Reading Comprehension
The LSAT's Reading Comprehension section is designed to test your ability to wade through complex passages and understand the relationships between the parts of the passage. You will get a set of five to eight questions and a passage that is 400 to 500 words long. You will get four passages per section.
- The passages are long, so you must read quickly. You must be able to read actively and pull out the important points.
- If you can pull the main points from the passage and understand the author's point, the next step is to attack the questions.
- If you understand the passage and what the question is asking, your final step is to apply that information to eliminating the incorrect answer choices and picking the correct choices.
Logical Reasoning
Logical Reasoning questions constitute about half of the total LSAT questions. Logical Reasoning questions test your ability to take apart an argument. Each section of the LSAT will have about 25 questions, and you will have 35 minutes for each section. Most of the passages are three or four sentences long and apply to one question, but some passages are longer.
- The text is dense and requires careful reading. Most of these questions have logical errors that fall into one of ten error types.
- The second step is to identify the different ways questions are phrased.
- The final step is to go through an attack plan. The Web site www.lsat-center.com provides a four step process so that you can identify the logical error, find out the question type, and pick out the answer from the choices.
Analytical Reasoning
Most students find the games section the most difficult on the LSAT. These questions are designed to measure your ability to understand a system of relationships and to draw appropriate deductive conclusions about those relationships. You have to draw accurate diagrams under intense time pressure.
The Analytical Reasoning section of the Law School Admission Test has about 24 questions broken into four "games" that are each five to eight questions long.
- The first step is to identify the different game types. Virtually all of the games can be put into one of seven main categories.
- Once you can identify the game type, you can quickly set up a diagram and plug in the information.
Once you have drawn the diagram, you need to take your results and use them to answer the multiple choice questions.
