Old Approach/New Approach Meta-Structure (Beginner) with Andrea

Hi, Leela, Leah, I have that right, please let me know if not, I'm sorry, I should know, we have reading comm today, old approach versus new approach, meta structures, so part of you're the only person in the office hours, so we might have a quiet one, feel free to ask me questions or engage as you wish, also no pressure, I know a lot of times people just have these on in the background while they're doing other stuff, so yeah, no worries, I can just go ahead and talk, if you are not wanting to participate, whatever you prefer, but let me.

quickly get to our passage. So today we're doing something out of June 2007. Sorry, my brightness has been a little wonky here.

There we go. So I'm pulling that up. Hmm. What's the June 2007 Oh, hi, Catherine. How's going? Welcome to Office Hours.

We have a pretty low key group today so far. just the two of you. As I mentioned earlier, I know sometimes people just kind of have these on in the background and they're not really wanting to participate.

Maybe they're doing something else. just wanted to offer up if you wanted to participate. It's a pretty quiet room so far.

So there's definitely an opportunity to do that if you'd like to engage a little. a bit more. I was just saying that we are doing June 2007.

However, I am having a hard time finding that passage on Elsa next. it must be one of the diagnostics.

I think it's probably the diagnostic would be my guess. I heard you, I'm taking my little one of the, but I'm here.

Okay, well, I'm still navigating to the passage anyways, trying to find our passage. Yep, this is June 2007. It looks like.

So, let me just confirm. Okay, so admittedly, the sample passage we have today for this particular meta structure, apologies, I'm looking at the list of the materials that we have internally, and our sample for this meta structure is actually a passage for, which makes me think it might be a little bit harder than a beginner passage.

It might not be, it's, you know, it's possible, it could be beginner, but I'm a little hesitant on the idea of passage 4, so if anyone is really wanting to focus on the beginner aspects, please feel free to let me know when we can really break it down and sort of go slow and do it in a slow way.

Yeah, we'll probably just do that because I feel like otherwise passage 4s do tend to be a little bit trickier, but that's that it's usually pretty good to learn something from

hard questions. I'm a big fan. Almost in all my tutoring sessions, I usually give my students hard questions because if you can pick out the hard ones, you can pick out the easy ones, right?

And there's a lot to learn from really hard questions. You learn so much more from a hard question than you learn from an easy one because typically what makes questions hard on the LSAT is the fact that they have a lot of different things all going on at once.

A lot of different traps, a lot of different, you know, sometimes a lot of premises, that sort of thing.

So yeah, we'll think of like that. But okay, so we've got some more people here. This is wonderful. Wow, look at this.

We have a proper group. Okay, this is awesome. The last couple of hours I've done, I've only had one or two, so this is great.

All right, give me a sec here. Let me pull up a fresh window for this. But we are doing June 2007.

For those of you who want to follow along, it is the diagnostic exam. So it's the very first one where it says, right?

Actually, I'll show you guys, um, just this up here. Figure out how to share that. Okay. So, let me share.

And this screen. Um, okay. So, it's this one right at the top, it's June 2007. We're going to jump into passage four.

All right. So in terms of old approach versus new approach and just thinking about meta structures in general. So, meta structures are basically a way of framing your.

thinking around different methods of reasoning and methods of argumentation. The LSAT repeats certain patterns all the time, and a lot of these patterns are about different ways that you could go about arguing something, right, which is what attorneys do all the time.

So sorry, I'm just checking to see who we have. Okay, we have bunch of people. again, Ragu. Good to see you.

Okay, one more time. Let me just throw it in the chat here. So you all have it in 2007 LSAT, first diagnostic exam, there you go.

But yeah, so basically it's a way of thinking about the big picture, right, so that's pencil word meta, right?

It's like the big picture. How did the author go about structuring what they were saying? So that's really what they're

that means and an old approach versus a new approach tactic is basically when you have the evolution of something, there was, you know, of like out with the old and with the new, right?

That's basically, it's pretty self-explanatory. The name does a good job just getting it across here. There was the way things were, or the way something was, and the way things it is now, or this new up-and-coming way that something is being done.

So it's kind of comparing and contrasting this potentially outdated view with a newer view. Oftentimes, the author likes the new view.

They're kind of arguing for something different for an evolution in general, note the else out is pretty progressive. So usually, they're all about whatever the most progressive thing that you can say is.

So that's why they love the sort of thing new approaches and stuff like that. would expect when you're kind of thinking about that framework, you might get a scenario where there are parts of the old approach, an author,

likes or their parts of the old approach, the author especially doesn't like you could see all of that so try to like think of that in your mind.

It's also worth noting that you don't actually know what the meta structure really is until you read the passage.

