Reading on the LSAT Test

The LSAT test is packed with densely worded arguments and passages. Half of the challenge of the LSAT test is to analyze and draw out hidden assumptions and inferences made in the test; however, the other half is just being able to get a basic understanding of the passages. This is particularly true in Reading Comprehension, a section that rewards you with gimme points just for paying attention.

This is the first article in a series of articles about reading on the LSAT test. The series includes:

• Reading on the LSAT Test: an introduction
• The Main Idea
• The Best LSAT Reading Tip

Reading on the LSAT Test

This lesson series will go over the TestSherpa method for active reading. Active reading will make your scores in Reading Comprehension soar and it will help you get through the other sections of the test faster and with more confidence.

You might be thinking, “isn’t all reading active reading?” After all, it’s not as if you’re just lying around on test day hoping to pick up inferences through osmosis. To some degree, this is true. All reading is active reading. It’s the intensity of that active reading that is critical to your success on the test.

Have you ever played a sport or game where your heart really wasn’t in it? Sure, you were actively participating but you missed a couple easy lay-ups because your were distracted, or you didn’t see a teammate was open because you were worried about your own score, or your skis crossed because you were thinking about lunch. Contrast that to times when you are “in the zone,” and everything just seemed to click. The LSAT is like a sport in many ways and the more practice you have getting “in the zone,” the better your chances are on test day.

Active reading is being “in the zone,” during the test. Fortunately, you don’t need a high-priced sports psychologist to get you prepared – TestSherpa has a simple and easy to follow method for active reading.

Learning How To Read Again for the LSAT Test

For most of your college career, you’ve read in order to memorize and repeat facts about history, language construction, biology, physics formulae, political and economic theory, calculus and many other fields of study. That experience won’t help you much on the LSAT. On the LSAT, there is nothing to memorize. The LSAT is an open book test, everything that you need is right there in the passage in front of you. You need to learn an entirely different way of reading than you’ve been doing in most of your school life.

Certainly, there will be one or two detail-oriented questions that will pay off for just paying attention. But if the entire test were composed of these types of questions, everyone who was half-awake during the test would score 100% of the points. Remember the LSAT exists because it is a solid predictor of the skill sets you need for law school.

Your law professors won’t be impressed by your ability to memorize and recite factoids. What will impress them is your ability to think and interpret what you read. Law professors expect you to be able to quickly paraphrase and analyze long, boring passages and arguments and be able to respond critically to them. That is what the LSAT is really testing.

The type of reading you do on the LSAT requires inference. You must read between the lines. It requires making guesses about where you think the author is going inside of an argument or a passage and then testing those guesses as you move forward. In some cases – unlike your college reading – you’re trying to be a skeptic. You’re asking, “why is the author writing this and is it necessarily true?” You’re looking for red flags. You’re looking for conflict in the passage. You’re saving time by making inferences and assumptions while you read that will pay off as points when you get to the questions.

Active reading involves asking questions over and over as you read, especially “why” questions:

• Who wrote this?
• What is the main point the author wants to make?
• How are they putting their arguments together?
• Why did the author write this?
• Why did the author say there’s a conflict?
• Why does the second paragraph seem to contradict the first paragraph?
• Why is the author quoting Charles Darwin?
• Why, why, why, why, why…?

If you ask yourself these questions as you read, you are truly an active reader. Reading shouldn’t be a one-way street; Reading should involve you putting your thoughts into the passage as well. You are participating in a kind of dialog with the author.

The Passage Stands Alone

Before moving on to further analyze that questioning style of active reading, we need to make a very important point: The passage stands alone.

The LSAT exists in a vacuum. It doesn’t matter what you know to be true in real life. All that matters it what is true inside that vacuum. If you’re a physics student and you’re faced with a physics passage, you might feel lucky that you know something about the topic involved. Your experience might help you read faster because you won’t be intimidated by terms and jargon.

But what should you do if the passage contradicts what you know to be true? Nothing. The LSAT could care less about your body of knowledge in the field of physics. The LSAT could care less about what is true or false in the real world. The LSAT may deliberately ask you questions about fictional subjects or offer controversial points of view. The LSAT only wants to see your ability to understand the passage in a vacuum and analyze the thoughts contained inside the passage.

Don’t worry about truth and real life. The passage stands alone.

Dealing with Jargon on the LSAT Test

Because of the wide variety of passages you will see in the Reading Comprehension section (natural sciences, social sciences, business and law topics, humanities and more), you will undoubtedly be faced with some terms and jargon you are not familiar with. This can be intimidating because you’ve spent many hours of your college career memorizing these kinds of terms for quizzes and test and now you only have eight minutes per passage. Furthermore, the LSAT passages are sometimes so disjointed, it’s not even clear what the jargon means right away.

You’re in luck. The LSAT is not a test about memorizing jargon. If you see a term you don’t recognize, just move on. If the LSAT happens to ask you about it in a question (which is extremely rare), you’ll know where to find it later and you can reread that section of the passage.

The LSAT often uses deliberately intimidating terms just to throw you off your focus. If you spend a lot of time trying to understand what the unfamiliar jargon means, you’re not reading actively anymore.

Consider the following sentence:

Larger runners often suffer from plantar faciitis when the fascia that connects the heel bone to the toes is inflamed causing a tenderness above the heel bone.

If you’ve never heard of the term “plantar faciitis,” and you’re not a fan of natural science passages to begin with, this sentence can seem intimidating. But that’s only on the surface. It doesn’t matter if you recognize “plantar faciitis,” or not unless you’re asked a specific question about it. In fact, it doesn’t matter if the term is “planter faciitis,” or “heelus ouchiitis,” or “Emo Phillips Syndrome.” All you care about is that it’s that thing that causes heel pain.

Don’t be intimidated by jargon.

Who Wrote This

The authors on the LSAT are anonymous, so the answer to this question is not specific. What we’re getting at with this question is a matter of author’s point of view and style. Does the author show a particular prejudice? Is the author a scientist? A journalist? A literature professor? A motivational speaker? Whatever your view of the author, it will help you anticipate what is coming up next in the passage.

The LSAT test will ask questions that relate to your understanding of the anonymous author:

• The author of this passage is most likely a…
• The author quotes Charles Darwin in order to…
• The author would most like agree with which of the following statements about plantar faciitis.
• The author assumes which of the following to be true regarding the study of human intelligence?

Now that you’ve seen the importance of active reading on the LSAT test, the next article will show you how to get to the main idea.