as well? Me? I'm trying to improve, but my main problem is just reading completely. Or something.
Cool. Well, yeah, that's what I would share. Thank you. And I have the same question as Molly.
Do you read over twice in three minutes? So I would say the whole process of reading over twice. And then maybe doing the quick sketches of each paragraph would be three minutes for me. Because again, I don't, a bit like logic games for me.
I wouldn't move on to the questions until I understand what the rules are, what's being asked of me. Because if I'm confused going into the questions, then I'm not going to perform it my best. So I think sometimes people want to jump straight to the questions because I don't always time. I don't always time.
But I think that you make up for the time that you might lose understanding, you make up for speed with answering questions. So yeah, definitely. Thank you. Fantastic advice Richard.
Thanks for sharing that. So yeah, I agree that in general, three minutes on the initial read is a good benchmark. Maybe it'll occasionally be 330 for a really tough passage. Maybe it'll be two and a half for a relatively easier passage.
But three minutes sounds pretty spot on that way. You have approximately one minute on average per question, maybe slightly less. But that's a good general rule of thumb. Now, I also want to emphasize the words of regarding a properly understanding the passage, taking the time to understand on that initial read.
Maybe you're not looking to memorize every single detail. But you want to know where they are so you can find them when you need them. And as an exercise, as a drill, sometimes slow down and really take the time to digest every single sentence, every single idea and maybe paragraph. And what does it mean?
Why is it there? How are they setting the stage? That's one of my favorite things to do in coaching sessions with students is we'll take one really tough passage and spend 20 minutes just breaking it down and doing the questions. That's obviously more than double on average what you get on test day.
But for a really tough one, for example, the riddle basins of attraction, I think it's from test 50, passage four. I did that one the other day with a student. We just spent a long time going sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, breaking it down. And one thing I'll do is I'll make up examples.
I'll make up analogies. For that one, I talked with the riddle basins being like the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and water spilling into them and the riddle parts being like topography on a continent. And a lot of that wasn't there in the passage, but I use that as a mental frame to better understand what was going on. And for a really tough physics passage like that, for most pre-laws at least, that was really useful to do.
On test day, can you always do that sort of thing all the time? No, but for tougher passages where you don't really have a proper frame of reference, and they're not giving you good examples to work with, make up your own and see if they fit, and that can at least help you along through the course of answering the questions. Thank you. Of course, Anya, thanks for joining in and sharing what was going on for you.
I know, so she just shared some good information in the chat here about primary purpose questions. Asking yourself, what's the author's attitude? What does the author want to inform the reader out of a specific point? We'll provide counter arguments, catch any viewpoints from each paragraph.
Yeah, as you're reading, look for specific viewpoints. Look for where the author is expressing their opinion. For primary purpose, the question is, why did the author write this? What are they trying to communicate?
Just like in logical reasoning, what's the main idea? What's the main point? What's the main conclusion? If they could only keep one idea, what would that be?
What's the reason they even said all of this in the first place? If you could only have one takeaway, what's that takeaway? That's the primary purpose, and that's also main idea. Same thing.
Tone will typically be relatively moderate or qualified in nature, so not wholeheartedly enthusiastic and supported without qualification. Typically, it will be qualified approval or moderate skepticism, something like that, something relatively in the middle, but maybe leaning a little bit one way, a little bit the other way, or they could simply be reporting something. But stay away from going too far into the extremes, typically. And that's actually why the economists and scientific American can be useful in a way, because they're not totally partisan, totally in one direction, totally in the other.
They're usually looking to provide some sort of relatively objective reporting or analysis on something. Can they have opinions? Sure. But they're not going to be too far in one direction or the other.
They're fairly moderate, fairly reasonable. Thanks for tuning into the show. Please subscribe if you haven't done so already to be notified of new episodes as I release them. And feel free to reach out if you need anything at all as you feel with your prep.
I'm happy to help, however I can. In the meantime, I wish you all the best and take care.