So what we're doing a little differently here today is because we're teaching particularly this meta structure, you're obviously going to know before going into it but on the test you wouldn't necessarily have that knowledge until you've finished.

So the way that you're using meta structures as a test taker which is different from how we're teaching them in office hours is you know if you study your meta structures and you kind of have a sense of what they all are when you finish your passage that should give you a big picture sense of like the flow of the argument and it gives you a sense of framework for how to be thinking about how to expect questions to be formed.

for instance if you have compare contrast you're going to get kind of you know what within the passage the meat that you're digging into.

Okay so let's jump in here also since a bunch of you joined in a little bit later. I just wanted to say feel free to talk in the chat.

think for you guys It's obviously if you guys want to participate. I'm so happy to engage and it's good for you guys, right?

It's kind of like office hours are basically a free tutoring session. So feel free to talk in the chat There's absolutely a judgment for each zone As someone who studied for the LSAT for like nine months or a year or something ridiculous like that and started at the very bottom I'm an eventually made their way to the very top.

I remember going to a lot of office hours, and I always felt shy and It's funny. actually oftentimes didn't make it the most of them because I was afraid to say stuff in the chat So I always want to encourage my students seriously, no judgment zone don't be me and Let me start an opportunity to learn so definitely if you're able and willing and interested in interacting I'm here to answer your questions and help you become a better test anchor However, I can so all right with

that. Let's jump into our reading techniques. Okay. So, let me just move this little chat box around. All right.

So, in tracing the changing face of the Irish landscape, something I want to lag here. It was just an underlying sometimes, Ragu and I have been talking about this in past office hours.

To note that something is changing, they could, that's the kind of thing, it's the kind of adjective that is descriptive.

So, in the past, we've talked about how adjectives are often indicative of author's attitude. If the word ends in LY, like an adverb or if it's an adjective, that's usually where your author's attitude becomes apparent.

Word choice is also where you find authors' attitudes, the verindance. I don't know, he pressured her versus he. eat encouraged her, pressuring and encouraging someone, are functionally the same underlying verb, right?

They just kind of mean to egg, but one has a positive connotation of egging someone and one has a negative connotation of egging someone.

So that's an example of where authors attitude hides in word choice and often times, that's in your verbs. You don't really see that in nouns so much, you can occasionally, but you don't really, nouns are descriptive inherently, right?

They don't often convey that much tone that they can. So I would say, you're looking for your author, look for adjectives, adverbs, and if you see any verbs that are more descriptive than just is or was, pay attention to them.

But here, this particular adjective isn't really one that's indicative of an author's opinion, what that would look like if it was, it would say, entracing the beautiful face of the Irish landscape.

Now we know the author loves. So that's what I mean when I say adjectives are good for flagging authors' attitude.

But in this case, we're actually getting a much more functional adjective. So I'm underlying it for another reason. You don't always have to, sometimes adjectives don't mean that much, but oftentimes they do.

So you want to kind of pay attention. In this case, this is a new category of adjective. We haven't talked about this in past office hours or at least the last two that I did.

For this one, basically, I like to flag ones that are talking about something that changes the nature of the noun.

So, in tracing the beautiful face of the Irish landscape, of like a positive right versus in tracing the ugly face of the Irish landscape.

That's a negative author's attitude towards Ireland, the changing face. Or you could even say like the lopsided. face or the, I'm trying to think of something super sure did the bumpy face, right?

That's changing like, okay, what kind of face? Like, now there's a totally different kind of face. It's not just that the face itself is positive or negative, it's that the face itself is now like totally different and potentially a neutral way.

So hopefully that makes sense. Because if I say beautiful face, it's really just the face I'm focusing on and I'm adding making it positive or negative, beautiful or ugly, changing, now it's like a whole different kind of face.

I like to flag those adjectives. All right, so in tracing the changing face of the Irish landscape, scholars, and I like to fly them, this is probably one group of people, right?

That's a perspective. Have traditionally, all right, LY, right? So author's attitude. Notice that if you recall, this is an old approach versus new approach, meta structures, office hour.

Traditionally, it of means in the past, right, old approach, funny that the ironic here that the author is literally using that word to describe, that's what I mean, it's authors attitude, this is what the author wants from you.

It's really a structural thing, but yeah, so that's kind of how you can use those adjectives and adverbs to learn a lot about a passage.

so in tracing the changing face of the Irish landscape, scholars have traditionally relied primarily on evidence from historical documents.

I like to note this as well. So this is conditional, more or less. It's not conditional, but it's in the family of conditional logic, right?

if you think about a necessary assumption question stem looks like the argument depends on which one of the following or the argument relies on which of the following.

I like to, in reading comprehension, flag, any concept that shows up in logical reasoning, because because they often test it in the questions.

