Reading faster on the LSAT without losing what you read

Reading Comprehension is where most people lose time, and the usual response — read faster — makes it worse. Speed-reading techniques trade comprehension for words per minute, and this section charges you for exactly that trade.

The time is not mostly spent on the first read. It is spent going back: hunting for a detail, re-reading a paragraph because you retained nothing from it, or reconstructing the argument for the third question in a row. Fix the return trips and the section fits.

Read for structure, not for content

You are not being tested on whether you remember the passage. You are being tested on whether you can find and use it. So read for the shape: whose view is this, what is this paragraph doing, where did the author turn.

Content you can look up in seconds. Structure you cannot — reconstructing it means re-reading, which is where the minutes go. A reader who knows paragraph three is the objection and paragraph four is the answer navigates instantly; a reader who absorbed all the facts and none of the shape starts over on every question.

Four labels

The habit worth building: as you finish each paragraph, give it three or four words. "Old view." "Problem with it." "New study." "Author's verdict." Say it silently or write it in the margin.

It costs a few seconds per paragraph and pays for itself on the first question, because Main Point, Primary Purpose, Organization and most Function questions are answered directly from those four labels. You have also just built the map you will use to find every detail.

Track voice

The most expensive RC error is attributing a view to the wrong person, and it is common precisely because passages spend long stretches explaining positions the author does not hold. Mark whose voice you are in whenever it changes — a small "C" for critics, "A" for the author.

That one mark defends against a whole family of wrong answers: the ones that are accurate about somebody's view and wrong about the author's.

What not to do

• Do not highlight heavily. Highlighting a third of the passage marks nothing — it just slows the read and leaves you a wall of color to search.
• Do not skim the first read and plan to come back. You end up reading the passage twice, which costs more than reading it properly once.
• Do not skip the last paragraph to save time. It usually holds the author's actual position, which is what the most-weighted questions ask about.
• Do not read the questions first. It sounds efficient and turns one read into five partial ones with no structure at the end of them.