[Music] hey everybody it's patrick from lsat lab we're going to talk about big picture reading which is really one of the big three skills you're working on with reading comp we got to get better at what we extract from the passage sort of like briefing a case in law school we got to become more aware of the various question types that are involved because they have different nuances different strategies different difficulty levels and then we've got to be masters of the answers because a lot of times an answer is wrong for one word today we're just going to focus on the big picture part and think about some tools for getting interested finding big ideas and retaining them but let's start with a thought experiment let's pretend that we're about to go shopping and this is our shopping list doesn't look too bad and do we even need to bring it kind of look like a nerd we've got this oh what a tragedy befell the hubris of man as i strode through the store confidently remembering like the last two things i had read and then winter comes and i can't find my way back home the reality is we are not going to remember what we just read unless we've got a scheme to pin it down how do memory experts pin stuff down there's people who memorize like the first 200 digits of pi so they're like pi then one then five then nine then two then z stop it that is not how we do it we use chunking is that the sound a reggae guitar makes chunking means that we put a few different things into one box so you're not listing out individuals you're thinking 1592 65 35 hey remember 89.79 i remember that guy you can remember more with less if you chunk the idea though is that we got to make these chunks memorable 1592 1492 is the columbus so 100 after columbus okay 100 columbus 65.35 adds up to a hundred you retire at 65 65 35 89 79 it's like the end of a decade so it's new year's eve 1989 or 1979. what's really relevant to reading comp here is the amount of effort we have to put in to making these chunks memorable there's no way to remember 15 things but there is a way to remember four things if you work at it and you keep saying it back to yourself it gets shorter every time you say it because you're chunking your chunks did you just say you're chunking your chunks ombre yes i did ombre gotta go he thought we were cool all right let's help this guy out how could we organize these like 15 things into three or four categories some of this is basically an italian meal um some of these are sort of like breakfast morning and then we've got the leftovers we can even re-chunk wipes and soap just call the cleaners but i mean hey i'm feeling frisky let's mix it up let's chunk it a different way what do we got what do we got some of these items are carbs a bunch of these are like cold or frozen and then some of them you can't eat and i've tried chunking is a it's kind of like running a compression algorithm on your thoughts or like making a zip file of the paragraph you just read but you've got to remember to do it you actually have to pause digest a few ingredients and create a label for how to remember all of them together i got the reasons why organicism is dumb what do you got i got how organisms got started this person didn't do a very good job chunking all the boxes just say something about science the human brain is best at remembering stories and most stories have a three-act structure there's a set up there's a conflict or climax and then there's some sort of resolution or falling action most reading come passages have about two or three big functional parts as well and so once we find the first part we can figure out we can pre-label the other boxes that we will be reading to fill in remember this is still a standardized test and just like hollywood standardized tests kind of need to stick to a few formulas so there aren't that many different genres of reading comp passages and once we get used to them we have a better sense of what to expect what kind of movie are we seeing i think it's romantic comedy well then i guess there's three things we know when we first start off one of them's with the wrong person and then a miscommunication threatens everything until a grand gesture saves the day duncan is that you sniffles is that you gang this is sniffles the clown we dated for a while back when i was living in san antonio well duncan i see you're still trying to reduce life to your templates okay they're called frameworks first of all and secondly what we should be talking about is why you stood me up at that denny's three years ago i thought you were dead maybe i even hoped you were just as different movie genres cause us to expect different things different reading come frameworks will cause us to expect different big ideas pause the recording and read this little blurb l sacred here lsat's acknowledging some of their common frameworks like they might present a controversial position so that the author can attack it or defend it we might critique someone's point of view or just examine it neutrally we might ask a puzzling question and try to answer it or we might just highlight some noteworthy figure or event what we're trying to develop is a habit of stopping now and then to zip up what we've read digest it into a simple chunk and we also want to try to like label some of the blanks we want to fill in as we go like what will the important chunks be and frameworks provide us a vocabulary for that we can remind ourselves i just gotta remember the old the new and how the author feels about the new i just gotta remember side one and side two of the debate and then the author's position the generalization and the specific the funky question and the author's answer almost all passages only have two or three big ideas hey nice frameworks ombre thanks dude do you know of any parties uh okay pause the recording and read this to me most of reading comp is the first paragraph i gotta settle on the central topic that'll be the subject of the main point i gotta pick a framework so that i can organize the rest of the material as i go and i want to figure out is my author's thesis in that first paragraph or am i still reading waiting for the author to make an appearance when we're trying to think of a topic we don't need it to be a sentence but you want it to be more than just a boring noun when you're picking a framework you'll probably find that there's more than one possible one that could apply that's totally fine just pick