To give you an example of how to work a smashed reading comprehension question, I’m going to show you how to prove your answer is correct using question 13 from section 3 of the LSAT PrepTest 38 (2002).
- I do not read the passage. I do allow my eye to stray over the first few words of the passage “Intellectual authority is defined…” and am very very glad I do not have to read or comprehend the passage.
- I read the question stem carefully. “The author discusses the example from musicology primarily in order to.” Okay, it is pretty clear that I’m going to skim for the word “musicology.”
- A quick roll of the eyes over the passage makes it clear that the word “musicologist” shows up in the third paragraph and only once.
- The sentence that contains the word: “For example, if a musicologist were to claim that an alleged musical genius who, after several decades, had not gained respect and recognition for his or her compositions is probably not a genius…” Okay, running out of steam here! I don’t want to waste a ton of time on the verbiage. Let me focus on the question stem again: what am I being asked? The key is “discusses the example primarily to.” Where does the sign post in the passage to the right answer point? “For example,…” points to the sentence before! That sentence reads “But, the critics might respond, intellectual authority is only recognized as such because of institutional consensus.” This is the important bit: my answer choice must match this sentence.
- The correct answer choice reads: “illustrate the claim that assessing intellectual authority requires an appeal to institutional authority.”
- illustrate: well, that is what examples do.
- the claim: “critics might respond” with a claim
- assessing intellectual authority requires an appeal to institutional authority: intellectual authority is only recognized as such because of institutional consensus: yup, both indicate intellectual authority being fundamentally derived from institutions.
This one wasn’t even that infelicitous.
I must confess, though, there was an answer choice that called out to me! It was “distinguish the notion of institutional authority from that of intellectual authority.” The reason it called to me was that, in all honesty, I read the entire sentence that contained the “musicologist.” The end of that sentence reads “the critics might say that basing a judgment on a unit of time…is an institutional rather than an intellectual construct.” That sounds a whole lot like the answer choice, right? The “For example” sign post, however, says that you need to base your answer to the question “discusses…primarily to” on what the “for example” is referencing. Also, is it really distinguishing the notion or just an instance?
So, to recap:
- I followed directions by answering the question asked. This helped me zero in on the “for example” cue.
- I paid attention to detail by proving my answer choice word-for-word and by noticing the sketchy “the notion” in the answer choice that called to me.
- I organized the information given to me carefully, by focusing on only the part of the passage that could contain my answer. I then carefully matched that information with the information in the answer choices.
Barriers to Smashing this question type:
- It is hard to trust not reading the passage.
- It is going to take a lot of practice.
- You might see a dip in your accuracy rate.
Methods to overcome:
- Trust it anyway
- Practice, practice, practice. Hundreds of passages. Until you are getting them 100% correct.
- You will develop a sense for the tricks and traps they place for you if you practice enough, now that your attention isn’t cluttered with passages.