Almost everyone who struggles with LSAT reading comprehension describes the problem in the same way: they run out of time. So they try to read faster, skimming harder and forcing their eyes down the page, and yet the score stays exactly where it was, and on a bad day it even drops. The reframe that changes things is this. You are not slow because you read carefully; you are slow because you read the whole passage with the same flat attention, remember almost none of it, and then have to go back and reread for every single question. The fix, in other words, is not more speed but structure.
Read for the skeleton, not the details
A reading comp passage is not a pile of facts to memorize but an argument with a shape. There is a main point, there are people who agree and people who disagree, and there are shifts, usually marked by a small word like but, however, or yet, where the author quietly turns a corner. Your first read should chase that skeleton and almost nothing else: who is talking, what they think, where the author stands, and where the passage changes direction. If you can answer those four questions by the time you reach the end, then you understand the passage, even if you could not recite a single detail from the second paragraph.
The details, after all, are still sitting there on the page, and you can always go back for them. What you cannot get back is the structure, and so that is what you read for the first time through.
Mark the turns
As you read, make a light mark at every shift in the argument, whether that is a small arrow where the author pushes back on a view, a bracket around the sentence that states the main point, or a quick note in the margin that says her view or their objection. This feels like it slows you down, and it does, by a few seconds per paragraph. In exchange, though, when a question asks why the author mentions something in the third paragraph, you already know, because you marked the turn that put it there, which means you answer from a map instead of searching the whole territory again.
Let the questions come to the structure
Once you have the skeleton, most questions stop being reading problems and quietly become location problems. A main point question is answered by the sentence you bracketed, a question about the author’s attitude is answered by the turns you marked, and a detail question tells you exactly where to look, so you look there once rather than three times. The students who finish on time are rarely the fastest readers; they are simply the ones who read once, well, and then spend the rest of their time answering instead of rereading.
Practice the map, not the clock
When you drill reading comp, take the timer off for a while and read a passage slowly, writing a one-sentence summary of each paragraph and then the main point of the whole thing before you check yourself against the questions. What you are really training is the habit of seeing structure, and the speed tends to follow the habit rather than the other way around. Once the habit is there, put the timer back on and notice what has changed, because you are not reading any faster, you are simply no longer reading the same passage four times.
Speed on reading comp, then, is a result rather than a goal. Chase the structure first, and the time arrives more or less on its own.
