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How to read · Lesson 2 of 9

Stop highlighting: active reading that sticks

After this lesson, you can replace highlighting with a 3-item marking system and complete your initial passage read in under 3 minutes.

6 min video, plus notes and 1 practice question below

In this lesson

• Ditch highlighting and underlining as a note-taking crutch; it burns clicks in the computer-based interface and creates clutter that distracts you later
• When you do mark something, mark only 3 things: viewpoints (who believes what), evidence (where key support sits), and advocates (whose stance drives the passage)
• Run your first read around 3 questions: what's the main idea, how is the passage structured, what's the author's opinion, and cap it at 2.5 to 3 minutes
• Answer general, big-picture questions first, since you can usually get those right off your initial read, before detail and inference questions
• Treat this as a speed and clarity system, not extra rigor: minimalist marking plus the right question order is what buys you both

Why highlighting is quietly costing you points

On the computer-based LSAT you get an average of 8 minutes and 45 seconds per passage. The built-in highlighting tool is clunky: every click and drag to mark a sentence eats into that budget. Do it enough times across a passage and you've spent real minutes marking before you've answered a single question.

It's not just slow, it backfires later too. When you return to a passage to check a highlighted line, you naturally trust it, even when what you marked isn't actually what the question is asking about. Half of it ends up as noise that pulls your attention away from what the question needs. The strongest scorers use a minimalist approach instead: mark less, and mark only what matters.

Mark only 3 things: viewpoints, evidence, advocates

If you're marking anything, restrict yourself to 3 categories. First, viewpoints: any opinion, theory, or hypothesis in the passage, and who holds it. Multiple viewpoints show up constantly in RC, and tracking who believes what gives you an anchor for the main idea. Second, evidence: the spot where an example or key support appears, so you can find it fast when a detail question sends you there.

Third, advocates: whenever someone in the passage is actively promoting an idea or taking a position, note it. That stance is usually central to primary purpose and tone questions later. Outside those 3 categories, don't mark anything. Every second you spend clicking a highlighter on something that isn't a viewpoint, evidence, or an advocate is a second you don't get back.

Run your initial read in 3 steps, capped at 3 minutes

Your first read of a passage should answer exactly 3 questions: what is the main idea, how is the passage structured (1 viewpoint or several), and what is the author's own opinion. That last one matters even when the author never states it outright, because it drives main idea, tone, and purpose questions down the line.

Cap this step at 2.5 to 3 minutes. You're not writing a book report and you don't need to understand every detail before you move on. You're laying a foundation, not finishing the job. If you're still rereading sentences past the 3-minute mark, you've slipped into detail-level reading that belongs later, not now.

Then work the questions general to specific to inferential

Once your initial read is done, don't answer questions in the order they're printed. Start with the general, big-picture questions like main idea or primary purpose, since you can usually answer those right off your first read. Move to the detail questions next, using your 3-category marks or a quick skim to locate the answer. Save inferential questions for last, since by then you already understand the passage well enough to make the reading-between-the-lines jump easier.

This isn't about working harder on the passage, it's about working smarter on where your time goes. Tackling questions in that order saves you real minutes and cuts down on mental fatigue, because you're not bouncing between a hard inference question and an easy detail question and back again.

Why the minimalist system beats heavy marking

3 things change when you swap heavy highlighting for the viewpoints-evidence-advocates system. First, you get clarity, because a smaller, more deliberate set of marks keeps your attention on what actually drives the questions instead of burying it under everything you found mildly interesting. Second, you get efficiency, since a faster initial read and the right question order both save time you can spend where it counts, on the questions themselves.

Third, you get momentum. Starting with the questions you can already answer off your first read, instead of grinding on the hardest inference question first, builds confidence early in the passage and carries you into the harder questions with a clearer head. None of this requires reading faster or marking more. It requires marking less, and marking it on purpose.

The short version

• Before your next practice passage, stop yourself from underlining full sentences; if you mark anything, mark just a word or bracket for viewpoint, evidence, or advocate, nothing else
• Time your initial read. If you're past 3 minutes and still rereading, you're doing detail work that belongs to a later question, not the first pass
• After you finish the initial read, write your 1-line main idea before you look at question 1; if you can't state it in 1 line, your read wasn't a big-picture read yet

Mark lesson 2 complete