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Reading Comprehension: How to Read an LSAT Passage

Structural reading: whose voice is speaking, where the author arrives, what to mark, what to let go, and how to spend 35 minutes across four sets.

12 topics · 49 questions

Each topic is a path, not a menu: work down it in order and every question builds on the one above. Click any of them to watch the answer draw itself.

The Author's Voice vs. Views Merely Reported

  1. How it worksHow do you track an author's voice on one line and everybody else's views on separate lines below it?
  2. How it worksShow me the signals that a sentence belongs to a critic being described rather than to the author.
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through whose view is whose in 'Many historians hold that the revolt was spontaneous. The archive suggests otherwise.'
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't an unattributed sentence automatically the author's own opinion?
  5. Going furtherWhat happens when an author reports a view, accepts half of it, and rejects the rest?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Many historians hold that the revolt of 1665 was spontaneous, pointing to the absence of any surviving plan. A revisionist school, working from the 65 depositions taken afterward, holds that it was organised by the guild wardens, whose names recur throughout them. The depositions were taken by magistrates who had been instructed to find organisers, and a deposition taken under that instruction tells us what the magistrate was seeking rather than what the deponent knew. What the archive shows is that nobody in 1665 could tell the two possibilities apart either. Which one of the following is a view the passage attributes to others rather than advancing as its own?

Pivot Words and Where the Author Arrives

  1. How it worksHow does a pivot word mark the seam between a reported view and the author's own position?
  2. How it worksWhat do although, nevertheless, to be sure and granted each signal about whatever follows them?
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through where the author lands in 'Granted, the data are thin. Still, the pattern is hard to dismiss.'
  4. Common mistakeWhy doesn't every however in a text mark an author switching sides?
Your turneasy1 of 3
Granted, the sample is thin: 24 sites, of which 7 were excavated before modern recording. Still, the pattern is hard to dismiss. Every one of the 7 older excavations reports the same sequence, and the recording standards of the day would have made an invented sequence harder to produce rather than easier. Where does the author of the passage arrive?

Marking Claim, Counterclaim, Evidence and Concession

  1. How it worksHow do you build an outline that grows as the text scrolls, one label per group of sentences?
  2. How it worksWhat is the difference between a concession and a qualification inside the same paragraph?
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through labelling a paragraph that admits a weakness and then explains why it does not matter.
  4. Going furtherWhat changes about your labels when evidence arrives before the claim it is supporting?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
The instrument measures only the fraction of a sample that is soluble, which in practice is about 68 percent. That is a real limitation, and it is why the totals reported here run below those in the earlier survey. It is not, however, a reason to reject the comparison: the insoluble fraction is the same in every sample, so the ranking the survey produces is unaffected by what the instrument cannot see. The sentence beginning 'That is a real limitation' is best labelled

How Much Detail to Absorb on a First Pass

  1. How it worksHow do you read for a map you can navigate back to rather than for facts you can recite?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through what to keep and what to drop in a paragraph listing four enzymes and one conclusion.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't rereading one hard sentence twice a better use of 20 seconds than moving on?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to a first pass when the set is a pair of 250-word comparative texts?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Four enzymes act in sequence on the precursor: the first removes a phosphate, the second and third rearrange the ring, and the fourth closes it. Mutants lacking the fourth accumulate the open form, which is toxic; mutants lacking the first accumulate nothing, because the precursor is not made while the phosphate remains. The pathway is therefore regulated at its entrance and not, as had been supposed, at its exit. The result holds in each of the 15 strains tested. On a first pass, which one of the following is the thing worth carrying forward from this paragraph?

The Viewpoint Inventory

  1. How it worksHow do you keep a running inventory of every voice in a text and what each one holds?
  2. How it worksShow me a text's voices as parallel tracks, the author's highlighted and the reported views in grey.
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through inventorying a text with early critics, a revisionist school, and an author siding with neither.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't a text naming three scholars a text carrying three distinct viewpoints?
  5. Ties togetherHow does one viewpoint inventory answer attitude, function and inference questions from the same notes?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Early critics of the painter treated the late canvases as a falling-off. Some 72 years later a revisionist reading found in them a deliberate roughening, and cited the workshop accounts, which show the same pigments bought in the same quantities as before. Two of the three scholars usually named as revisionists differ only over dating; the third holds that the roughening was the work of assistants. On the evidence of the accounts, the falling-off and the deliberate roughening cannot be told apart. Which one of the following correctly matches a view to the voice that holds it?

