Need Help on RC Timing Strategy!

Angrid2026

Hello everyone,

I have been studying for the LSAT for a couple of months now. I am in the 158 - 163 range on my prep test at the moment. My biggest weakness is when it comes to timing on the RC section. I spent around 3 to 3.5 minutes reading the easy passage and around 4:5 to 5 minutes on the harder passage (art confused me the most - I am almost always comfortable with any other topics). On the question side, my weak point is when it comes to harder passages, with the majority of questions being implied questions.

I hope everyone can share their strategies on this, or if you have faced the same struggle and have overcome it, I would love to hear from you.

Thanks guys!

marinaecroy

I was struggling with implied questions too. I think those are the most difficult so don't beat yourself up over struggling with implied. What really helped me recently was being told to slow down and comprehend everything that I'm reading. After every paragraph I stop and rephrase in my own head. I ask myself:
What was the main point of that paragraph?
What was the purpose of that paragraph?
What does the author think about the information I just read?
Counterintuitively, I have found that when I spend about 15 - 20 seconds after each paragraph sumarizing, I finish passages faster. I think its because I answer questions much more quickly and confidently and go back to re-read less. On top of this, to help with timing, I aim to spend about 7 minutes on the easier passages, and no more than 10 on the hard passages. I'd say my time is pretty evenly broken up into 50% reading and 50% questions.
Remember that RC isn't a test of how fast you can read, its a test of how well you can understand the passage. If you take 4 minutes to read and REALLY understand, and 4 minutes to answer questions, that's completely fine.

Angrid2026

Really appreciate it, Marina! I am going to do some RC drills and implement the strategy you mentioned. Hopefully, it will help RC ability!

L up North

Agree with everything mentioned by Marina above. Also something that helped me (my main problem was spending too much time on the earlier passages and needing to rush through the last one) was to do the first passage first, then skip to the end of the last passage and work back wards towards the first passage. This made the first passage act as a sort of warm up. By doing passages 4 and 3 next, I was less stressed because I knew I would likely need more time on those anyway, and doing the 2nd passage last meant that even if I didn't have a ton of time left, it was easier for me to answer the questions without a super in-depth read of the passage- I had a higher chance of getting those questions right with less time than I did when I was under pressure on the last passage being crunched for time. The reason this helped me was more about catering the pattern of the exam to the way my brain would feel the least stressed, but it has worked well for me. Also, I find that a lot of the RC wrong answers have one or two minor details that make them wrong, not the entire answer being wrong, so I highlight whenever I find one of those wrong details (ie, if there is a passage that talks about a specific experiment taking a lot of time and having in X and Y results, and one answer says that the experiment resulted in X and Y and was conducted quickly, that's immediately wrong, even if accurately states the results of the experiment). Also, I find a lot of the "function of this paragraph in passage" or "function of this sentence in paragraph" questions have correct answers that are basically stating the broad theme of the passage or paragraph. So, if I can't find an answer I thought made sense for how I understood the part they're referencing, but there is an answers that summarized the broader theme of the passage the paragraph was in, or the paragraph the specific sentence was in, then I choose that answer. 8/10 times that answer is correct. In terms of topics, most of the "art" related passages are speaking to how that particular artist distinguished or represented a particular time in art history or a particular approach to their type of art. So reading art passages, I'm always looking for what the author cites as similarities between that artist's approach or technique and other artists, and what they highlight as differences. That will get you a pretty solid framing going into the questions. Hope that helps a bit!!!

Angrid2026

Thanks, L up North, this is incredibly insightful and helpful. Having to do a prep test test today and will try to incorporate these technique!