Critical Reading Tutorial

CRITICAL READING TUTORIAL DEMIDEC RESOURCES © 2004

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DEMIDEC RESOURCES AND EXAMS

CRITICAL READING WORKBOOK

A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR The Language and Literature portion of Academic Decathlon contains one of the strangest portions of the entire competition. You spend 80% of this test showing your grasp of the drama and shorter selections assigned, but does this satisfy the test-writers? No. They don’t just want to know that you’ve read analyzed and comprehended those texts, they want you to show that you can do it again, really quickly, on a piece of prose they’ve provided. That sums up the Critical Reading portion of the Language and Literature test. It’s as though they asked you to go and research the Hashishan1 and answer a bunch of questions about it without any previous preparation. Unfair, unfair. This section most closely resembles the Reading Comprehension sections many of you will be familiar with from the PSAT, SAT, ACT and other such standardized tests. Actually, this section is usually a bit more difficult, but like these more common tests, it is very technique-able. With a bit of preparation these little passages will be very straightforward. Read on, Kevin Heckman p.s. You may be wondering—is this a workbook? In a sense, it is. But in reality it integrates a number of workbook-style exercises within a framework that emphasizes (we hope) sharing knowledge and know-how. So it’s more than a workbook: it’s a teachbook, or, in more conventional language, a tutorial. This year, other DemiDec workbooks taking the tutorial approach include those in economics and poetry fundamentals. p.p.s. If any of you gain access to actual passages used this year (after the tests of course!) please feel free to forward them on to me at [email protected]. The more data I have on the sorts of questions they’re asking, the more accurate these materials will be in future seasons.

1 The Hashishan (also known as the Assassins) were members of a Muslim sect founded around 1090 in Iran that were particularly active during the Crusades and known for employing assassination as a primary political tool. Led by The Old Man of the Mountains, they were eventually scattered by Mongol invaders. - Kevin


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WHAT’S IN THIS PACKET? This tutorial contains the following:

Reading strategies to help you get the info you need. A breakdown of the questions by type. Criteria to help you eliminate those pesky wrong answers. Lists of words and terms the Decathlon will commonly use. Drills to try out all the above.

HOW SHOULD I APPROACH THE TEST? Though we devote both a resource and workbook to them, keep in mind that these ten questions are only a fifth part of a larger whole. There are 40 other questions in the Language and Literature Test for which you’ve (presumably) spent a lot of time preparing. It stands to reason that you should skip those opening ten questions and go straight those 40. This guarantees that you have the time to get to all those questions for which you’ve studied and that you don’t forget any of the last minute cramming you may have done. Only after answering as many of those 40 questions as you can in a reasonable amount of time should you attack these ten back at the beginning.

WHAT’S MY STRATEGY? Simply laid out, I recommend the following strategy. Each of you will, of course, develop a distinctive style, but in my experience I’ve found that the following can be very effective:

1. Actively Read the Passage 2. Attack the Questions 3. Process of Elimination (POE) 4. Bubble Your Answers

We’ll consider each of these steps in turn below.

READING THE PASSAGE

Fortunately, the passage you’re going to have to deal with is fairly short: 300-500 words (most passages are 450-500). Still, this is the place where most students get in trouble. You read the passage. You answer a few questions, and your memory of the passage begins to fade. You find yourself re-reading the passage, and answering a few more questions, re-reading the passage again, etc., etc., ad nauseum. Of course, going back to the passage is a good thing. This is the open book portion of this test, and what’s the point of open book if you don’t use it? However, you don’t want to have to read the same material over and over. After all, they don’t give you points for reading, only for answering questions. Correctly. When you study for a class, or for Academic Decathlon, you read for details. You want to be able to answer specific questions like, “What, according to legend, were Einstein’s first words?”2 This sort of reading is less useful for the Critical Reading section because only a few questions

2 According to legend, Einstein’s first words were “The soup is cold.” These didn’t come until he was four or five. When his astonished parents asked him why he had never spoken before then, he replied “Until now, everything has been satisfactory.” – Kevin


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are that specific. Instead, you should read for the structure of the passage, not worrying about details. If you know the structure, it becomes pretty easy to go back and find whatever specific pieces of information you need to answer the questions. As you read, you should ask yourself three basic questions:

1. What’s the subject of this passage? 2. What does the author want us to think/know about the subject? 3. What’s the author’s attitude/relationship to the subject?

In the future, we will refer to these as the Questions Three3. For example, a passage that should look familiar to you:

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Great King of Thebes, and sovereign Oedipus, Look on us, who now stand before the altars— Some young, still weak of wing’ some bowed with age— The priests, as I, of Zeus; and these, the best Of our young men; and in the market-place, And by Athena’s temples and the shrine Of fiery divination, there is kneeling, Each with his suppliant branch, the rest of Thebes. The city, as you see yourself, is now Storm-tossed, and can no longer raise its head Above the waves and angry surge of death. The fruitful blossoms of the land are barren, The herds upon our pastures, and our wives In childbirth, barren. Last, and worst of all, The withering god of fever swoops on us To empty Cadmus’ city and enrich Dark Hades with our groans and lamentations. No god we count you, that we bring our prayers, I and these children, to your palace-door, But wise above all other men to read Life’s riddles, and the hidden ways of Heaven; For it was you who came and set us free From the blood-tribute that the cruel Sphinx Had laid upon our city; without our aid Or our instruction, but, as we believe, With god as ally, you gave us back our life. So now, most dear, most mighty Oedipus, We all entreat you on our bended knees, Come to our rescue, whether from the gods Or from some man you can find means to save. For I have noted, that man’s counsel is Of best effect, who has been tried in action. Come, noble Oedipus! Come save our city. Be well advised; for that past service given This city calls you Saviour; of your kingship Let not the record be that first we rose From ruin, then to ruin fell again. No, save our city, let it stand secure. You brought us gladness and deliverance Before; now do no less. You rule this land; Better to rule it full of living men Than rule a desert; citadel or ship Without its company of men is nothing.

Sophocles, Oedipus the King 3 “Who approaches the bridge of death must answer me

These Questions Three Ere the other side he see.” – Kevin


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1. What’s the subject? A request for Oedipus’ help. 2. What does the author want us to think/know about the subject? The extent of the curse

on Thebes and the reasons for asking Oedipus’ help. 3. What’s the author’s attitude/relationship to the subject? The author is using the request

to lay out the background of the curse and Oedipus’ history. Here is another example that will also look familiar to veterans from last year’s competition.

