How to do LSAT games faster

January 14, 2009 at 9:07 pm | Posted in Answering Questions Faster, Logic Games | Leave a comment
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One of the common mistakes that students make when preparing for the LSAT is timing themselves when solving games from the very beginning of preparing for the LSAT.  When you don’t allow yourself sufficient time to understand what the game is about and you don’t struggle through it to solve it, but instead you put a time limit of 8.5 minutes per game, you are much less likely to improve your game solving skills. You will be skimming over games, stressing out about not being able to finish the games quickly enough and will not improve your score.

Instead, at the beginning, you should focus on solving the games at any speed, understanding the strategies and not worrying about the time at least until the time that you are thoroughly familiar with all the kinds of games that might be included in the LSAT test.

Once you are comfortable enough to solve games without the time limit, you shold start working in increasing the pace, as solving the problems faster is ultimately a matter of repetition and experience.

“Extreme” answer choices are not always obvious

January 3, 2009 at 6:03 am | Posted in Analytical Reasoning Tips, Extreme Answers | Leave a comment
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One of the kinds of answer choices that you might already be familiar with and know that they are usually not the right choices in analytical reasoning sections of the LSAT  are “extreme” answers choices. These are the answer that start with “all,” “always,” “everywhere,” etc… making an absolute and unqualified statement, such as “all people are good,” “all money is evil,” etc….  Usually, these incorrect answer choices are also shorter as it takes fewer words to make an extreme statement than a qualified one.

However,  it’s important to remember that some “extreme” answers are not that obvious. For example, even though the key words, such as all, everywhere, always, all the time, etc… indicate that the answer choice is extreme, absence of those words doesn’t mean that the answer isn’t extreme.

For instance, consider the following statement: People are good.

Is it extreme? At first, it might not look like it, but it is. It doesn’t say that some people are good, or that some people are good in some places and under some circumstances. This statement implies that all people are good without saying “all” and therefore is extreme.

So, look for the key words that would suggest that the answer is extreme, but also be on the look-out for brief, generilinzg statements that don’t have those key words as these statements are also usually extreme and are incorrect choices in the analytical reasoning arguments of the LSAT exam.

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