So in this case, I don't think it's necessarily important to highlight if you're just reading the passage all the way through, but these are just small things that I'm teaching you guys as we go along to look out for in the future.

They're not necessarily important enough to the passage itself that I'm going to stop and highlight them, but they are things that as a tutor who's been doing this forever and ever, these are patterns that I know in my mind often get tested.

So I'm just trying to tell you guys that they exist so you can like be prepared for next time you see them in the passage, you can think to yourself, okay, that usually gets tested.

want to pay attention to that. Okay, so let's get through this paragraph super quick here and tracing the changing face of the Irish landscape.

Scholars, I am going to have a point of view that they have traditionally relied primarily on evidence from historical documents.

However, that's a structure pivoting word, right? A point pivoting word? However, such documentary sources provide a fragmentary record at best.

So, small thing I'm gonna flag isn't a side as well. The word, whenever you get pronouns, this isn't necessarily a pronoun here, but, and here it's pretty obvious because what historical, or what documentary sources, historical, these historical documents, it's clear what they were referring back to.

However, typically in reading comprehension, what makes it hard is, and I'm sure we'll see this later on in the passage, they often use synonyms to convey the same ideas.

So, it looks like they're introducing new ideas when actually they're just bringing up the same old ideas but they're using different words to,

to label them. So when they use different words to label them, it's meant to deceive students into thinking new concepts when really it's just another way of phrasing the old concept.

So I always look out for pronouns. You want to always know what a pronoun is referring back to. That's one way that they'll try to hide.

An old idea is they'll use a kind of loose vague pronoun. This isn't that like when this gets trappy is when this sentence would have been further down here and you would have been expected to realize that it was referring back to that up there.

So that's kind of how reading comp works. Take something that's well written, jumble it all up, and make it poorly written, and you have a reading comprehension passage.

So what can actually really help in reading comprehension more than your reading skills are your writing skills. Practice writing, brush up on you know, basic concepts, like reference and

syntax and all of that. I think if you know how a sentence is supposed to look, you'll be much better at identifying what a sentence isn't supposed to look like and you'll see these bad sentences and you'll be able to decipher them a lot better.

Okay, so however, such documentary sources provide a fragmentary record at best. Okay, so this is a little bit of author's attitude here at best, right?

They could have just said provide a fragmentary record period. At best, it's just kind of saying like in the best case scenario, right?

So what I want, if I'm predicting what's coming next, is tell me why that's the case. If we've traditionally relied primarily on this, that's kind of a big deal, right?

If you're relying in car accidents, we're relying primarily on airbags and seatbelts. So if you're going to tell me that

seatbelts and airbags are no good. Well clearly somebody thought at one point they were good enough because that's all we really have, right?

As opposed to some other contraption that was never made. So this is like kind of a stark disagreement to say it's kind of a bit of an attitude here, right?

To say that they provide a fragmentary record at best, that's like saying well, if a lot of people were using them at one point in time, I want some serious evidence for why that's the case.

You should be thinking, okay, author, if you're going to justify a broad claim like that, I want to see the reasoning for it.

So that's kind of predicting. So that's the structure of a fragmentary record at best. Reliable accounts are very scarce for many parts of Ireland to the 17th.

Rival accounts are very scarce for many parts of Ireland prior to the 17th Okay, so. they're super scarce. And many of the relevant documents from the 16th and also temporal elements, I like to flag.

They often test questions about periods of time. They make you infer what would have been the case before certain benchmark or after a certain benchmark.

And many of the relevant documents from the 16th and 17th centuries focus selectively on matters relating to military or commercial interests.

Okay, so what this author is basically suggesting, what can be inferred here, is because they're using this as evidence for this statement here, then we know that military and commercial interests are probably not that representative or all-encompassing, because talking about the landscape, in my mind,

I'm like, oh, yeah, military and commercial interests. What other kind of interests are their personal interests? does that really matter?

In my mind, I don't see why that can't be enough. They haven't told me why it can't be enough.

So that's an assumption that the, or that's basically what this author is positing, that that's not good enough, that this selectivity, that this group is an unrepresentative sample by inference, what they're saying.

They're also saying that reliable accounts are very scarce. You notice they're saying reliable accounts, right? So something that I would switch back on here, if I have my critical brain on, which is always what you want to have for the LSAT.

If reliable accounts are very scarce prior to this century, then why were people traditionally relying primarily on that information?

Is it because centuries and scientists before this were just really stupid and they thought it was good enough? Or is it because that was all they had?

We don't know why, but if you're telling me the thing was primarily relied on was scarce. I want to know then why it was being relied on in the first place because you would think that rational people wouldn't rely on something super scarce unless they either didn't have a choice or unless the scarcity maybe wasn't that big a deal, right?

So you want to be critical of what you're reading. That's kind of how you do that. That's the kind of pushback you want to have.