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Padre Martinez knew his country, a country which had no written histories. He gave the Bishop much the best account he had heard of the great Indian revolt of 1690, which added such a long chapter to the Martyrology of the New World, when all the Spaniards were killed or driven out, and there was not one European left alive north of El Paso del Norte.

That night after supper, as his host sat taking snuff, Father Latour questioned him closely and learned something about the story of his life.

Martinez was born directly under that solitary blue mountain on the sky-line west of Taos, shaped like a pyramid with the apex sliced off, in Abiquiu. It was one of the oldest Mexican settlements in the territory, surrounded by canyons so deep and ranges so rugged that it was practically cut off from intercourse with the outside world. Being so solitary, its people were somber in temperament, fierce and fanatical in religion, and celebrated the Passion Week by cross-bearings and bloody scourgings.

Antonio Jose Martinez grew up there, without learning to read or write, married at twenty, and lost his wife and child when he was twenty-three. After his marriage he had learned to read from the parish priest, and when he became a widower he decided to study for the priesthood. Taking his clothes and the little money he got from the sale of his household goods, he started on horseback for Durango, in Old Mexico. There he entered the Seminary and began a life of laborious study.

The Bishop could imagine what it meant for a young man who had not learned to read until long after adolescence, to undergo a severe academic training. He found Martinez deeply versed, not only in the Church Fathers, but in the Latin and Spanish classics. After six years at the Seminary, Martinez had returned to his native Abiquiu as priest of the parish church there. He was passionately attached to that old village under the pyramidal mountain. All the while he had been in Taos, half a lifetime now, he made periodic pilgrimages on horseback back to Abiquiu, as if the flavour of his own yellow earth were medicine to his soul. Naturally he hated the Americans. The American occupation meant the end of men like himself. He was a man of the old order, a son of Abiquiu, and his day was over.

Willa Cather Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)

1. What’s the subject? The early life of Martinez. 2. What does the author want us to think/know about the subject? The contrast between

Martinez’s roots and his present state. 3. What’s the author’s attitude/relationship to the subject? While in third person, the

author does suggest that Martinez is relating this information to Father Latour. If you’re having trouble answering these questions, go back and re-read the first and last sentence of each paragraph (if there’s more than one). Theoretically, these sentences will contain the most important information the author wants to convey. This isn’t always the case, but it can be useful for clarity’s sake, if the first read leaves you feeling confused. This information is enough to answer a lot of the questions you’re going to be facing. Still, you can do even more that first time through the passage if you wish.


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ANNOTATION It can also be useful to annotate. In the margin, note down important points, main ideas, transitions, etc. By the time you’re done you’ll have a map of the passage. This can be time consuming, so be sure to practice it. Eventually it will become second nature to you. Things to annotate:

1. Main Ideas: If a passage has more than one paragraph, write, in three or four words, the main idea of each paragraph. What does the author want us to believe? Even if the passage is presented as one large paragraph, you can note major points as the author makes them. Keep it to three or four words, though. You don’t want to spend the entire test writing an essay in the margin. Essays are another part of the competition.

2. Examples: If the author goes into detail about an example, you can bet that there will be a specific question on that information. Point it out by writing an “X” or “e.g.” in the margin. When that question comes up, voila! No searching through the passage for you!

3. Definition: If a complicated term is defined in the passage, put a “df” nearby. This makes it easy to find if that word becomes critical later.

4. Changes: If the passage has been proceeding happily in one direction only to suddenly take a left turn, mark it! This is a critical point and a lot of questions will probably center around it. Again, make it easy to find. Draw a line separating the passage into two parts, or put a “∆” in the margin—whatever works best for you.

Don’t underline! Supposedly, underlining highlights important details in the passage. This is fine if you’re studying, but for Critical Reading there’s no real way of knowing in advance which details will be the truly important ones. Also, most people who underline do so excessively, and in the end you’ve got a passage that is completely underlined. Not very useful for finding important info later! Quick note-taking is much better. If you can annotate a point in a few words, you’ve understood that point. One other thing—by underlining you’ll mark a certain area that your eyes will keep coming back to. That’s not so good if the answer to a particular question isn’t in an underlined area. Besides annotating, you can, of course, make notes on the passage itself. Useful things to mark include:

1. Transition words: Words such as but, although, however and nonetheless all let you know that a change in the argument is occurring. The change may be large or small, but it’s almost always worth noting. Circle these words when you see them. For a more complete list, see Appendix I.

2. Flavor words: Words that begin a sentence with an opinion are often the clue to the author’s view of things. These words are usually followed by a comma and include Possibly, Usually, Occasionally, and Rarely. If something is usually true, you can also conclude that sometimes it’s not! That’s just the sort of logic that crops up in the answer choices.

3. Names, dates, and proper nouns: Any of these things could be the focus of a specific question. Put a box around these words for easy tracking.

4. Rhetorical Questions: A favorite technique of some writers is to make their points in response to a question they set forth. If you see a question mark, pay double attention to the answer that follows. It often contains a key part of the author’s point.

Do you need to do all this? Whether or not you annotate and mark the passage is largely up to you. For some people it feels very natural and is a big help—for others, not so much. You should definitely answer the Questions Three. If you find that you’re consistently


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misunderstanding the passage, taking time to annotate will force your brain to comprehend what you’re reading.4 For more practice reading and annotating, try the following drill. Read the passage. Without looking back at the passage, answer the Questions Three. If you can do that, you’d be in good shape to answer any questions about that passage. If you have a hard time, try another passage, but this time annotate as you read. That extra step will probably make answering the Questions Three easier.

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Today I went outside for the first time since the second of May, if I don’t count that “dash” down two or three streets on the third of May, which I can hardly recall any more. Tito Street is full of glass and tiny black shrapnel, sand, pieces of brick and tile, broken-off boards. In all of Tito Street, from the department store to the Eternal Flame, only the window-panes on the Zvijezda pharmacy have remained intact. I wonder how—when all round is dust. I dropped in on Duska—her building was demolished, the left corner completely destroyed, gone. It looks as though it was struck by two of those large mortar shells. I called out to Duska. She answered immediately. No wonder: there’s not a single pane of glass, the window frames were torn out. Her orange blinds had been fixed into place with nails with the result that she could neither come to the window nor out on the balcony. I was in a hurry, so I didn’t want to come in—the main thing is that the three of them are alive and well.