one that you think would be usable and get going when you're listening for the author's voice the most common places to find it will be the end of the first paragraph beginning of the second or at the very end but in particular listen for pivot words like but yet however recently because they commonly introduce the main purpose or focus of the passage this first sentence is brutal i would be totally numb i would read it four times and i would start to go back and be like all right let's let's do bite-sized pieces just get that opening clause tracing the changing face of the irish landscape nope still meant nothing just get that first noun irish landscape i'm picturing grass and moss and leprechauns and the cliffs of mar the blarney stone that's the best irish accent i've ever done which isn't saying much the changing face of the landscape what is the face of a landscape no get out of here that's the wrong face like the grass the rocks just the habitat is that what they mean they're just keeping track of how the habitat changes okay i understand what changing irish landscape means there are scholars who basically research this and they rely primarily on documents okay so right now i think the topic is people who try to measure how ireland's rocks and grasses have changed now what sort of framework might this be leading towards well the idea of traditionally hints at old versus new and primarily often indicates that the author will kind of challenge that go against the mainstream and sure enough the next sentence starts with one of those signature author pivot words you're like okay is this my author oh my god it is oh my god she's expressing her opinion she said fragmentary that's negative man when you find the author's voice in a passage it is time to celebrate i mean this is it this is the key right this is what gets us out of the escape room there's only two or three really important moments to find and so we slow down and say it to ourselves like a 10 year old the scholars are relying on documents but the documents are kind of dumb frameworks keep us focused on what the two or three big ideas are with this second sentence where we see the sort of tension between scholars are primarily relying on something that's fragmentary at best sounds like we've got a problem or a position we want to challenge so we have a few different frameworks you know we could say old new the old thing was that they used documents to track how ireland's landscape was changing but maybe there's going to be a new thing or the problem is they're using this freaking fragmentary method so maybe there's going to be some solution a better less fragmentary method or we could understand it as like there's a position these scholars think hey guys documents are the best and our author is saying um fragmentary much we can pick any of these but once we pick one it'll give us a vocabulary for what blanks we want to fill in all right so what's the new way all right the author doesn't like this what's her solution why is the author challenging this position pause the recording and reread this last sentence try to relate it back to a framework the last sentence doesn't add anything new it just unpacks the sentence that began with however hey author why should we believe it's a fragmentary record well because the reliable accounts are very scarce and the things we do have are too selectively focused on military or commercial interests okay at the end of the first paragraph you stop and you summarize where you're at what you're looking for we're talking about people studying ireland's habitat what they've been using documents is not a great source so we're reading with an expectation that we'll find some new way to study the irish landscape pause the recording and read a couple more sentences welcome back thank goodness we were reading with an agenda or else i don't think we would have read that sentence and went oh here it is the treasure that i've been looking for but we found it an additional means we have to connect the dots that when we're talking about investigating landscape change it's a callback to what we were doing in the first sentence we used to rely primarily on documents we got an additional means why don't you tell us what it is author pollen grain fossils [Music] pause the recording and read the rest of the paragraph welcome back so let's just recap the big picture for ourselves the old way was that they use documents a new way is that they can also look at fossils of pollen grain and our author is pretty optimistic about this new way she thinks in many cases it will correct or supplement the documentary record the documentary record sometimes you have to climb back up into the passage to connect the dots that's very worthwhile if we don't notice callbacks then we don't really understand the movie that we're watching at this point in this passage i feel like i'm basically done i know the topic is people trying to study ireland's changing habitat i know that the old kind of sucky way was looking at documents and the new kind of optimistic way is using pollen grain go ahead and read the rest of the passage and see if there's any more big ideas that we would need to add into that mix all right welcome back so just recapping we had just come from learning our solution pollen grains are an additional means that could correct the documentary record the old was documents the news pollen grains on we go the beginning of the next paragraph is for example so this whole paragraph is small it's just evidence the beginning of the next paragraph is another example this is also subsidiary the beginning of the last paragraph has a pivot and the author's expressing a new opinion she does hear say like you know there are some things that pollen can't figure out a lot of us like to build a passage map where we kind of label the paragraphs in big functional chunks first paragraph told us the problem second told us the solution then we get example one example two of the solution kick and butt and then we get this weird last paragraph where the author sort of gives us her editorial on this new solution i'm kidding of course we don't need to be remembering anything about goose grass i just think it's as funny a noun as you could ask for whenever i'm getting confused or lost i return to my happy place which is the framework and i just kind of remind myself okay patrick just remember the old is they used documents and it was