Kind of naturally set yourself up in a position to disagree with the passage and what you're reading. My pro tip is imagine somebody that you find obnoxious authored this passage.

So I usually tell my students and when I'm tutoring I say like X is in-laws, group project partners that do no work, roommates that don't pick up after themselves.

Whoever it is that just gets under your nerves, imagine they wrote this and that will make turning on your critical brain in the right way feel a lot easier.

Okay, so this is their justification for why documentary sources provide a Freibunty record at best. they're probably I'm going to then turn around and say that this whole method sucks would be my guess.

Alright, let me take a look here in the chat, saw something pop up. Not here.

Yeah, really good question. You should always be making inferences, but probably almost never writing them out. Because it would take forever to write all that out and it might not be that useful.

I think if the idea, so you should always explore them in your mind. As you're reading something, the worst thing you can do guys in reading comp is just read a sentence.

and not engage with it. That's going to end up with you basically, you're going to finish that and you're not going to understand why the author wrote anything.

what matters in reading comp is not that you understand what was said, but that you understand why the author said it, right?

So you have to kind of know you have to see the argument kind of before your eyes, right? What really matters is why did the author write that?

Don't get bogged down in what it says. So if you're making inferences, you're really following what the author's trying to get across.

What the author's point is, here we're talking a lot about what the author is suggesting. I'm pretending I hate the author.

So now I'm like, well, I could disagree. I'm basically, I put myself in the position of these scholars mentally.

I've decided to take their side. And so that's kind of like how I would recommend approaching like when you read something to just actually disagree.

If I can tell, this is my author, right? Because he tributes this to you to scholars and then he disagrees with it.

Here's she or them. I'm immediately setting myself up to disagree with the author because that will make it easier for me to see the author's argument if I already like don't like the author or if I'm biasing myself to want the author to be wrong it will just make it more I will have more clarity than what the author's argument actually is and those inferences will be easier to spot and mentally explore right.

So what I'm doing right now out loud I would do this in my head and approximately like 15 seconds I probably would have read this paragraph maybe not that quick I don't know it would have taken a matter of seconds right it's not very long paragraph but what I'm doing is I'm breaking it down like baby step by baby step so you guys can kind of see this is how I'm reading it and usually when it comes to this section which is actually my favorite section what I'm typically teaching students and tutoring hours is how to turn their mind into a critical thinking machine.

as opposed to reading for information. Reading for information is the worst thing you can do on this section. You don't want to just read set sentence, be like, okay, what did that say?

Okay, I think I know what it said, move on to the next sentence. Okay, what did that say? Okay, I I know what it said.

Okay, next sentence, what did that say? That's dangerous. You want to know why they said it. And the way that you figure out why they're saying what they're saying is if you immediately go into it hating what they said.

That's how you turn on your critical brain. And that will also set you up for the questions. If they do ask those inference questions, you already know the answer, you already predicted it, right?

So it's a lot like predicting and logical reasoning, except for you're just treating, reading comprehension, like it's one very long logical reasoning problem.

And you're constantly predicting, you're making these little inferences, you're following the argument, you're reading it just like an LR problem, but it's a much longer argument.

Okay, let's try to speed up here, because we do have quite a bit to get through, but yeah, a lot of these lessons we've kind of already used.

look through. So also really quick, if anyone has any other questions, God, I'm realizing now we are already at the halfway mark.

So I'm probably going to have to jump through the rest of this pretty quick. But if we want to take a minute to ask any general questions that anyone has about any of the several things I just brought up, I think they're probably touched on what, at least 10 different topics that are all potentially relevant in reading comp.

So if anyone has any other follow up questions about any of them or they want to hear more about any of them, now might be a good time.

Otherwise, I'm going to try to bang through the rest of the passage super quick. So if anyone wants to go in deeper into any of that, go in once, go in twice.

Okay, cool. Let me take a drink of water and here we go or kombucha, I guess. Okay, I'm just going start.

at the top, and then get our flow back. In tracing the changing face of the Irish landscapes, scholars have traditionally relied primarily on evidence from historical documents.

However, such documentary sources provide a fragmentary record at best. Reliable accounts are very scarce. Very right, being dramatic. Reliable accounts are very scarce for many parts of Ireland prior to the 17th And many of the relevant documents from the 16th and 17th centuries focus selectively on matters relating to military or commercial interests.

Notice I'm reading in a tone, right? Getting in character can make it easier to see the author's opinion and the author's voice.

I don't normally talk like that otherwise. Studies of fossilized pollen grains preserved in peats and lake moths provide an addition.

means of investigating a vegetative landscape. Okay, cool. So our author is now showing us another way of investigating this landscape as opposed to relying on historical documentation.

