There’s an important general principle about reading comprehension passages on the LSAT: To maximize your score on this section you must fundamentally change your approach to reading.
The vast majority of prospective lawyers read often. They tend to major in reading-heavy subjects in the humanities and social sciences, they read for pleasure and they stay informed on the news of the world through newspapers and other short-form journalism. In all these contexts, readers strive for 100 percent comprehension and usually have no time constraints.
On the LSAT, however, time is extremely limited.
[Practice seven tips for LSAT success.]
You must read a dense 450- to 500-word passage and answer up to eight questions on it, all in less than nine minutes. This time pressure alone makes it near impossible to achieve anything close to 100 percent comprehension. Fortunately, the questions you will be asked to answer require you to understand only about 25 percent of the passage.
That you don’t have enough time to understand the entire passage — and that you don’t need to — suggests a reading strategy that focuses on four things: the main point of each paragraph, the structure of the passage, the locations of important details and the author’s opinion on the subject matter. Let’s go through each of these in detail.
[Decide if you should take the February LSAT.]
Main Point and Structure
At the end of each paragraph, ask yourself: How can I summarize the most basic idea contained in the passage? This summary should be as short as possible, with only the broadest and most basic information conveyed in the passage. In addition, ask yourself what role that paragraph plays in the context of the entire passage. Does it present a problem? Offer a historical account? Present someone’s opinion?
Knowing the main point and structural role of each paragraph will help you to understand the big picture: what subject matter is discussed in the passage and how. That enables you to eliminate answer choices that are clearly inconsistent with the passage’s main point, while the structure of the passage gives you a way to identify more specific information in the passage if asked.
Locations of Important Details
Much of what you will encounter in the passages on the LSAT will be dense, detailed material, which will take time to wade through and fully understand. Focusing on the main point of each paragraph forces you away from that more dense, detailed material. As I tell my students at Stratus Prep, this is by design. Since only a small percentage of this information will be required to answer the questions, you save time by only learning that information when called upon to do so.
Although you do not want to try to internalize the content of the more detailed information, you do want to know the location of that information in case you need it to answer a question.
The structure of the passage is a good tool to locate this information, but equally important is to give yourself some marker to quickly identify that information. For example, if one part of a passage discusses in detail the biological evolution of salamanders to make a broader point about evolution generally, circle the word salamander and you will be able to find that example quickly.
[Know how to manage your time for each section of the LSAT.]
Author’s Opinion
As you work your way through the passage, you should search for indications of the author’s opinion about the subject matter. These can be words of support or condemnation, explicit statements of opinion or subtler expressions of sympathy for one position over another.
Note, however, that the author is often neutral with respect to the subject matter. The author may simply present the ideas or opinions of someone else without stating his or her own opinion, or may present two conflicting opinions without taking sides. When attempting to identify the author’s opinion, therefore, make sure to distinguish the author’s own opinion from the opinions of others.
Knowing the author’s opinion serves two important purposes: It helps eliminate answer choices that are inconsistent with the author’s opinion and it directly answers questions about the author’s tone, opinion or attitude.
Have questions about prepping for the LSAT? You can reach me at lawadmissionslowdown@usnews.com.
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Master the Reading Comprehension Section on the LSAT originally appeared on usnews.com