Tone Words: Critical, Skeptical, Ambivalent, Dismissive

  1. How it worksHow do you place a tone word on a scale of intensity instead of sorting it as positive or negative?
  2. How it worksWhat does ambivalent actually require a text to contain, and how is that different from neutral?
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through ranking guarded, appreciative, scornful and detached on one attitude dial.
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't an LSAT author ever contemptuous, outraged or overjoyed?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
The reform did what it promised: waiting times fell by 36 percent within 18 months, and they have not risen since. It also transferred to the clinics a discretion that nobody outside them can review, and in the 13 districts where that discretion has been examined it was exercised unevenly. Both of these are consequences of the same design. The author's attitude toward the reform is best described as

Pacing Four Sets in 35 Minutes

  1. How it worksHow should a set's time budget split between reading the selection and answering five to eight questions?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through rebuilding the budget when the first set eats 12 minutes instead of 9.
  3. Going furtherWhat changes about pacing when one set carries eight questions and another carries five?
  4. Common mistakeWhy doesn't reading a selection faster buy back time on the questions that follow it?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A reading section runs 35 minutes across four sets. One of the sets carries 7 questions. Which one of the following splits that set's budget soundly?

Choosing Which Set to Do Last

  1. How it worksHow do you triage four sets in 30 seconds using paragraph count, question count and density?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through ordering a law set with 8 questions, a dense physics set with 5, and a comparative pair.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't a selection on a subject you know well the right one to start with?
  4. Going furtherWhat happens to triage on an interface whose question bar shows every question at once?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A test taker triaging four reading sets in 37 seconds is choosing an order of attack. Which one of the following is the most useful signal?

When to Abandon a Question

  1. How it worksHow do you set a hard stop, flag the question and move on without losing your place in the text?
  2. Worked exampleWalk me through the decision at 75 seconds into a question with two answers you cannot separate.
  3. Common mistakeWhy isn't guessing on an abandoned LSAT question ever worse than leaving it blank?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A test taker sets a hard stop of 81 seconds on any one reading question. On reaching the stop, the soundest move is to

Three Ways to Attack a Set

  1. How it worksHow does reading the questions first change what you notice on the way through a selection?
  2. How it worksWhat does skimming both the selection and its questions before a careful read actually buy you?
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through the same 9-minute set run twice, once selection-first and once questions-first.
  4. Common mistakeWhy doesn't the approach that feels best untimed survive a 35-minute section?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
Reading the 7 question stems of a set before the selection changes the first pass by

Highlighting, Underlining and Flagging on Screen

  1. How it worksHow do the highlighter, the underline tool and the flag each earn their place in a reading set?
  2. How it worksWhat does a question bar showing every question at once change about how you move through a set?
  3. Going furtherWhat happens to your click budget when answer choices lose their radio buttons?
  4. Common mistakeWhy isn't a marked-up screen the same kind of help as a marked-up paper page?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
In a reading set of 7 questions on the digital interface, the highlighter earns its place when it is used to mark

The Recurring Passage Architectures

  1. How it worksHow does the old-consensus-then-revision blueprint tell you where the author's own view will sit?
  2. How it worksShow me the phenomenon-with-competing-explanations shape as one box with three arrows feeding into it.
  3. Worked exampleWalk me through naming the blueprint from the first sentence of each paragraph and nothing else.
  4. Going furtherWhat changes when an advocacy blueprint concedes ground to its opponent twice before the end?
Your turnmedium1 of 3
A passage has four paragraphs. The first opens: 'For most of the last century the standard view was that the script recorded an administrative language.' The second opens: 'Three decades of decipherment have made that view hard to hold.' The third opens: 'The tablets from the 15 smaller sites tell against it in a different way.' The fourth opens: 'What replaces it is less tidy than what it replaces.' On the old-consensus-then-revision blueprint, the author's own view sits

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