They want us to get into the geology of it. Quick thing, I also want to flag the else that loves to be redundant just to bog you down and slow you down.

Peats and lake mods, they're kind of the same thing. Of course, they're going to say it twice if they get the opportunity to add more words and slow down.

Provide additional means of investigating vegetative landscape change. Details of changes in vegetation resulting from both human activities and natural events are reflected in the kinds and quantities minute pollen grains that become trapped in sediments.

So this is where we find them. This is why these fossils are helpful because... as they tell us all of this stuff about the environment.

They tell specifically about the changes in vegetation. And remember, this was about tracing the changing face of the Irish landscape.

Many things go into vegetation. Or sorry, many things go into landscape. This is only vegetation, but my critical brain is thinking, OK, well, what about landslides?

Or what if there was a mountain there and the mountain was eroded? Or what if the river dried up?

And now it's just a field somewhere, right? In my mind, vegetation is only one very small part of what is the broader landscape.

So this guy, if his whole point is all about one minor part of the landscape, if I'm in this point of view, I don't really feel like that's good enough for me.

Analysis of samples can identify which kinds of plants produced and analysis of samples can identify which kinds of plants produced the preserved pollen grains when they were deposited.

Sorry, I said that wrong analysis of. Samples can identify which kinds of plants produced the preserved pollen grains And when they were deposited, okay, so at least now we're learning what kinds of plants are in the landscape But again, I want to know what kind of rocks were there.

want to know what kind of water was there All that and in many cases the findings can serve to supplement or correct the documentary record Now i'm going to take a second and play the inference game On the other side now now i'm actually agreeing with the author a little bit here So it's theoretically possible i'm thinking about inferences well, what if the plants are Only what if certain kinds of plants only grow in certain kinds of soil um and only drink certain kinds of water By just knowing what kind of vegetation you could maybe figure out a lot about the other stuff that I was talking about Maybe we can maybe we don't But given he's only talking about vegetation here I wonder if he's going to tell me something like that and maybe that's why vegetation is key

Otherwise, I want to hear a little bit more because I feel like there's, you know, a lot to landscape.

We'll find out whether not he cares about that going a little bit further. But we've seen that this pollen thing can help you figure out about figure a lot out about the kinds of plants which then have in some the ability to supplement or even correct to fix a broken record because that's suggesting that then maybe these documents are not reliable.

Remember they said reliable accounts are very scarce. We're correcting the record, then apparently the geological record contradicts the historical documents.

All right, for example, a structural thing there that I'm just going to flag sort of the flow of that happening.

Analysis of samples from long low in county down have revealed significant patterns. of serial grain pollen beginning by about 400 AD.

The substantial clay content of the soil, oh wow, honestly guys, I did not know this passage. Okay, we'll see, I'm just getting a little excited because that was my prediction, right?

we can learn a lot about the rest of the landscape. So that's kind of why it helps to have the, to be doing that inferencing and to be thinking critically.

If you're, if you're making these inferences, you're just basically playing a game with the passage, you're being a very engaged reader and the structure is going to feel so much more like brighten in your face than it might if you're just reading for information.

The substantial clay content, okay, so have revealed significant patterns of serial grain pollen bubble. The substantial clay content of the soil in this part of down makes cultivation by primitive tools difficult.

Okay, this isn't quite going where I thought. Now they're mentioning soils, I guess, a separate thing. But what I'm guessing here by inference, if I'm trying to think of my passage, if they're saying they were serial-grained pollen beginning by this time, but the substantial click onto the soil, at least right now, because they're not saying it was that way in the past.

They're just saying in this part of down base cultivation by primitool is difficult. Temporally, this is suggesting then that the soil probably wasn't always that way.

If all they had was primitive tools, then maybe they weren't, they couldn't have cultivated the grain and pollen. If the grain and pollen, the grain didn't get there naturally, the serial grain didn't get there naturally, and they put it there, then surely they're cultivating it somehow.

Does that sort of make sense? I'm kind of like, in my mind, taking you through all the possibilities that I probably would have never set out loud if I wasn't teaching.

So it feels like it's slow now, but when you're doing this alone in your brain. It's way faster to like recognize a quick inference than it is to like explain one.

So don't worry too much about that guys. Just try to like follow the slow-mo version of the thinking process here.

And when you apply it, it'll be more natural, the more natural speed that you think. A substantial click onto the soil in this part of down makes cultivation by primitules difficult.

Historians thought that such soils were not tilled to any significant extent. Until the introduction of the mold board, wow, to Ireland, in the 7th century A.D.

So historians think that we're not tilling because the soil there would have made that difficult to do, right? Because cereal cultivation would have required chilling of the soil.

So yeah, this is kind of... What opportunity, exactly what a prediction was, is what they're getting at. Also the word because conditional flagging that.