In Zlatarska Street there’s not a single store that has remained intact. The upper two floors of the Privredna Bank by Hotel Europa have been completely burned out—they’re black, they couldn’t be blacker.

The Post Office building! That gorgeous building! Only the outer walls have survived. Inside it is as empty as a seashell. For three days the smoke curled up over that emptiness. They’re bombarding us constantly. Shells are falling in the midst of people walking by, among people waiting in line to buy something. There are always some casualties. People no longer seem to be concerned by the nearness of their own death. They walk along and they die. Like cattle.

Among the razed buildings only shadows will move. The shades of the dead who will come in search of their final minute of life. One by one, until the last person has perished.

Elma Softic Sarajevo Days Sarajevo Nights

1. What’s the subject? _____________________________________________________

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2. What does the author want you to know? _____________________________________________________

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3. What’s the author’s relationship to the subject? _____________________________________________________

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4 Annotating text is also a great way to deal with other hard pieces of reading. Try it while studying history or economics. If you can sum it up, you’ve definitely understood it. If not, you better re-read.


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Answers to the preceding passage:

1. It describes the life and environment of a war-torn city. 2. That the city is decimated and so are the people. 3. The author is a first hand observer.

Try it again.

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For Roosevelt, the technique of liberal government was pragmatism. Tugwell talked about creating “a philosophy to fit the Roosevelt method”; but this was the aspiration of an intellectual. Nothing attracted Roosevelt less than rigid intellectual systems. “The fluidity of change in society has always been the despair of theorists,” Tugwell once wrote. This fluidity was Roosevelt’s delight, and he floated upon it with the confidence of an expert sailor, who could detect currents and breezes invisible to others, hear the slap of waves on distant rocks, smell squalls beyond the horizon and make infallible landfalls in the blackest of fogs. He respected clear ideas, accepted them, employed them, but was never really at ease with them and always ultimately skeptical about their relationship to reality.

His attitude towards economists was typical. Though he acknowledged their necessity, he stood in little awe of them. “I brought down several books by English economists and leading American economists,” he once told a press conference. “…I suppose I must read different articles by fifteen different experts. Two things stand out: The first is that no two of them agree, and the other thing is that they are so foggy in what they say that it is almost impossible to figure out what they mean. It is jargon; absolute jargon.” Once Roosevelt remarked to Keynes of Leon Henderson, “Just look at Leon. When I got him, he was only an economist.” (Keynes could hardly wait to repeat this to Henderson.) Roosevelt dealt proficiently with practical questions of government finance, as he showed in his press conferences on the budget; but abstract theory left him cold.

Considering the state of economic theory in the nineteen thirties, this was not necessarily a disabling prejudice. Roosevelt had, as J.K. Galbraith has suggested, what was more important than theory, and surely far more useful than bad theory, a set of intelligent economic attitudes. He believed in government as an instrument for effecting economic change (though not as an instrument for doing everything: in 1934, he complained to the National Emergency Council, “There is the general feeling that it is up to the Government to take care of everybody…they should be told all the different things the Government can not do”). He was willing to try nearly anything. And he had a sense of the complex continuities of history—that special intimacy with the American past which, as Frances Perkins perceptively observed, signified a man who had talked with old people who had talked with older people who remembered many things back to the War of the Revolution.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. The Age of Roosevelt: The Politics of Upheaval

1. What’s the subject?

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2. What does the author want you to know?

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3. What’s the author’s relationship to the subject? ____________________________________________________

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Answers: 1. Roosevelt’s opinions of intellectuals and particularly economists. 2. That he did not think highly of them. 3. He’s an authority on, and certainly admires, Roosevelt.

And again!

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But these terminological difficulties pale beside the intellectual confusion over a simple, fundamental problem: is directing truly an art at all? How can a director be said to create if the assignment is merely to stage someone else’s play? That is not creating to a very meaningful degree, is it? This argument usually includes a distinction between creation and interpretation, and the introduction of an interpretive category within the arts has led to frequent comparisons between directing and orchestral conducting, both of which came to be regarded as professions in the same period. However useful, particularly to the spread of culture over time and space, both professions seem to be some aesthetic distance from the picture of the Romantic poet dream-creating his pleasure dome, eyes aflash and hair afloat in the inspirational breeze. Coleridge comes to mind here because it is his aesthetic that is in question: art is imaginative product, and since human imagination, in Romantic theory, echoes the Universal Imagination of Creation Itself (the source of galaxy and proton), poetic imagination can (should?) create like the Deity from nothing, imagining into existence new entities, things never known before. To the Coleridgeans, which means to most Anglo-American intellectuals of the twentieth century, theatre directing might best be called the exercise of “fancy”—shuffling the counters of memory and association, rearranging the fixities and definites of another creative vision (the director as museum curator).

One line of disagreement with this familiar argument is that Coleridgean aesthetics are founded on an idea of Creation that few intellectuals now accept. Consequently, the Coleridgean position is continually undermined by the contemporary awareness that Shakespeare did not “make up” his stories, that Michelangelo invented neither the marble of his statue nor the iconography of his fresco, and that Virgil had no hand in creating the epic form that determined so much of his poem’s nature and success. And what was the name of that genius who designed Chartres? “Originality,” “organic art,” and “the artist-god” are critical notions that fit nicely into the particular phase of bourgeois individualism from which they come, but they are not ideas sufficient for every day. If we live under the shadows of Flaubert and Beckett (watching fingernail clippings decompose on the floor of an empty room), we are also contemporary with John Cage and with Julian Beck and Jusith Malina—with collective creation and creative chance. There is more to art than its inventiveness quotient.

David Richard Jones Introduction to Great Directors at Work

1. What’s the subject? ____________________________________________________

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2. What does the author want you to know? ____________________________________________________

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3. What’s the author’s relationship to the subject?

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Answers:

1. Whether or not directors are artists 2. That according to one line of thought they are not, but that line of thought is flawed. 3. While his relationship is unclear, his attitude seems to be that directors should be

considered artists.

If you feel comfortable already, skip ahead. If not, try another one for practice.