fragmentary the new is we can also use pollen grain and it solves some riddles although it leaves some questions unanswered as we said earlier this skill that we're working on of trying to pull out the essential stuff and put it into simpler personal terms that's basically what we're going to be doing when we're briefing cases in law school so it's actually really good news that all the practice time we put into reading comp is practice time that's prepping our brain to be better at something we'll do a lot of in law school hey guys you mind if i share the study room with you sure go for it thanks so uh what you're studying torts i bet it's torts we're zooming in on the big picture reading skills of reading comp one of the first tactics is just making sure you give yourself the space to warm up to a topic a lot of us do not retain a sentence when we first read it so we have to break it into bite-sized pieces develop a mental picture think of a concrete example until we can actually feel like oh i know what we're talking about skill number two is to pick an organizing framework more than one might apply but once you pick one it anchors you to a very simple story that only has two or three big ideas what we reacted to in the early going of this passage was that people were traditionally primarily doing something however the author had a negative feeling so we started thinking okay is the author saying this is a problem and i got a solution here's the old sucky way here's the new better way we have to read with an appetite which means that we're keeping track of which boxes we've filled and which ones are still open once we were done with the first two paragraphs we knew the old way was documents the new way was pollen but we still weren't really sure how the author felt about this new solution and that's why when we hit the last paragraph the very first sentence really hit us strong we had accomplished our mission and filled in the final blank of our big picture good job finding me everybody gotta go the better you are at reading comp the more you read with sort of a dynamic speed you slow down when you find a big idea and you make sure you encode it and you kind of speed up when you know it's just support let's take one more quick journey through this passage to think about big ideas versus support the first sentence names somebody else's position and usually authors pivot away from that and sure enough oh no oh an lsat student loves a pivot now once you rev these guys up they're not going to stop they're so excited when they see a butt however recently because they know here's where the big picture will probably come into focus these can appear throughout the passage but when they appear in the first paragraph that usually means big picture stuff all right guys back to work so when we see a pivot word like butt yet however recently that almost always will mean a big idea the last sentence in the first paragraph was like a premise it was unpacking reasons why the documentary record is fragmentary big idea number two was pollen grains how did we know it was a big idea well the callback language that we're talking about a different way to investigate landscape change to trace the changing face of the landscape the rest of this paragraph felt like support because they were just reiterating that like changes in vegetation are reflected in pollen analyzing pollen can help you identify what the plants were when we get to the third paragraph and see the for example officer reba what are you doing here hey what's the big idea literally ah she's right whenever i see for example i slam on the brakes and i reread the previous claim because that had to be a big idea as i read the example i've got to see how it's illustrating that big idea so i want to see an example of the pollen grain correcting the documentary record once i see historians i'm like yeah the scholars that use documents okay call back so this example should show the pollen grain correcting the documentary record get ready historians you're about to get served by pollen grains and so he says to me these soils weren't even tilled till the 17th century when the moldboard plow came that's funny because i heard according to pollen grain analysis they found cereal grain which as you know would require tilling the soil long before the moldboard plow hey are you guys talking about the moldboard plow we dig the fact that the third and fourth paragraphs both begin for example another example means we're not getting any big ideas there the last paragraph has a big idea but then it's immediately followed by for example so we really only need that first sentence most of what we're trying to do in reading a passage is just isolate the like two three or four big claims that get made i gotta take that big old passage and reduce it to these three chunks good reading comp often feels like that old game we played as a kid that red light green light if you see a big idea like a pivot or a callback it's like red light stop process understand and when you see examples or bullet points you're like oh green light just keep going we're not at a big idea we need to remind ourselves of the big idea that that list or example is attached to but we don't need that detail on the first read remember we're going to be trying to get better at three different things how we read the passage how we react to different question types and how we scrutinize those answer choices let's talk a little bit about question types we could kind of organize them into six families they're going to ask us about the big picture like the main point or how it was organized they're going to ask us about the purpose of a detail or the purpose of a word or a paragraph they'll ask us about opinions what's the author's attitude what did these biologists think they're going to ask us to go fetch a detail and then they're going to ask us to sort of like pick an answer that's derivable from the logic of a detail or from the logical connection between two details and then they're going to do some flexible tasks like strengthen it weaken it add a new sentence the passage we just read came with five questions we're going to try two of them pause the recording and try to do this one from memory then unpause when you want to review it alright welcome back choice a is our correct answer here choice b the main clause says that historical documents have led to the revision this passage was not about