Why Study Reading Comprehension?

I Already Know What Reading Comprehension Is--What Can This Book Do for Me? Reading comprehension is a staple of standardized testing. You saw it on state tests in elementary school, you saw it on the SAT, and of course you will see it on the LSAT

There is a reason for this. Reading comprehension is a great way to test an individual’s ability to absorb, comprehend, process, and evaluate information in a time efficient manner (skills you will need as a lawyer). It seems to make sense, but is it really possible to quantify a person’s level of reading comprehension? Can’t we all, by looking at our own lives and experiences, see that our level of reading comprehension is something that fluctuates from situation to situation?

Let’s look at a few scenarios:

1. Ted is an electrical engineer. He has been working in a niche industry for years, but it’s very easy for him to understand and evaluate articles on engineering concepts that fall outside of his specialty, even when he isn’t familiar with the specific terminology involved. He’s recently gotten interested in the stock market, and has been trying to read up on it. However, he’s having a lot of trouble understanding and organizing the investment advice that he’s read in various financial publications.
2. Sally is a freshman in high school. She has mastered the art of instant messaging, and sends and receives hundreds of messages a day. She filters them and organizes them easily, and is able to weave together a cohesive understanding of the lives of her friends. However, when she tries to organize the personalities and events of 18th century Europe from her history textbook, she’s hopelessly lost.
3. Jane is an English lit professor, and a bit of a luddite. She’s finally getting around to using the internet to communicate with her students. She is surprised by the short, abrupt, and casual messages they send to her. She is unable to catch subtlety and has difficulty interpreting the tone of the messages she receives. She tries to write short responses back, but invariably ends up sending emails that are too long and take her too much time to put together.

We could try to test Ted, Sally, and Jane's reading comprehension levels, but the results would vary depending on the type of exam given. The truth is, none of us has a definable (or quantifiable) level of reading comprehension. Put simply, our reading comprehension ability is variable. It depends on many factors, including our familiarity with the subject matter, the manner in which the material is written, the purpose of our read, and our overall interest and focus level.

For a few of you, the strengths you possess as readers already align with the LSAT reading comprehension test. In other words, your ability to read and comprehend LSAT passages is similar to Sally's ability to organize and synthesize her text messages. However, for most of us, LSAT passages do not naturally fall into our reading "sweet spot." So what do we do? We must work to become intimately familiar with the characteristics of LSAT passages, and then define our reading approach based on these characteristics. In other words, we must expand our sweet spot to include the LSAT.

This book is designed to lead you through this process, one step at a time. If you are not already an "LSAT reader," you will become one by the time you finish this book.

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