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My wife and I are not real farmers—not even Lerice, really. We bought our place, ten miles out of Johannesburg on one of the main roads, to change something in ourselves, I suppose; you seem to rattle about so much within a marriage like ours. You long to hear nothing but a deep satisfying silence when you sound a marriage. The farm hasn’t managed that for us, of course, but it has done other things, unexpected, illogical. Lerice, who I thought would retire there in Chekhovian sadness for a month or two, and then leave the place to the servants while she tried yet again to get a part she wanted and become the actress she would like to be, has sunk into the business of running the farm with all the serious intensity with which she once imbued the shadows in a playwright’s mind. I should have given it up long ago if it had not been for her. Her hands, once small and plain and well kept—she was not the sort of actress who wears red paint and diamond rings—are hard as a dog’s pads.

I, of course, am there only in the evenings and on weekends. I am a partner in a luxury-travel agency, which is flourishing—needs to be, as I tell Lerice, in order to carry the farm. Still, though I know we can’t afford it, and though the sweetish smell of the fowls Lerice breeds sickens me, so that I avoid going past their runs, the farm is beautiful in a way I had almost forgotten—especially on a Sunday morning when I get up and go out into the paddock and see not the palm trees and fishpond and imitation-stone birdbath of the suburbs but white ducks on the dam, the alfalfa field brilliant as window dresser’s grass, and the little, stocky, mean-eyed bull, lustful but bored, having his face tenderly licked by one of his ladies.

Nadine Gordimer Six Feet of the Country (1953)


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Answers:

1. The farm and, to a lesser extent, their marriage 2. The couple has become attached to it in unexpected ways. 3. The speaker is the husband, who is less engaged in the farm than his wife.

The next passage is one of my favorites:

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There’s an old story about an untutored bumpkin who listened to some students as they talked about the stars. Although the concepts they discussed were strange and new, he felt he could understand how astronomers used telescopes to measure the distance from the earth to the celestial bodies. It even seemed reasonable that they could predict the stars’ relative positions and motions. What totally puzzled him, though, was how the devil they were able to find out the stars’ names!

People sometimes approach programming languages in the same way—as though they’re complicated mathematical codes that the first computer scientists were lucky enough to break. Well, they are ciphers of a sort, but they’re not so hard to crack.

The most basic programming codes belong to an instruction set. These are the computer’s built-in commands, and they aren’t much more sophisticated than the operations we can punch into a programmable hand calculator. There are instructions for doing simple arithmetic, of course, and for saving answers and values as we go along. There are usually a variety of instructions available for comparing values, and for deciding what to do next. A special set of instructions store and retrieve things from the computer’s memory. The fanciest instructions usually deal with getting more instructions.

A machine language—the simplest programming code—is defined by numbering the basic instructions. When we do this, each instruction’s number becomes its code name. If we use eight-digit binary values for numbering (as computers often do), we can name 256 different instructions, starting with 00000000 and ending with 11111111. A machine language program is nothing but a long series of eight-digit numbers.

Machine language programming is easy, but it’s incredibly tedious. Fortunately, one of the earliest programmers had a bright idea. Why not write a machine language program that could recognize short sequences of English letters, and would automatically translate the English into the proper machine language instructions? Why not, indeed! Such programs were called assemblers; they understood assembly language, and were soon found on every computer.

Although assembly language was a convenience, it hardly exhausted the limits of human ingenuity. Why be limited to three-letter words? Programmers wanted to express themselves in relatively English sentences, rather than in the computer-oriented terms of machine and assembly languages. In response, research teams did the obvious. They repeated the same step that had led to assemblers, and wrote more complicated programs called interpreters and compilers. The new programs translated increasingly sophisticated sequences of letters into a form the computer could understand. The letters, and the words they formed, were called high-level languages.

Doug Cooper Oh! Pascal! (1982)

1. What’s the subject?

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_____________________________________________________ 3. What’s the author’s relationship to the subject?

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Answers:

1. Programming languages 2. How programming languages evolved 3. The author is an expert on the subject

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As usual, movies provided succor5. I even started going in the afternoon and felt again the guilty pleasure of coming out of a movie into daylight. When I had exhausted the first-run theaters, I would troll Forty-second Street for the B movies or the revivals, finding comfort in the familiar. The prints were worn and grainy, and the old, broken-down theaters smelled of urine and lost hope, but none of that mattered. You could find on the screen what you needed. I even found You Were Never Lovelier in a print where the sound was always a few feats behind the action. It bothered everyone except me; I already had a perfect print in my head.

The new movies were different. They were becoming glossier. They were also becoming emptier. Psychology was in, social criticism was out (unless it was criticism of communism, but that was not so much social as religious). People were bad because they were bad. Occasionally they were bad because their parents had not loved them enough, although they could also turn rotten if their parents had loved them too much. Whether it was Raymond Massey refusing parental love to James Dean in East of Eden or Margaret Wycherly dandling a crazed and murderous James Cagney on her knee in White Heat, parents were a handy excuse for truant behavior. It was easier to blame it on Mom and Dad than on some kind of system. It was also more fun.

Sexual betrayal was still a big theme, as it had always been, but now, if a woman betrayed a man, she might be doing it for the Russians. The studios embraced anticommunism with the same calculated fervor they had recently reserved for Stalin. Hot or cold, a war was a war. There were good guys and bad guys. All the studios needed was to be told who was who. The government told them that. None of these movies was successful. They had all of the moralizing of the World War Two movies, but none of their skill. They had titles like The Iron Curtain, The Red Menace, The Red Nightmare, I Was a Communist for the FBI, I Married a Communist. They presented a gullible America on the verge of being taken over by ruthless Communists even though most of these seemed to be either seriously stupid or alarmingly out of shape.

Walter Bernstein Inside Out (1996)


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5 This reminds me of a scene from The Professional, when a haggard Leon is watching Charlie Chaplin films on his own, before meeting Mathilda. – Daniel


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Answers: 1. Movies 2. How newer movies have changed 3. The author is speaking from his own point of view, from memory.

Only three to go—are you still with me?

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We generally know little of the life of an ancient author if he did not happen to play some part in the political scene. Apuleius, however, is one of the exceptions. He was involved in a lawsuit in which he defended himself; and the speech he then delivered has come down to us, with many details about his life. Further information may be gleaned from Florida, a collection of excerpts from his orations or lectures.

