How do I learn better from Drilling? Forum

[usaorbust]

So I have the Cambridge packets and have been drilling questions by type but I have been having a bit of trouble nailing flaw questions. I have been dividing up questions type and mixing difficulties but consistently miss a few questions in difficulty 4 and a few from difficulty 3. I get around 75% of Difficulty 3 questions right, and around 66% of difficulty 4 questions right. I miss the occasional difficulty 2 question but not that many.

Like most people here, I want to hit 170+, but I feel like missing these higher difficulty questions will hold me back. Ive gone through the Manhattan LR and the LR bible as well as the trainer, but I just cant seem to master the difficult questions. I look through the missed answers on the Manhattan forum as well, but I am not sure I am learning about how to fix my problems. any advice?

[tanes25]

So I have the Cambridge packets and have been drilling questions by type but I have been having a bit of trouble nailing flaw questions. I have been dividing up questions type and mixing difficulties but consistently miss a few questions in difficulty 4 and a few from difficulty 3. I get around 75% of Difficulty 3 questions right, and around 66% of difficulty 4 questions right. I miss the occasional difficulty 2 question but not that many.

Like most people here, I want to hit 170+, but I feel like missing these higher difficulty questions will hold me back. Ive gone through the Manhattan LR and the LR bible as well as the trainer, but I just cant seem to master the difficult questions. I look through the missed answers on the Manhattan forum as well, but I am not sure I am learning about how to fix my problems. any advice?

Flaw questions are tricky for me as well. I think you first have to be very familiar with the common flaws used on the LSAT. You also have to be able to spot them. This is my issue. I understand the flaw and what it means but I'm not always able to catch the flaw when tackling questions. I know this doesn't help much but you have to figure out what about flaw questions is giving you an issue. Even though you're doing the Cambridge packets and working by level of difficulty they don't all have the same flaws so you'll have to work them differently and you'll also be looking for something different. Hopefully this makes sense. Also, when you're drilling write the flaw and write out your though process for each answer choice. Write why you chose your answer and write why you omitted the other four. This should help you narrow down some issues too. If nothing else you'll see where you messed up with eliminating an answer choice that was the right answer.

[freekick]

So I have the Cambridge packets and have been drilling questions by type but I have been having a bit of trouble nailing flaw questions. I have been dividing up questions type and mixing difficulties but consistently miss a few questions in difficulty 4 and a few from difficulty 3. I get around 75% of Difficulty 3 questions right, and around 66% of difficulty 4 questions right. I miss the occasional difficulty 2 question but not that many.

Like most people here, I want to hit 170+, but I feel like missing these higher difficulty questions will hold me back. Ive gone through the Manhattan LR and the LR bible as well as the trainer, but I just cant seem to master the difficult questions. I look through the missed answers on the Manhattan forum as well, but I am not sure I am learning about how to fix my problems. any advice?

There are at least two types of drilling
1.
Reading the Q
Reading the stimulus
Understanding/analysing the argument
looking at the answers
eventually picking one
looking at TCR to confirm whether you got it right
Feeling good/bad and moving on to the next Q

2.
Reading the Q
Reading the stimulus
Breaking up the stimulus into premises and conclusion
Writing down all assumptions you can spot
Thinking about and writing down all possible lines of attack
Looking at the answers, eliminating the 3 totally off the mark ones
Deciding between the two on the basis of your work upfront
Checking whether one of the many assumptions you thought about got tested or if it was something totally different/new
If the latter, then going back to the stimulus and analysing how that unspotted assumption is implicated and what about your thinking led you too miss it
Concluding by writing down your learning from the exercise, question after question

If you follow 2, you will get WAY more out of drilling than by diong 1 or a version of it. After a point you will start seeing how oftern old wine is being served to you in a new bottle. There will still be curveballs but you will be left with more time to deal with them coz you would have picked the low hanging fruits faster than others. HTH

[Mikey]

Really focus on the questions and why they have 4 incorrect answers and only 1 right answer. It takes up time to do but it is well worth it to improve. Don't just choose an answer, be somewhat sure it's right but not really, and look at the right answer. This isn't how you improve. Dig into the question, no matter how long it takes and come up with explanations for why each answer choice is wrong and why the right is right.