Preptest Review

[muzzy5412]

How would you recommend a review the exam, I have taken for practice?

Obviously, just looking at the answer from a incorrect question does not really help. Just wanting to know the best way to go about it so I can absorb the most and have that go off next time I encounter a similar question.

Thanks

Rehan

[ohthatpatrick]

Hey, Rehan.

First, I'd recommend you read this blog post on this topic:
http://www.manhattanlsat.com/blog/2009/ ... lanations/

Reviewing an entire test question-by-question can be exhausting but rewarding.

Ideally, you want to get into the habit of marking off questions that you feel iffy about AS you're doing them.

Students tend to think that problems they got wrong are the biggest priority for review (so much so that they barely look at the ones they got right).

However, given that we FREQUENTLY come "down to 2" on questions, it's just as important that we review problems that we got right, via somewhat tentative logic or lucky guessing.

So to differentiate problems you got right because you OWNED them vs. problems you got right (but would have a hard time explaining WHY the correct answer is right or why each wrong answer is wrong), you want to get into the habit of marking off problems as you're doing them if your guess is medium/low confidence.

If you have high confidence in your answer and get that question right, you want to give yourself permission to review it a little bit quicker than the questions on which you had lower confidence (whether you got them right or wrong).

When you review a problem, you want to think about:

- Could I have done this faster/easier? (Check the forum for explanations to see if other people have discovered way easier ways to think about/do the problem than the method/rationale you used)

- Do I know what kind of question type this is? Do I know what the tendencies are for this kind of question type? Are any aspects of this problem reinforcing that tendency or is this an oddball question that requires more flexible thinking because it ISN'T the typical kind?

- What are the general, abstract, archetypal qualities of this question?
For LR,
think about patterns of reasoning:
- correlation/causality
- necessary vs. sufficient
- part to whole
- comparative vs. absolute
- attacking the person, not the argument
- treating a failure to prove as proof of failure
- % vs. #'s
- suggesting a means to an end
- offering an explanation
- making a prediction
- disagreeing with someone else's claim
- relying on potentially sketchy evidence such as
*surveys
*samples
*analogies
*experiments
*artifacts
*statistics
*testimonials

Think about the qualities of the correct answer that make it work for the question type / think about the qualities of each incorrect answer that make it broken.

We want "general" reasons why answers are right/wrong, such as
"B was correct. It's providing a missing logical link, which is common on an Assumption question. I can sense that it's doing so because one phrase in B connects directly to the premise and another phrase in B connects to the new term/idea in the conclusion."

"C was wrong because the word 'most' is too extreme. D was wrong because 'other than aardvarks" makes this out of scope. E was wrong because the comparison 'MORE tenacious' was never made."

For Games,
think about game type and question type

For RC,
think about the purpose of the passage
- Clarify a Misconception
- Present a Debate
- Support a Thesis
- Present New Research and its Implications
- Solve a Problem

for individual answer choices you need to find a line reference that supports/proves the correct answer. You need to find 1-4 words that break each incorrect answer.

Keep reinforcing trap answer tendencies:
- extreme
- out of scope
- comparisons
- opposite
- word blender (they grab phrases from the passage, but from the wrong place or arbitrarily combine phrases from two different parts of the passage)

Obviously, I could go on and on, but that's not what the forum is really for.

Hope this helps give you some ideas.