He lived through the mid-decades of the second century A.D. and was born in North Africa at Madaura, a well-to-do town set on high above the Medjerda Valley. The place, he claims, was “a Colony of the highest distinction”—that is, it had been settled many years before by veterans from the Roman army.

While he was still young, his father died, leaving him and his brother a fortune of two million sesterces—a comfortable though not an overlarge sum. Apuleius says that he used up a large part of his inheritance on his prolonged education and travels, on his gifts to friends and teachers. After an elementary grounding at Madaura, he went on to study at Carthage, Athens, Rome.

“There is a famed saying of a wise man about the pleasures of the table: ‘The first wine-bowl quenches thirst, the second begets jollity, the third stirs up desire, the fourth sends mad.’ But the bowls of the Muses have an opposite effect. The more you drink and the stronger the draught, the better is it for the good of your soul. The first bowl, given you by the elementary teacher, rescues you from ignorance; the second, proffered by the teacher of literature, sets you up with learning; the third, brought by the rhetorician, arms you with eloquence.

“These three draughts are enough for most men. But I have drunk other cups at Athens: the imaginative draught of poetry, the clear one of geometry, the sweet one of music, the austere one of dialectic, and the nectar of universal philosophy, of which one can never have enough.”

Jack Lindsay


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Answers:

1. Apuleius’ life 2. How we know of him and how he came by his education 3. The author is speaking from a scholarly place

Here’s a passage with a technical bent:

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Scientists studying magnetic therapy would do well to read the 1784 “Report of the Commissioners Charged by the King to Examine Animal Magnetism.” The report was instituted by French king Louis XVI and conducted by Benjamin Franklin and Antoine Lavoisier to experimentally test the claims of German physician Franz Anton Mesmer, discoverer of “animal magnetism.” Mesmer reasoned that just as an invisible force of magnetism draws iron shavings to a lodestone, so does an invisible force of animal magnetism flow through living beings.

The experimenters began by trying to magnetize themselves, to no effect. To test the null hypothesis that magnetism was all in the mind, Franklin and Lavoisier deceived some subjects into thinking that they were receiving the experimental treatment with animal magnetism when they really were not, while others did receive the treatment and were told that they had not. The results were clear: the effects were from the power of suggestion alone.

In another experiment (there were 16 altogether), Franklin had Mesmer’s representative magnetize a tree in his garden: “When a tree has been touched following principles and methods of magnetism, anyone who stops beside it ought to feel the effect of this agent to some degree; there are some who even lose consciousness or feel convulsions.” The subject walked around the garden hugging trees until he collapsed in a fit in front of the fourth tree; it was the fifth one that was “magnetized.”

One woman could sense “magnetized” water. Lavoisier filled several cups with water, only one of which was supposedly magnetized. After touching an unmagnetized cup she “fell completely into a crisis,” upon which Lavosier gave her the “magnetized” one, which “she drank quietly and said she felt relieved.”

The commission concluded that “nothing proves the existence of Animal-magnetism fluid; that this fluid with no existence is therefore without utility; that the violent effects observed at the group treatment belong to touching, to the imagination set in action and to this involuntary imitation that brings us in spite of ourselves to repeat that which strikes our senses.” In other words, the effect is mental, not magnetic.

Modern skeptics should take a lesson from this historical masterpiece, which employed the control of intervening variables and the testing of specific claims, without resorting to unnecessary hypothesizing about what was behind the “power.” A sad fact is that true believers remain unaffected by contradictory evidence, today as well as in the 18th century.

Michael Shermer


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Answers: 1. Magnetic therapy 2. A comparison between that and animal magnetism, which was disproved in 1784 3. The author wants modern scientists and skeptics to take a lesson from this example

And one more:

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Our project is coming to a close—unsuccessfully, I am sorry to say. Funding has been cut off, our foundation board having decided that the remaining money might be more profitably spent on some joy-buzzers. After I received the news of our termination, I had to have fresh air to clear my head, and as I walked alone at night be the Charles River I couldn’t help reflecting on the limits of science. Perhaps people are meant to choke now and then when they eat. Perhaps it is part of some unfathomable cosmic design. Are we so conceited as to think research and science can control everything? A man swallows too large a bite of steak, and gags. What could be simpler? What more proof is needed of the exquisite harmony of the universe? We will never know all the answers.

Yesterday afternoon was our last day, and I chanced upon Shulamith in the Commissary, where she was glancing over a monograph on the new herpes vaccine and gobbling a matjes herring to tide her over till dinnertime. I approached stealthily from the rear and, seeking to surprise her, quietly placed my arms around her, experiencing at that moment the bliss that only a lover feels. Instantly she began choking, a portion of herring having lodged suddenly in her gullet. My arms were still around her, and, as fate would have it, my hands were clasped just under her sternum. Something—call it blind instinct, call it scientific luck—made me form a fist and snap it back against her chest. In a trice, the herring became disengaged, and a moment later the lovely woman was as good as new. When I told Wolfsheim about this, he said, “Yes, of course. It works with herring, but will it work with ferrous metals?”

I don’t know what he meant and I don’t care. The project is ended, and while it is perhaps true that we have failed, others will follow in our footsteps and, building upon our crude preliminary work, will at last succeed. Indeed, all of us here can foresee the day when our children, or certainly our grandchildren, will live in a world where no individual, regardless of race, creed, or color, will ever be fatally overcome by his own main course. To end on a personal note, Shulamith and I are going to marry, and until the economy begins to brighten a little she and Wolfsheim and I have decided to provide a much-needed service and open up a really first-class tattoo parlor.

Woody Allen A Giant Step for Mankind


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Answers: 1. The end of a failed study on choking 2. The study succeeds just as it has been discontinued 3. The author seems to be making fun of science and the scientific process

Annotating a passage may feel awkward at first, but it can be very useful in raising your comprehension level. Practice will help make annotating second nature. Try annotating the following passage, then compare your efforts with those on the following page.

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We generally know little of the life of an ancient author if he did not happen to play some part in the political scene. Apuleius, however, is one of the exceptions. He was involved in a lawsuit in which he defended himself; and the speech he then delivered has come down to us, with many details about his life. Further information may be gleaned from Florida, a collection of excerpts from hi orations or lectures.





