Lazybum
Hey - putting this out there, I've been doing LSAt RC and I am getting now near perfect 1-3 wrong. Recently transitioned back to GMAT RC and I literally cannot read those passages. They are light, no contrarian points, and seem superfluous when compared to the depth in an LSAT RC passage. I keep looking for the wrong hints for what the main idea is and get stuck misunderstanding points of the article???
GMATNinja what am I doing wrong? Do I need to unlearn or just adapt / get used to GMAT materials (I've done 30 LSAT section 4s - RC)
Posted from my mobile deviceThere are some differences between LSAT RC and GMAT RC -- but, in general, those differences tend to make LSAT passages
harder than GMAT passages, not the other way around. For instance, vocabulary on the LSAT tends to be more difficult than GMAT vocabulary.
When our students do worse on GMAT RC than on LSAT RC, it almost always means that they're doing something differently when they get to GMAT questions. If you're studying for the GMAT, chances are that you care much more about your performance on GMAT sets than on LSAT sets. While it is natural to care about your results, the extra level of nerves and strong desire to do well can make you do unhelpful things. Based on what you've said above, it sounds like you are potentially over-reading GMAT passages, looking for complex and twisty arguments instead of simply assessing the passage in front of you.
If GMAT passages seem light and easy, great! The strategies that are working for you on tougher LSAT passages should work just as well on an easier passage. Just don't squeeze the passage to death and look for complexity that isn't there.
Put another way: if you're approaching ALL RC passages in a consistent, systematic way, then there's absolutely no reason why you would perform badly on passages that feel easier to you. If you're suddenly struggling on GMAT passages, it's because you're not reading in quite the same way as you were before.
I suspect that our RC videos are too basic for your needs at this point, but I do a lot of not-very-exciting preaching about consistency in them. The full list is
here.
I hope that helps a bit!