How do I improve at Reading Comprehension on the LSAT?

When students begin studying for the LSAT, a lot of people think Reading Comprehension will be easy because it’s something you already know how to do. But in fact I find for many of my students, they actually score worse on Reading Comprehension than on Logical Reasoning before we begin our work together. There’s a lot more to success in this section than simple reading comprehension. 

Do you need to be introduced to reading? I doubt it. But perhaps you need to be introduced to how to read on the LSAT. Because it’s very different from real-life reading. It’s not about information. Many other LSAT methods tell you to slow down and focus on the details when solving Reading Comprehension. This is the opposite. Speed up, ignore the details, and read purely for argument. This is going to be a new approach to reading -- a very different one from reading for school, for pleasure, or for any other purpose.

To improve at Reading Comprehension, the most important component is to change what you're reading for.

You need to read for argument first and foremost and ignore everything else.

Types of Reading Comprehension Passages

Other Reading Comprehension methods differentiate passage types by topic. There will be biology, philosophy, law, history, and other passages rooted in different academic disciplines. But that’s the information -- the thing that doesn’t matter. If you find, for example, law passages easier to understand than physics passages, that means you are paying attention to the wrong thing. The information may differ, but the means by which each passage builds an argument will be the same. Instead, we will differentiate passage type by the means by which the argument is made, rather than the topic of the argument. 

Thus there are three types of passages: normative/prescriptive, descriptive, and comparative. Broadly, the differentiation is about the number of arguments and the presence of the author within the argument(s):

• Normative/Prescriptive passages have the author presenting an argument about the subject matter. 

  
  

• Descriptive passages constitute arguments given by the subject matter itself. 

  
  

• Comparative passages are comparisons between two passages, either or both of which can be normative or descriptive.

Normative/prescriptive passages will have the author presenting a stance on the subject matter that differs in some way from the simple facts being presented. This will feature criticism or agreement structure. In other words, the author is a character within the text, giving an opinion on someone else’s argument. As a result, there will by definition be more than one argument. But it is the author’s argument that carries primacy; everything else is merely proof for the author’s point, proven wrong by the author’s point, or in some other way interacting with the author. They all exist for a purpose, and that purpose is always in relation to the author’s normative or prescriptive claim. That’s the way I read the passage; I initially search for the author’s argument, then I read everything else through that prism asking what it’s accomplishing in relation to that argument. If the first paragraph is confusing, for example, come back to it after you find the author’s argument. It will make much more sense in relation to that.

Therefore the argument will be paraphrased as  ___ is good, is bad, is right, or is wrong. Or we should, we should not, etc. In Logical Reasoning, never paraphrase. In Reading Comprehension, it’s fine. An argument will never be phrased with the words, “the passage is talking about ____.” You always need to prioritize the author’s subjective stance -- good or bad. As in Logical Reasoning, normativity (and in this case criticism and agreement) is the crux.

Side Skill: Authorial Interjections

An authorial interjection is a small word or phrase that you can find in many reading passages that does not change the meaning of the sentence but merely offers the author’s commentary on it. 

Consider these two sentences:

When it came to the source of the genome’s adaptation, the biologist was right.

When it came to the source of the genome’s adaptation, shockingly, the biologist was right.

The meaning of the sentences -- that the biologist was right about the source of the genome’s adaptation -- is the same. But in the second sentence, the author gave a view on that fact: it was shocking. “Shockingly” is therefore an authorial interjection, giving us a great shortcut to finding the author’s opinion as it differs from the information being covered in the passage. 

Usually, authorial interjections will be adverbs (or, less often, adjectives). Words like, “cleverly,” “surprisingly,” or “unfortunately” will all tell us the author’s opinion. First-person pronouns (“I,” “we,” or “us”). Also, punctuation can do it, such as an exclamation mark or even question marks. 

Also -- and this is the most common one -- the phrase “many scientists/ecologists/etc. agree that ___” or “it is commonly accepted that ___,” “most interpretations view,” “it is generally believed that,” or any such synonym that gives the concept of a common opinion or belief would be an authorial interjection. This is vital because those phrases virtually always mean the author is going to disagree with what is generally accepted.

Descriptive passages will not offer an author perspective that is different from the information being presented. In other words, the author is not a character within the text. There could be a single argument within the text, or there could be multiple, but the author won’t have an opinion on them. These passage types are much less common than normative passages, but they can be more difficult because the argument can be more subtle.

In these cases, the argument will simply be the overarching conclusion of the information in the passage. It won’t be ___ is right or wrong, but simply ___ is. These do still have arguments. Often, they’ll need to include slightly more content or information. These arguments often have Logical Reasoning structures, such as causation, comparison, etc. The goal here is to find what’s common between all the content, and that will allow you to unlock the purpose of the passage.

Comparative passages will contain two different passages (passage A and passage B), and there will be one comparative passage in each Reading Comprehension section of each LSAT. So these passages will be worth somewhere between five and eight points of the total on your test. Either of the two passages contained within the comparative passage could be normative/prescriptive or descriptive. It is important to diagnose not just the argument in each passage, but also the relationship between them.

How to find purpose in Reading Comprehension Passages

You don't need to know what is being said in a Reading Comprehension passage if you know why it is being said. And a number of keywords are shortcuts to identifying the purpose of information.

Side Skill: Recognizing Structure-Indicator Keywords

There are lots of words that indicate the relationships between sentences or paragraphs. If you do see Logical Reasoning structures like causation, identifying that is important. But these are more common. Identifying and understanding these gives you a shortcut to identifying structure within a passage. 

Contrast words show when two ideas don’t fit together. These include “however,” “nevertheless,” “but,” “but in fact,” “yet,” “despite,” etc.

Illustration words show the role of a piece of information is to offer support to another, more important point. These include “in short,” “for example,” “similarly,” “moreover,” “this shows that,” “to illustrate this point,” etc. These illustration words include list indicators, such as “first,” “second,” “third,” etc.

Concession words allow for the truth of a component of an argument that is ultimately being criticized or dismissed. These include “while this may be the case,” “this may seem to be,” or “while that is indeed the case.”

Concluding words show that you’re looking at an argument. These include “I propose that,” “thus,” “therefore,” “as a result,” etc. This offers structure and perspective.

If you can find a Reading Comprehension passage's argument, and you can find the means by which every component of the passage is proving the argument, you will be able to answer questions quickly and easily. It's not about information. It's about purpose.

Thus the means to improving in Reading Comprehension on the LSAT is about redefining how you process a passage, what you're looking for, and just as importantly what you are not looking for.