TL:DR Adler Mortimer’s method of note-taking for analytical reading gives us a effective framework for scoring well on the LNAT Section A passage
The Law National Admissions Test or the LNAT is deceptively simple. Simple because it tests our basic skills such as reading and logical thinking. Deceptive because it requires us to understand these very meta tasks that we do most often unconsciously.
This passage mainly pertains to Section A though it relates peripherally to Section B. Section A involves reading several argumentative passages and answering multiple-choice questions based on them making up a total of 42 questions. Most students scramble through the questions due to the time pressure (only 95 minutes!) and make careless mistakes. These students feel the passage is too difficult, get a mental block from the time pressure and end up confused and cloudy when reading the multiple choice options. How can you prevent this?
My recommended solution is to have a systematic approach with awareness of what we are doing. As a tutor for the LNAT for the past three years, I made this the goal for all my students. However, because of the abstract level of these sessions, and perhaps in my nature as a lawyer, I wanted to find authority to support my arguments.
For years I searched for academic resources to support my point, and I finally found one in Adler Mortimer’s How to Read a Book. In this book, Mortimer talks about a concept known as the “note-making” stage of analytical reading. This concept consists of four steps that perfectly mirror the way I guide students on answering the LNAT.
Step 1: Know what kind of book you are reading
Mortimer tells us that we need to know the kind of book we are reading as early in the process as possible. This should be done before you begin to read. For example, is it a novel, play epic or lyric? Likewise, for LNAT Section A passages, you should begin by understanding the theme or genre of the passage. Some typical themes are history, sociology, theology, law, business or sometimes just random opinion pieces that have an argumentative angle.
Step 2: State the unity of the whole book in a Single Sentence
Mortimer tells us that we should say what the book is about as briefly as possible. What the book is about is what the author is up to or his main point. In the LNAT, I always tell my students to skim the Section A passage and then tell me what the passage is roughly about. This is so they can put the options to the multiple-choice questions in context, which is crucial to the aptitude-training of a lawyer.
Step 3: Set forth the major parts of the book in their order and relation
Give a systematic outline to the book. What does every chapter contain and how does it contribute to the main point of the book? In a short passage like that in LNAT Section A, we speak about each paragraph and how each contributes to the main point of the passage. Each paragraph has a purpose of its own and contributes together like gears to the main machinery. It is often to find questions targeting certain parts of a paragraph which makes this method useful as a headstart to answer questions.
Step 4: Find out what the Author’s problems were
This helps us understand the mindset of the author. For many questions we need to ‘step into the shoes’ of the author to perform the logical thinking needed to answer the questions. The way I ask students to do this is by asking them what the author’s purpose in writing the passage is. After all, no one sits down and writes something without a purpose, even if the purpose is to give LNAT candidates a head-scramble. Finding out the purpose of reading something does not only increase understanding of the passage but is immensely timesaving as you can state the unity of the passage by skimming it rather than reading it.
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