Read Challenging Material

The Importance of Building General Verbal Skills

Reading challenging material in addition to your LSAT prep exposes you to different viewpoints and complex narratives, honing your critical thinking skills. When you encounter a complex argument or a multi-layered issue, you’re not just absorbing information; you’re analyzing it. This is extremely valuable for the LSAT.  The LSAT often presents you with information-dense passages and having these strong verbal reasoning skills will enable you to go through these texts effectively, identifying key points and logical structures.  Reading challenging material regularly can prep you for this, equipping you with the skills to break down complicated sentences and unfamiliar vocabulary.

In addition to that, and more directly related to the test, you’ll find it much easier to implement the kinds of strategies and approaches that are required for the different questions if you’ve built a strong verbal reasoning foundation. For instance, techniques for dealing with logical reasoning questions are much more effective when you already have the capacity for identifying logical structures and flaws in arguments, skills developed through reading and evaluating challenging material.

Expanding Vocabulary Through Challenging Material

Both of the sections that test your verbal reasoning, but the Reading Comprehension section in particular, require having a strong vocabulary. You’ll be faced with passages that span a wide range of topics and disciplines, from the sciences to humanities. But in addition to language that can get technical, dense, and filled with industry-specific terms, you’ll also have to deal with non-technical but still sophisticated and unfamiliar or “$5” words.  And also, having a strong vocabulary isn’t just about knowing a lot of words; it’s also about understanding their nuances and subtleties. For instance, understanding the difference between “validate” and “corroborate” can be key when interpreting a complex argument.

Without a strong vocabulary, you’ll find it much more difficult to have a clear picture of what you’re reading and, obviously, that’ll make it more difficult to get the questions right.

So how do you build your vocabulary? One of the most effective ways is by diversifying your reading material. Don’t limit yourself to LSAT prep materials or legal texts. Branch out into academic articles, scientific papers, and even quality journalism.  By diversifying your reading, you’re essentially expanding your vocabulary toolbox.

Strategies for Selecting Challenging Material

Selecting appropriate challenging material is key for targeted skill development.  You want to find reading material that not only improves your vocabulary but also improves your verbal reasoning skills.

The first thing that I recommend to my students is to read contemporary academic philosophy.  Contemporary philosophy, particularly philosophy dealing with social issues like political or legal philosophy, is a fantastic discipline for helping students develop their critical reasoning skills.  That’s because philosophy is all about conceptual analysis and clarification and as a result requires careful and sophisticated argumentation.  You can find an introductory textbook to legal and political philosophy (The Blackwell Companions are pretty good) and you can also read articles on those topics at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and International Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

I would also recommend reading long-form journalism; you can pick several journals that cover different topics in-depth – for example ‘The Economist’ for business/economics, ‘Science’ or ‘Natural History’ for science/nature, ‘Wired’ for technology, ‘National Geographic History’, etc.  You can find a curated list of essays/opinions/book reviews at aldaily.com, and they also list publications that they source from – it could be useful to help you pick magazines that you’re interested in.

In essence, the material you choose should challenge you, but not to the point where it becomes a chore to read. Aim for texts that stretch your intellectual boundaries while still being engaging.

Developing an Effective Reading Routine

Reading challenging material is one thing; extracting benefit from it is another. Active reading techniques are the difference between merely skimming the surface and not getting much out of it vs being actively engaged and as a result training yourself to think more clearly.

Active reading means reading in such a way that you’re engaged with and focused on the text. When you read a complex passage, dissect its argument structure. Identify the main claim, supporting evidence, and any counterarguments or contending perspectives. Learn to look for these relationships as you’re reading – you’re training yourself to see the forest as well as the trees.  As you’re doing that, if you come across a word you don’t know don’t just skip it. Use context to figure out its meaning.  This is a two-way street, the overall structure helps clarify vocabulary and vice versa – understanding the language illuminates the logical relationships.  In addition to that, making notes or annotations as you read can improve your comprehension. Mark key points, unfamiliar words, or anything that requires further investigation.  That way you’ve now got a mechanism by which you’re engaged while you’re reading.  And the key thing is to visualize.  Creating a mental image keeps you engaged as you’re reading – you’re not just sounding out words in your head but you’re building a narrative that allows you to ‘see’ the complexity of the information.  This way you’re keeping track of all of the info presented to you.  Summarizing is a great trick to get you to visualize.  After you’re done with a section (paragraph for example) give yourself a quick summary.  What you’ll find is that, initially, you’ll re-read/skim what you just read but since that’s a bit tedious you’ll start to simply describe what you’ve visualized.  And that’s the key part; your goal is to get you to visualize automatically as you’re reading.

By employing these active reading techniques, you’re not just passively consuming text; you’re interacting with it. This level of engagement trains you to think more carefully and critically.

Vocabulary Building

You also want to focus on vocabulary acquisition.

Building a strong vocabulary is more than just memorizing lists of words. It’s also about understanding their meanings, usages, and nuances.  When you encounter a new word, don’t just look up its definition. Break it down into its roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Understanding the components of a word can give you clues about its meaning, making it easier to remember and apply in different contexts.  Tools like flashcards can be very useful, especially digital versions that allow you to include example sentences or synonyms.  Learning a new word is just the first step; using it is what truly cements it into your memory. Try to use the word in a sentence as soon as you learn its meaning. You can also create illustrative flashcards that not only list the word and its definition but also provide a sample sentence that shows how the word is used.

Conclusion

Preparing for the LSAT is intense, it demands focus, discipline, and a lot of practice. While LSAT-specific study is essential, don’t underestimate the value of enhancing your verbal reasoning skills and vocabulary through reading challenging material. By reading a range of complex texts and employing targeted active reading and vocabulary-building strategies, you’ll be working on that fundamental capacity of critical reasoning that’s central to doing well on the test.

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