Jack Lindsay


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Jack Lindsay There is no right or wrong way to annotate, so long as you point out information that helps you comprehend the passage. Try out annotating different things until you find a way that works for you. QUESTION TYPES Essentially, there are three types of questions in Critical Reading: Specific, General and Construction. Within each type there are several sub-species. What follows is a breakdown of each question by genus and species along with strategies to deal with them. All sample questions refer back to the Sophocles passage on page 4. SPECIFIC Specific questions require you to go back to a part of the passage and retrieve information. You may be asked to draw conclusions or simply to regurgitate, depending on the difficulty of the question. Specific questions include Definition in Context, Search and Retrieve and Usage.

Why we know

Apuleius

On education

Change in direction

Further Work: With a partner, read and annotate a passage from a newspaper or magazine. Selections from the editorial page or a news magazine are especially useful. Compare your annotation and answers to the Questions Three. Did you zone in on the same points? Did your partner do something that you may want to try in the future? Try this same exercise with study material for other tests.

His early life

Further Info

Apuleius Quote


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DEFINITION IN CONTEXT These questions take a word and ask you to give its definition. Seems simple, right? The tricky part is that the test writer will deliberately choose a word that’s used in an atypical way, meaning that you have to read very carefully:

1. In context, “suppliant” (line 8) is BEST understood to mean a. supple b. requesting c. bending d. youthful e. sacrificial

Most of the time, the test-writers choose words that can be understood based on the information around them. In this case, we know that “suppliant” describes the branches carried by those who kneel in Athena’s temples. They are there because of the curse on the city, and presumably part of the request for the aid that the speaker heads. Based on that, A, C and D wouldn’t really make sense. B and E both have merit, but since the whole passage is a request for help, B is the better answer. E has no concrete support. Another type of Definition in Context question could read “All of the following words reinforce the speaker’s sense of alienation EXCEPT.” As you can see, this is sort of a Definition in Context in reverse. You’ve got the definition and you must select the word that doesn’t go with it. When answering this sort of question, be sure to read the meaning of the word in context. Imagine the word is a blank space. Re-read the sentence, filling in your own word for the blank. Now look for the answer choice that comes closest to your word. Beware! the test-writers will occasionally contend that a word, in context, has a definition that you will not find in the dictionary. For instance “mysteries” was defined, in context, as “professional skills,” on one test. The correct answer to this question type will not always be a dictionary definition of the word—words are, for better or worse, often manipulated by their authors to mean the darndest things. SEARCH AND RETRIEVE The most popular question type, these will ask to find one or more specific pieces of information within the passage. For example,

2. Oedipus became king of Thebes by

a. killing the previous ruler b. removing a threat c. choice of the priests d. being born to it e. the will of Athena

Sometimes a Search and Retrieve question will be quite straightforward. Sometimes you’ll have to draw some conclusions of your own. In this case, in line 22, the speaker refers to Oedipus having come to the city and setting it free of the Sphinx. This would come closest to B, removing a threat. C and E might be tempting, since both are mentioned in the passage, but neither is in the context of Oedipus’ past. Neither A nor D has any concrete support in the passage. The key to answering these questions is in going back to the passage. Be very wary of answering these questions from memory. That’s exactly what the test writers want you to do. Instead, scan the passage to confirm your answers. Better to take an extra moment than lose the points.


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USAGE Usage questions are often the trickiest questions on this part of the test. Instead of asking you to simply go find a piece of information, they want to know why the author chose to use that piece of information. This requires a greater level of understanding than that needed for a simple Search and Retrieve question. For example:

5. The speaker mentions the story of the Sphinx in order to emphasize

Oedipus’ a. intelligence b. faith c. origin d. strength e. daring

Basically, the question is asking whether we understand why the author introduces this small bit of information. Look at where the information comes in the passage—directly after explaining why they’re begging him and before actually asking him to save them. D and E can be eliminated, as there’s little in the passage that accentuates either trait, and nothing much right around the story of the Sphinx. C might seem promising, but the passage doesn’t say anything about where he came from—only that he came to Thebes and freed it from the Sphinx. The speaker mentions that a god helped Oedipus frequently, but he mentions it elsewhere as well, so he doesn’t seem to use the story to emphasize Oedipus’ divine help. He does, though, use the Sphinx as an example of Oedipus’ key trait: his wisdom and ability to understand riddles. That makes A the best answer. This sort of question tends to be the most difficult because you’re actually trying to figure out the author’s intention. Often you can use The Questions Three to point you in the right direction, since, in a short passage, most everything will help reinforce the main point. Aggressively eliminate answers that are clearly wrong, and then select the best answer out of what remains. Try the drills on the following pages—you should recognize the passages by now. Every three passages are followed by their answers.


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Jack Lindsay 1. In the context of the passage, “begets” (line 16) can be BEST understood to

mean a. gives birth to b. increases c. avoids d. receives e. causes

2. Apuleius is different from other known ancient authors in that he

a. was not involved in politics b. was not born in Rome or Athens c. defended himself in a lawsuit d. traveled and studied extensively e. came from a wealthy family

3. The author mentions the book Florida most likely in order to

a. suggest an additional resource b. reference a popular book of the time c. cite his own source of information d. give an example of Apuleius’ writing e. provide context for the concluding quote


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One woman could sense “magnetized” water. Lavoisier filled several cups with water, only one of which was supposedly magnetized. After touching an unmagnetized cup she “fell completely into a crisis,” upon which Lavosier gave her the “magnetized” one, which “she drank quietly and said she felt relived.”



Michael Shermer

4. In the context of the passage, “null” (line 7) can be BEST understood to mean a. void b. opposite c. correct d. experimental e. obvious

5. The experiments attempted to magnetize all of the following EXCEPT

a. Mesmer’s representative b. other human beings c. the scientists themselves d. a glass of water e. a tree in a garden

6. The author places certain phrases in quotes in order to a. suggest that some language may be incorrect b. emphasize certain technical terms c. set off quotes by Franz Anton Mesmer d. accentuate his skepticism of magnetism e. indicate new descriptive vocabulary


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Yesterday afternoon was our last day, and I chanced upon Sulamith in the Commissary, where she was glancing over a monograph on the new herpes vaccine and gobbling a matjes herring to tide her over till dinnertime. I approached stealthily from the rear and, seeking to surprise her, quietly placed my arms around her, experiencing at that moment the bliss that only a lover feels. Instantly she began choking, a portion of herring having lodged suddenly in her gullet. My arms were still around her, and, as fate would have it, my hands were clasped just under her sternum. Something—call it blind instinct, call it scientific luck—made me form a fist and snap it back against her chest. In a trice, the herring became disengaged, and a moment later the lovely woman was as good as new. When I told Wolfsheim about this, he said, “Yes, of course. It works with herring, but will it work with ferrous metals?”