documents doing stuff it was about pollen picking up some of the slack for documents c starts out just like a using pollen is a valuable useful tool to do here it says to identify ancient plant species whereas a said to trace the changes of the irish landscape d's wicked complicated the easiest thing would be to spot those examples and say what are you guys doing in a main point answer get out of here you're small if we dig in a little deeper these um crops were not said to have significant impact they were just new discoveries that pollen was helping us to make and in the case of matter specifically that was an example of something pollen wasn't able to track or explain so part of this answer is contradicted e is doing what a lot of trap answers do which is put too much emphasis on the last thing that we heard so the author in the final paragraph goes it must be stressed there are limits to what the pollen record can do but she's not body slamming it and saying its applicability is severely limited notice that in a the main clause is that pollen is a useful tool and answer choice e it's a dependent clause it's like the concession although it's a useful tool the real thing is it sucks the correct answer of a main point question is kind of a good way to check to see whether we did a good job at our big picture reading and in this passage the big author payoff elements were in the beginning and end of the second paragraph our correct answer basically looks like a hybrid of the language from those two sentences how do we find the most valuable sentences oh my dear well that brings us back to frameworks frameworks help you set an agenda helps you think about the passage having a story arc from setup to pay off what is the author really trying to stress or end with frameworks make it easier to talk about the big picture speaking of which let's try one more big picture question from this passage it's asking us to relate the second paragraph to the fifth paragraph so normally we would think back to our passage map and think well how did i chunk each of these paragraphs so we're going to put that passage map over here on the left pause the recording until you've got an answer that you like welcome back after we first read a question stem we try to predict an answer in our head so i probably would have said you know the fifth paragraph is showing us the limitations of the method that's described in the second paragraph a says that the second paragraph is proposing a hypothesis it's really important to understand that hypothesis means like a causal explanation for some phenomenon that happened that's not even close to what the second paragraph is doing which is describing a method of research b is saying that the final paragraph describes a problem that must be solved before we can even use this pollen grain method must be solved seems pretty harsh we said there's limits to the pollen grain method but the author didn't say we have to solve this before it can be considered viable c is saying that the last paragraph qualifies the claim in the second that's another vocab word we got to learn to qualify a claim is to actually talk about like exceptions or to narrow its scope like unqualified would be i love watching basketball on tv but qualified is i love nba basketball unqualified would be like yo that last lord of the rings was awesome qualified praise would be like other than the like stupidly long ending that last one was good so similarly unqualified would be pollen grain can help us track the changing irish landscape but a qualified version would be yeah pollen can do a lot there are some things he can't do so let's keep c ultimately it is correct d says that the second paragraph is talking about a view the author wants to argue against but that's completely opposite the second paragraph is the solution our author is here to present for us e says that the last paragraph is offering procedures to supplement the method what are you talking about the last paragraph is offering us examples of where we're not able to use this new pollen method again c is the correct answer and a pretty hard answer to understand if we don't have a strong sense of what we're looking for wow that was really cathartic i'll say hey can we start over i'd like that hi i'm sniffles pleased to meet you sniffles my name's duncan duncan chic [Music] hey everybody how was your stupid reading cup movie i didn't hate it we learned some cool stuff yeah like what we learned to warm up to the topic a lot of times that first sentence just doesn't mean anything the first time you read it even the second time but wait until the light of understanding turns on inside of you before you keep reading hey you remember those first paragraph goals we had it was like at the end of the first paragraph you should be able to say the central topic you should have picked some organizing framework and you should evaluate whether you heard the author's voice or saw pivot oh yeah what were those pivot words again i can't remember oh my god do you guys remember there was that part about frameworks and we were like duncan would love this part oh no i missed it was it all about setting expectations for later oh i love that stuff yeah it was all about planning out your chunks oh dear do i even want to ask oh sniffles it was actually pretty cool it was about kind of compressing your thoughts like creating a zip file for your thoughts but remember it doesn't happen automatically we gotta make the time to do it and anytime that we see like an example or list we should be asking ourselves what's the big idea literally right and frameworks give you the vocabulary for how to label your chunks and we've really got to read with an appetite for the author's voice that thing's subtle yeah we gotta read with an appetite and not stop listening until we filled up that box it was easier to remember stuff when we turned it into gossip did you hear how scholars are tracing the irish landscape yeah they're using documents can you believe it they're so fragmentary at best sister it's good to laugh all right guys so remember in this lesson we were mainly focusing on some big picture reading techniques which i would encourage you guys to go out and experiment with in future lessons we'll be breaking down more questions and passages check out any of our other videos on youtube or come see us over at [Music] lsatlab.com 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