So maybe they didn't actually cultivate this and maybe it just got there randomly or maybe the soil was different back then, right?

Those are probably the two main possibilities that we're going to get set up here with. Because here cultivation would have required tilling of the soil or slowly conditional language.

The pollen evidence indicates that these soils must indeed have been successfully tilled before the introduction of the new plow.

So basically, tilling then, what we can figure out here, which I didn't realize until I finish a sentence, but by inference, tilling must happen before you plant the seed.

Because zero cultivation would have required tilling of the soil. So to cultivate it, that means you must have done something before you cultivate it.

I do know what cultivating means. that basically means to harvest, Or to grow. But prior to that, it requires this tilling, which is what relates to our primitive tools here, right?

So the pollen evidence indicate that these soils must indeed have been successfully tilled before the introduction of the new plow, right?

Otherwise, how would they have gotten the cereal grain pollen existing in that place by these? So they were tilling somehow.

Hopefully that feels okay. Let me know if anyone has anything there, but yeah, we're basically getting into logical deductions here.

Also guys, we're probably going to focus largely on the passage today. just a heads up. Usually, I think when it comes to reading com, learning how to read the passage correctly is one set of skills and learning how to deal with answer choices is a totally different set of skills.

I try to focus my office hours on one or the other. We're doing passage for this one just because they're all beginner, or not, they're all beginner, but the last.

I've been doing all beginner office hours and I usually say start with making sure you're reading the passage right and then once you get up to intermediate then it becomes more about the answer choices and stuff because you can't do well in the answer choices if you didn't understand the passage so it's kind of a prerequisite.

So if anyone is wondering if they want to ask any general questions about passage reading skills as probably we're going to focus on today, you know we might do the first question but really what I want to hone in on is like teaching how do you read for this meta structure.

Okay, and yeah our pollen evidence indicates that these soils indeed must have been successfully tilled before the introduction we try.

So we didn't get that from the historical record but we get it from the geological record. So good for good for the author I guess his point is geologically being corroborated.

Alright another example, a structural component. Concerns flax cultivation in County Down, one of the great linen-producing areas of Ireland during the 18th century.

Some aspects of linen production in Down are well documented, but the documentary record tells little about the cultivation of flax, the plant from which linen is made in that area, the record of 18th century linen, production in Down, together with out

Yes, definitely. As soon as I finish up this paragraph here, I will definitely do that. Ragu, and I have been talking about this a lot.

I've done three office hours within like four days of each other. So actually, if you want to read more or if you want to hear more about that Catherine, the two reading office hours that were done this week by me go into that extensively.

I was going to say Ragu, you want to, you know, feel free to mention in the chat to give Catherine some tips based on what we talked about in last couple hours, office hours, because he was at my last couple of other, we talked about this.

But yeah, I'm happy to run you through that, but definitely go back and refer to those other ones as well, because that has been the topic of the week for sure.

The record of eight, okay, so let me just jump back here, the record of 18th century linen produced production and down together with the knowledge that flax cultivation had been established in Ireland centuries before that.

time led some historians to surmise that this is someone's perspective right probably the people up here that I've been pretending to be for while um led some historians to surmise that this plant was being cultivated down before the 18th century but pollen analysis indicates this is not case black pollen was found only to positively down since the 18th century okay so that probably means that they were pulling in the pollen pulling in the flax for the linen from elsewhere right um so this is basically just contradicting the historical record so they what they're basically saying is the historians may be uh uh not that the historians made the hypothesis that okay there must have been down this will almost surely be an inference question actually I feel like this is very much setting us up for one um

Okay, historians have deduced because of the fact that the ability to cultivate flax was their centuries before that time, and because we made all of this blended in that area, that they probably also cultivated in that area, and then the authors like, but actually the environmental record says that that didn't happen.

So you're probably going to an inference question. I would guess that I asked something to the effect of which one would the historians of the author just agrees, or which one would the author be most likely to agree with and an answer choice would probably be that the linen was, sorry, that the flax for the linen and county down was shipped in from elsewhere.

Gosh, I'm just so curious if that's a question. Let me just quickly. See if that's even like, okay, you know what, this will take me too long.

But like, do you see how you're basically getting like all of these temporal things, right? So you can kind of tell what kind of questions are going to get based on the inferences that the passage is setting you up to make.

You're basically predicting the interest choices of questions you haven't been asked yet. That's how you want to read, read, come.

You want to make those inferences. They're pretty obvious when they're being set up here because here this begs the question, okay, then how were they getting the flax for all this lemon they were producing there, right?

You kind of have to infer that it was coming from somewhere else in Ireland because that really, that's like a big fat question, that the author is not answering.

