Passage Discussion

[LSAT-Chang]

What could possibly be the scale for this passage?

I could feel that the last sentence was the author's main point: basically that although the current state of our scholarly knowledge relating to law and the medieval Englishwoman is still fragmentary, the situation is slowly improving.

But what are the actual two sides.. is there one?

[demetri.blaisdell]

Another tricky passage, changsoyeon. The two of us had better be getting better at these Reading Comp passages by now. I think there is a central debate here we can pull out.

Side 1: Analysis of laws is enough to write legal histories of women.
-Many legal historians
support - it's hard to do this and we're lazy (have you seen those scrolls??) and by the way, we don't want to because we don't care about women (as a distinct topic)

Side 2: Scholars need to study actual court records quantitatively to study women's legal history.
-Author
-emerging consensus
support - we need to know if women were actually able to use the written laws or how they got around them

I think this is a better description than thinking of the passage as simply "this is how the field is progressing." What do you think? Does this work for you? Am I missing anything important? Let me know.

Demetri

[LSAT-Chang]

Hi Demetri, I am definitely not getting my head around RC.. It really is my weakest section but I am really working hard to minimize those mistakes! I think it all arises from my bad first-read of the passage. Looking at your opinion of the scale, and re-reading the passage, I definitely missed out on the central argument. Ugh, it's so hard to ACTIVELY read for some reason. I really need to figure out something before the LSAT which is in 3 weeks

[demetri.blaisdell]

Keep working at it. It takes a little practice, but once you're familiar with the method, the scale will start to jump off the page. If you ever want a quick check of your work, take a look at the synthesis questions for the passage (main point, author's opinion, etc) and see how they line up with your understanding. If you're really struggling, it probably means you missed some key details. If not, you understood the passage well enough to get the "gist questions." At the end of the day, that's what matters. Keep up the good work!

[bigtree65]

This may be a stupid question but my rc sucks too so I saw this and I started wondering, what is active reading? is it a way to improve my rc? Lol