Because you’ve spent so many years in school examining and memorizing arcane details, it’s easy to waste time carefully reading every word in a reading comprehension passage. Putting in that kind of effort may even feel like you’re reading actively, when in fact, active reading requires you to do just the opposite.
This is the second article in a series of articles about reading on the LSAT test. The series includes:
The Main Idea
Active reading requires you to find the most important details, sentences and phrases in a paragraph or passage. You will hear these kinds of phrases referred to as conclusions, topic sentences or main ideas. Most paragraphs will have a topic sentence that tells you what you can expect to find in the rest of the paragraph. Since you don’t know what the LSAT is going to ask you about a passage, the most important thing you can do is identify those topic sentences so you can quickly identify which paragraphs to look in later.
Those smaller ideas – the main ideas of each paragraph – work together to help you understand what the main idea of the entire passage is. You don’t have the time to understand the whole passage, but you can quickly identify the main points and put them together to get the general idea the author wants to make.
There are two main way to identify the main idea of a passage. First, you can find the topic sentence and underline it. This is certainly the easiest and fastest method. Unfortunately, not all authors politely hand over topic sentences and some authors are deliberately obtuse. If you’re lucky enough to find a topic sentence in a paragraph (and believe or not, this happens more than not in the Reading Comprehension section) simply underline it and read on.
The second method for identifying the main idea of a paragraph or passage is to try to rephrase the main idea as a paraphrase in your own words. Consider the following paragraph:
One popularly held belief was that there is a need for better technology. Among the recommendations made by a joint U.S.-Canadian task force that investigated the blackout was the standardization of reliability measurements. Making such measurements mandatory and enforceable, with stiffer penalties for noncompliance was a key element to the task force’s five-step plan. Pending legislation in the U.S. Congress would give more authority to the North American Electric Reliability Council, including the ability to impose fines on utilities that don’t follow rules and standard procedures. Certainly there is a lack of real-time information that the utilities have to reference for the updated status of their systems. But even with the best technological systems in place, we would still face potential blackouts without enforceable standards. Clearly, technology alone was not to blame for the blackouts.
What do you think is the main idea?
Many test takers would get lost in the long, dense paragraph trying to sort out the details. Smarter test takers might look for a clear topic sentence but come up short since the author doesn’t offer us a single topic sentence. Active readers who follow the TestSherpa method would skim this paragraph identifying and tying together broad elements to form their own paraphrase.
The first sentence starts, “one popularly held belief…” which sounds like a good topic sentence that is going to spell out what a certain point of view is. Unfortunately, it doesn’t go far enough. At least we know the paragraph is going to deal with the role of technology in the blackouts. Reading further into the paragraph, we’re faced with all kinds of details about the findings and suggestions of the task force. It’s tempting to get lost in this mass of details. Skim these details but don’t worry too much about them unless you’re asked about them later.
The active reader would read the first sentence, understand that this paragraph would have something to do with the popular belief that technology was responsible for the blackout and then see if something comes up to support or contradict that belief. In the final sentence, we see that the author says that technology alone is not to blame.
So if we were to create our own paraphrase of this passage, it might be something like:
Many people think technology was responsible for the blackouts, but it was not the only cause.
Making a simple paraphrase enables you to move on without worrying about the dizzying details of the passage. You should practice making main-idea paraphrases every day, not just with sample Reading Comprehension passages you’ll find on TestSherpa and in released tests, but in everything you read. The next time you’re reading a textbook, the newspaper, your favorite magazine or even your best friend’s blog, you should make it a habit to find and paraphrase the main ideas they put forth.
How Does the Author Form the Passage?
By noticing how the author is phrasing her opinion, you will find important key words and phrases that you’ll need to understand the passage better. You will also understand issues of tone, topic and scope.
Tone
What tone does the author use in the passage? Is the tone argumentative, slightly argumentative or simply descriptive? Does the author use extreme language like “only,” or “must,” to make her points, or does she use a moderate tone with words like, “suggests,” or “is possible.” Many wrong answer choices in the Reading Comprehension section can be ruled out simply based on one or two words that don’t match the author’s tone.
Topic
Think of the topic as the general file drawer in which you might find the ideas contained in the passage. In the example above, that file drawer might be “technology,” or “city blackouts.” The topic let’s you know what kind of passage this is, what kind of details and arguments you might find and hints at where the author is going. Topic is not enough, however. Many wrong answer choices in the Reading Comprehension section are about the right topic, but are off target when it comes to the specific scope of the passage.
Scope
Scope is the narrow (but not too narrow) topic about which the author is specifically writing. In the above example, we know the author is going to write about something more specific than just “technology.” We also know that the belief that technology played a major role in the blackout is in scope but possibly too narrow to define the scope of the entire passage since it is the main idea of a single paragraph. Think of scope as the narrowest topic into which you can still fit the whole passage.
Why Did the Author Write This
As we’ve seen, authors on the LSAT sometimes don’t state their purpose up front. Active reading requires you to read between the lines and make connections between key phrases. When you’re not able to find those key phrases easily and a simple paraphrase doesn’t jump out at you, try answering the question “Why did the author write this passage?”
Make some guesses early on and see if they’re supported. Even if you’re guesses are wrong, you will be able to zero in on what the right scope and purpose are as you read along and you’ll find that the rest of the passage makes more sense when you have a guess against which to compare it. Your guess is your touchstone for understanding the rest of the passage.
What are they trying to accomplish? In the passage above, even thought we only have a single paragraph, we could make some guesses about the rest of the passage and then see what happens. is the author going arguing for better standards or better technology for utilities companies? Are they going to describe the circumstances that caused technology to be blamed for the blackouts? Are they going to make suggestions for preventing future blackouts.
By taking as little as ten seconds to make guesses and paraphrases, you could save minutes of reading and rereading.
The next article contains a simple idea that is hard to make a habit of, but may very well be the best LSAT reading tip ever conceived. If you only change one habit in your reading, this is the one.