I'm kind of annoyed. I'm like, author, well, the author hasn't told us that they had the technology to transport large amounts of linen, maybe the geology is wrong, right?

Not to say that the science is wrong, but like, I don't know, science isn't always... science is definitive if you do the science, right?

If that makes sense, right? At one point, the science said smoking was good for you. Now, obviously, we know that it's not.

So, just because it's in the Earth, doesn't mean that we're correctly reading it. So, you might even get a question that says, like, what would the other people think of the author's new perspective?

And they probably say something like that, like, hey, geological science is, like, very prone to mistakes or misinterpretations. Again, you want to turn your critical brain on?

Because, yeah, you're going to get stuff like this, where these are all inferences, like, these are all about... these entries are all about the same places that we must be...

oh, sorry. I'll jump back, Catherine, to talk about colors. At the end, don't let me forget, I'm just going to

Finish this paragraph while we have flow. If I forget, why get in the chat? It must be stressed though that there are limits to the ability of pollen of the pollen record to reflect the vegetative history of the landscape.

Thank you, author. I've been saying this. I literally just said that, did I not? was like, what if the geological record is wrong, right?

So this is the beauty of predicting. The passage becomes, and the questions become so much easier. If you know what's, if you're being critical while you're reading this, if you're an engaged reader and you're forming your own opinion about what you're reading, if you're trying intentionally to go against what the author's saying, you're gonna quickly like see the holes in their argument, right?

I now know very much why he's saying this. He's trying to get ahead of readers who are thinking a lot like me.

And he'll probably be like, okay, yeah, I can see why somebody would have that thought. Let me just like ask to decide or something like that.

So yeah, good of him. He has now made me a less dissident. satisfied audience of his particular, his or her, their particular passage here.

And again, that's like a structural thing, right? So yeah, let's see what he has to say. Must be stressed.

Thank you for pointing this out. We've been thinking it that there are limits to the ability of the pollen record to reflect the vegetative history of the landscape.

Okay, now explain those limits to me. That's what I want to hear because I kind of started wondering that for myself, right?

For example, pollen analyses cannot identify the species, but only the genus or family of some plants. Okay, yeah, that could be messy if you have a lot of like close overlap and similar grains and all of that.

But only the genus family of some plants. Among these is matter. A cultivated dye plant of historical importance in Ireland.

Matter belongs to a plant family that also comprises various native weeds. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. So this is kind of what we were just predicting, right?

Like, yeah, that could be an issue. would lot of similar stuff in a roughing categories. Various native weeds, including goosegrass.

If Matterpaulin were present and a deposit, it would be indistinguishable from that of the incultive native species. Okay, there we go.

This makes a lot of sense. Now we know. So this approach is not perfect. So, because that basically then tells us how that could be an issue, right?

it's indistinguishable, then it might look like there's not matter being. Like, literally everywhere, right? And maybe there wasn't. Maybe it's actually really hard to grow.

Okay, so the big takeaway here, guys, if you take one thing away from this office, let it be this.

Notice how I correctly. inferred. I mean, I didn't always correctly infer, right? Sometimes you're just falling and you're making guesses.

like, that process of kind of like getting ahead of what's coming next. The reason I was able to do that is because I was being a jerk as I was reading this.

So I like to say that the LSAT does not reward people who are nice and warm and friendly. I have had to train myself to be a total jerk to do well on this test and I train my students to be total jerks to do well on this test.

If you imagine someone you can't stand wrote this passage, it's so much easier to think like a jerk. So if there's any one takeaway, what really matters is to get the structure and to get those questions right, see the big picture is to fight back against what you're reading, to disagree with it, to have an opinion on it, to kind of see it as something that you find annoying.

So fight this passage like the person that you just like most in the world, the person you find most obnoxious wrote it and has given you an opportunity to roast them.

Take that opportunity to roast them and you will feel a lot of relief, I think, when you go into the questions and half of them are something you saw coming.

Okay, so in our last few minutes here, let's touch on how we think about the actual how we think about the actual structure and the highlighting.

So Catherine, I love to use pink for author's attitude and or infrastructure in general with highlighting. I do it instead of note-taking.

I think note-taking is a lot slower and highlighting can basically get you to the same place. What you want to basically create is a mind map of the passage with highlighting.

So I work my way backwards. from boldest colors to, like, least striking. So for whatever reason, to me, the orange just really sticks out as, like, very strong.

So if I'm, like, pulling myself back, bird's eye view, big picture, I'll see the structure in orange. Authors' attitude contrasts the orange pretty closely.

So usually what I'm getting, you might get this passage. doesn't have a strong, this author's attitude ever seen. But a lot of times, you get a structural statement.

Let me find one for you here. This is actually really a structural statement. But I had it initially and think, must be stressed, though.