7. In context, “in a trice” (line 17) can BEST be understood to mean

a. by chance b. after much effort c. fortunately d. surprisingly e. right away

8. The study has been closed because of

a. a lack of experimental results b. difficulty acquiring equipment c. a lack of operating funds d. personal differences e. the poor economy

9. The author most likely mentions joy-buzzers (line 3) in order to a. specify the reasons for the study’s discontinuation b. demonstrate the board’s disregard for the project c. give an example of a typical shortage in materials d. indicate that the foundation primarily studies humor e. add a humorous note to an otherwise serious subject


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Answers 1. E 2. A 3. A 4. B 5. A 6. D 7. E 8. C 9. B

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1. In the context of the passage, “paddock” (line 16) can be BEST understood to

mean a. barn b. yard c. porch d. stable e. lake

2. The speaker apparently expected his ownership of the farm to be each of the

following EXCEPT a. a solid investment b. brief but invigorating c. a diversion for his wife d. life altering for them both e. run by others

3. The speaker describes Lerice’s hands MOST likely in order to

a. contrast the farm and the suburbs b. emphasize her acting career c. show the wear of farm life d. embody her transformation e. illustrate the tenor of their marriage


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4. In the context of the passage, “ciphers” (line 9) can be BEST defined as

a. impossible codes b. cryptic writings c. obscure languages d. computer commands e. mathematical equations

5. The simplest programming languages have the disadvantage of being

a. accessible b. ineffective c. monotonous d. basic e. tenable

6. The author responds “Why not, indeed!” (line 25) MOST likely in order to emphasize

a. the inevitability of the step in retrospect b. his own role in creating assembly language c. the capricious nature of modern research d. early acceptance of programming theory e. the brilliance of early computer researchers


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As usual, movies provided succor. I even started going in the afternoon and felt again the guilty pleasure of coming out of a movie into daylight. When I had exhausted the first-run theaters, I would troll Forty-second Street for the B movies or the revivals, finding comfort in the familiar. The prints were worn and grainy, and the old, broken-down theaters smelled of urine and lost hope, but none of that mattered. You could find on the screen what you needed. I even found You Were Never Lovelier in a print where the sound was always a few feats behind the action. It bothered everyone except me; I already had a perfect print in my head.




7. In context “truant” (line 14) can BEST be understood to mean

a. parental b. playful c. childlike d. accusatory e. antisocial

8. In modern movies, Americans were most often depicted as

a. overweight b. heroic figures c. easily fooled d. patriots e. poor parents

9. The first paragraph serves to a. offer an insight into the author’s beliefs b. give an example that is later refuted c. set up ideals that are discussed later d. offer a contrast to later descriptions e. depict the recent changes in society


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Answers 1. B 2. A 3. D 4. B 5. C 6. A 7. E 8. C 9. D

Definition in Context, Search and Retrieve and Usage tend to be the most straightforward because they are the most specific. You can easily look up the answers in the passage, and you will probably find that you mainly miss these questions when you try to answer them from memory.6 This section grows more sinister with the more general questions that follow. GENERAL General questions look at the big picture. To answer them, you need to have a grasp of the whole passage. The Questions Three will prove exceptionally helpful here. General questions include Main Idea, Tone and Style, and Passage and Author. MAIN IDEA These questions expect you to choose a succinct sentence that sums up the author’s central stance on the subject.7 It might also ask us the purpose that the passage serves or to explain its structure. Occasionally, you’ll see a question that asks the main idea of a particular paragraph. Fortunately, if you’ve answered the Questions Three, either of these should be fairly simple. Example (again from the Sophocles passage):

4. The speaker’s primary purpose is to

a. list Oedipus’ accomplishments b. explain a pressing crisis c. appeal to various gods d. goad the king to action e. find a solution to a problem

Remember the answers to the Questions Three? We said that the subject of the passage was a request for Oedipus’ help. Therefore, the speaker’s primary purpose must be to request Oedipus’ help. A and B happen in the passage, but aren’t its primary purpose. C is mentioned, but isn’t central either. This leaves D and E. However, the speaker isn’t finding a solution, he wants Oedipus to find the solution, therefore D is the best answer. Aggressively eliminate answers based on the Questions Three, and then go back to the passage to check the answers you have left. Publication and Author: These are the questions that ask you what the passage could be an excerpt from, what sort of person the author is, or who the audience for the passage is intended to be. While these questions aren’t as popular as they used to be, there’s still a good chance of one popping up.

6 There’s a moral there. Don’t depend on your memory on these questions when you don’t have to. Look up the information you need to deduce the answers if you have time. 7 Ah, alliteration! The foolish word choices to which you drive us.

Further Work: With a partner, write specific questions for a piece of text you select. Editorials from the newspaper, magazine articles, short pieces of text from novels or study materials from other events are ideal. Exchange your questions with another group and test them out. What makes questions harder or easier? What sorts of information do you tend to single out when writing questions? The better you understand the question-writing process, the more likely you are to understand the questions on the actual exam.


