Approaching The Questions

When examining the three parts, students sometimes wonder about the best
strategy for attacking a question: should I read the question stem first? Should
I preview the five answer choices? The answer is Read the parts in the order
given. That is, first read the stimulus, then read the question stem, and finally
read each of the five answer choices. Although this may seem like a
reasonable, even obvious, approach we mention it here because some LSAT
texts advocate reading the question stem before reading the stimulus. We are
certain that these texts are seriously mistaken, and here are a few reasons why:
1. Understanding the stimulus is the key to answering any question, and
reading the question stem first tends to undermine the ability of students to
fully comprehend the information in the stimulus. On easy questions this
distraction tends not to have a significant negative impact, but on more
difficult questions the student often is forced to read the stimulus twice in
order to get full comprehension, thus wasting valuable time. Literally, by
reading the question stem first, students are forced to juggle two things at
once: the question stem and the information in the stimulus. That is a
difficult task when under time pressure. The bottom line is that any viable
strategy must be effective for questions at all difficulty levels, but when you
read the question stem first you cannot perform optimally. True, the
approach works with the easy questions, but those questions could have
been answered correctly regardless of the approach used.
2. Reading the question stem first often wastes valuable time since the typical
student will read the stem, then read the stimulus, and then read the stem
again. Unfortunately, there simply is not enough time to read every question
stem twice.
3. Some question stems refer to information given in the stimulus, or add new
conditions to the stimulus information. Thus, reading the stem first is of
little value and often confuses or distracts the student when he or she goes
to read the stimulus.
4. On stimuli with two questions, reading one stem biases the reader to look
for that specific information, possibly causing problems while doing the
second question, and reading both stems before reading the stimulus wastes
entirely too much time and leads to confusion.

5. For truly knowledgeable test takers there are situations that arise where the
question stem is fairly predictable. One example—and there are others—is
with a question type called Resolve the Paradox. Usually, when you read the
stimulus that accompanies these questions, an obvious paradox or
discrepancy is presented. Reading the question stem beforehand does not
add anything to what you would have known just from reading the stimulus.
In later chapters we will discuss this situation and others where you can
predict the question stem with some success.
6. Finally, we believe that one of the main principles underlying the read-thequestion-
stem-first approach is flawed. Many advocates of the approach
claim that it helps the test taker avoid the “harder” questions, such as
Parallel Reasoning or Method of Reasoning. However, test data shows that
questions of any type can be hard or easy. Some Method of Reasoning
questions are phenomenally easy whereas some Method of Reasoning
questions are extremely difficult. In short, the question stem is a poor
indicator of difficulty because question difficulty is more directly related to
the complexity of the stimulus and the corresponding answer choices.
Understandably, reading the question stem before the stimulus sounds like a
good idea at first, but for the majority of students (especially those trying to
score in the 160s and above), the approach is a hindrance, not a help. Solid test
performance depends on your ability to quickly comprehend complex
argumentation; do not make your task harder by reading the question stem
first.