So this is our author. This is kind of their tone. The author just said, sometimes there are limits to the ability to do this.

If the author was going to go on the way that they were, acting like this approach was. So fantastic and had in was flawless If the author was basically gonna delude themselves, they just would have said every once in a while They are limits, right?

could have said that but now they're saying well actually like to be fair reader I'm gonna go ahead and stress that those of you thinking critically about my passage which we were You are on to something right it must be stressed.

So that's tone So I use orange and yellow here to kind of sorry orange and pink to see that contrast the orange is this the structure of the author's Argument that pink is their tone when I read this.

was like, oh, that's our author. We were right So I initially just threw it in pink And I threw their example So I actually didn't highlight the way I Would normally in this passage you're kind of making up a new highlighting system every single time Because you just never know what you're gonna get right you're not gonna know the flow of it all until you get to the end

end. But in this case, there is some overlap between pink and orange for me because the author's structure is that the author speaking is at the structure, it's kind of both.

But I typically would say what I don't like to do is if we decided to call this all structure, this is now a slight shift in the structure or a pivot.

It's just a what this means whenever I see for example, or like for instance or something, I like to flag it in a different color so I can see the flow.

But I use the underline because really it's a subcategory of this sentence. So in sign passages that are harder than this, you'll typically see a whole bunch of mumbo in the example that is very hard to decipher.

It's about cells and mitochondria and whatever whatever whatever. If you didn't understand any of the mumbo jumbo the example, you didn't really have to because the example is just redundantly reiterating what preceded it or what it's an example of.

But first of all, if you get all the mumbo jumbo up in the top sentence, the example might clarify to make it seem a lot more obvious.

Usually one or the other is going to be clearer, but usually they make one, they make the other one harder to understand.

So I like to flag examples because I usually tell my students if you need to skim present quick, it's the example.

If you understood what it's an example of, you don't really know what the example is because you know why the author put it there.

It doesn't really matter what the example is, it matters why they said it, they said it to proffer the point that preceded it.

So I like to flag those structural components. I just wouldn't want to do it if I already had orange there and now it's orange again because it might seem like it's all the same thing.

So that's why I kind of threw the underline, just to flag my eye a little bit. All right, other things we flagged here, I like to flag temporal elements, periods of time, like I said, they ask a lot of inference questions, even just look at the answers here.

So I was introduced in Ireland in the seventh century, right, before the seventh century. Look at all these questions, choices about temporal variables have been cultivated continuously since this, inferences about periods of time that we talked about, right?

We talked about that a lot up here. So that's why I flag them, so I can just see them sticking out quickly.

And other than that, what else did we flag here? Adverbs and adjectives, usually I throw those in pink, that is prior to temporal.

Scares is, or choice, kind of, arrival accounts are very scarce, very scarce is a strong way of saying saying not as common or not common or not around all the time.

scarce is like dramatic, if you will. Let's see. I think the most part, it's more of a instructional thing, like an additional means.

would maybe flag that structure. I feel like this paragraph, we, the highlighting, we change. I showing you guys different things.

For example, our structural shift, what is the core of that? Serial green pollen. That's the subject of that example.

That's why it's in orange. Historians, this is the point of view. I like to flag different points of views and compare compress them.

up here, those scholars have that opinion. This is why I put historians in the same color, because I just kind of figured this is probably the same group of people.

Maybe it's not, but either way, it's probably not the group that the author agrees with, because remember, historian's historical documentation.

The author evidently here is not a historian. He's probably he or she or they is probably a geologist of some kind or like a botanist or a fossil person who knows, like, I don't know enough about science, apologies, I'm a humanities girl.

So. All right, but that's sort of the key to our highlights. I also like the word some conditional logic I always like.

I think we had one where we had a lot of conditional logic. I think I might have flagged it at the time and then be on highlighted as I was going.

I evidently did because I don't see it here, but yeah, so in this particular office hour, we didn't focus too much on highlighting techniques.

What I did a lot of was I highlighted something and flagged it to show it to you for a particular reasoning.

I was hiding in this case more as like a teaching tool and not actually showing you how I would highlight the full passage that we did just talk about it a little bit in the last few minutes, what that would look like if we did it.

If you want to see more on that, and this goes for anyone still in the office hour, look at the last two office hours.

We talked about that a lot. You'll get so much more context on strategic approaches for highlighting as opposed to notetaking and sort of seeing that big picture meta structure.

Okay. All right guys, so I'm going to let you go here. Yeah, if anyone has any last questions, we have a couple of minutes.

But otherwise, thank you so much for listening and participating. Thanks for good. Appreciate you coming. And yeah, if anyone has anything else, feel free to throw it in the chat, otherwise I guess we're hopping off here.

Go in once. Go in twice. Okay. Sounds great. All right. All right.