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5. This primary purpose of the passage is to a. provide a humorous aside b. resolve a central crisis c. explain a crucial detail d. introduce an antagonist e. lay the story’s background

The answer to this question is going to be related to the Questions Three you’ve asked when reading the passage - often the third one. In this case, the speaker is speaking directly to Oedipus and, in the course of making his appeal, giving a fair amount of background on the king and the current situation. A certainly doesn’t match anything in the passage. While the speaker introduces a central crisis, he doesn’t do anything to resolve it, eliminating B. The scope of the passage is more general than specific, removing C and, while the passage does introduce Oedipus, he’s not an antagonist, eliminating D. This leaves us with E as the best answer. Another common version of this question will ask you to describe the speaker. While these are usually a bit more difficult, the approach is the same: use the answer from the third of the Questions Three to inform your choice. For a list of types of publications and ways to recognize them, see the lists section at the end of this resource. Tone and Style Questions: This final sort of Main Idea question is concerned not with what the author has to say, but with how he or she says it. You can most always count on seeing a tone question of some sort. Often this sort of question becomes more of a vocabulary test. If you know what the words in the answer choices mean, you can answer the question easily. The answer to the second and third of the Questions Three will help guide you to the correct choice. For example:

6. The speaker’s tone can best be described as

a. colloquial b. pedantic c. contentious d. lugubrious e. impelling

We already know that in this passage, the speaker is urging Oedipus to help the city and, in doing so, is laying out all the problems currently faced and some of Oedipus’ own history. Vocab time! A might be tempting, since the speaker is in a conversation relating this information, but the text certainly isn’t written in the way a person actually talks. B means scholarly in a plodding sort of way, which certainly doesn’t describe the passage. C would suggest a more aggressive tone from the speaker—almost an attempt to draw Oedipus into an argument—which doesn’t really fit. D, which means mournful, also could be a temptation, since the speaker certainly isn’t cheerful, but he’s not resigned to his fate either. This leaves us with E as the best answer, which means urgent, since the speaker is definitely trying to get Oedipus to act before the city is destroyed. Style questions concern themselves with writing style and are the illegitimate children of Tone and Publication and Author questions. They’re included with Tone questions because they use many of the same terms. Instead of describing the mood of the passage, though, you’re asked to describe the manner of the writing itself. In the lists portion of this manual (Appendix I) is a list of descriptive words that could show up on this sort of question. If there are any you are not familiar with, look them up. Knowledge is power.


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Below are ten sentences. Choose the most appropriate tone for each one.

1. “One more push and we’re through!” shouted the sergeant. Inspired, we poured into the breach.

a. cloying b. restrained c. irreverent d. sanguine e. flippant

2. Though they worked like demons, time was their enemy, and it didn’t seem likely they would complete the task at hand.

a. hopeful b. benevolent c. realistic d. bitter e. satiric

3. Overhead, the buildings seemed to lean over me, protecting, and the sounds of the cars honking made a glorious harmonic in the soft twilight.

a. effusive b. fanciful c. mournful d. ironic e. cool

4. While many believe that the Egyptian pharaohs did not have contact with the people over whom they ruled, evidence supports the contrary. In fact, through religious ceremony, the pharaohs would have had the opportunity to interact with their subjects en masse.

a. authoritative b. elegant c. lugubrious d. critical e. excited

5. We could have completed the run if management hadn’t lost heart and pulled out. It’s always the same: the guys at the top clean up, while people like me are left behind.

a. somber b. bitter c. confident d. earnest e. ecstatic

6. While we might try, we can never recapture the feelings we had when young. That was a golden time that we will never see again.

a. detached b. facetious c. mournful d. kind e. learned

7. The remaining mourners sat around long after the funeral service, discussing their old friend, seeking some understanding. What they had lost, they all agreed, was beyond measure. Eventually, the conversation stilled, and there was only a sad silence between grieving friends.

a. caustic b. lugubrious c. dramatic d. sentimental e. insipid

8. A brilliant idea George! Give them money! And then they’ll spend it. And then they’ll come back to us for more, and we’ll have to give it to them, because we’ve created a precedent. And so on and so on until we are all paupers. Truly, George. Fine thinking. Don’t know what we’d do without you.

a. serious b. cynical c. regretful d. urgent e. sarcastic

9. The snow gradually drifted higher, and still they pushed on, deeper into the white. Weariness was etched into their faces, but none of them suggested stopping. Their goal was near, and each refused to be the first to flag.

a. melancholy b. nostalgic c. facetious d. candid e. determined

10. Slowly the cat circled the twitching object. She watched, head cocked, as it stopped moving and lay still. Then, carefully, she approached. Tentatively, she reached out a paw, and it sprang to life again with an odd whir. Startled, she leaped backward, but once it had stilled, she again crept forward, fascinated, puzzled.

a. curious b. concerned c. elevated d. flippant e. confident


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1. D 2. C 3. B 4. A 5. B 6. C 7. B 8. E 9. E 10. A Try it again with the following 10 sentences: 1. It may seem, at first glance, that this way is foolish, even suicidal, but think of the positives.

The glory. Focus your mind on the cheering crowds at your homecoming, and think not of the danger!

a. authoritative b. effusive c. moralizing d. bantering e. persuasive 2. We can certainly posit such a reaction, but without actual experimentation, such hypotheses

are presumptuous. However, were that reaction to occur, what might follow?

a. colloquial b. pedantic c. exuberant d. theoretical e. apprehensive 3. As for the performances, I found them nothing if not overblown, ill-considered, and without

subtlety.

a. impartial b. incisive c. reflective d. cloying e. curt 4. “Please good sir! My mum has been sick this last week and with no one to provide for me

and me poor brother, we’ll likely starve.

a. inflammatory b. elegiac c. picaresque d. approving e. nostalgic 5. Indeed sir, I fear a poor one such as myself couldn’t possibly partner with a noble of your

station! And in the dance, I do fear I’d be tangled in your ribbons!

a. bantering b. patronizing c. elevated d. reverent e. caustic 6. Overhead, the moon hung low in the sky, like a pale-as-ghost head peering on the busy

multitudes below. In the garden, vines snaked their way skyward, using the house as a footstep to reach for that same moon.

a. emotional b. facetious c. embellished d. bitter e. melodramatic 7. The rocket began to thunder into the sky, and beneath, the crowd began to scream, applaud

or just hope fervently with hands clasped together. As the tail of flame mounted skyward, all humanity celebrated wildly. Nature had been defied.

a. matter-of-fact b. fanciful c. detached d. excited e. lugubrious 8. The faded, yellowed curtains filtered the light so the kitchen looked like an old photograph,

and like a photograph, it brought forth other images in his mind. A time when the kitchen had seemed much bigger. When his mother had filled the room with her energy. So long ago.

a. mournful b. diffident c. shrill d. sentimental e. apprehensive 9. The girl looked at the fence. Then back at the clothesline. Screwing up her face in

concentration, she mentally compared the one’s length with the other’s height.

a. flippant b. lukewarm c. curt d. thoughtful e. solemn 10. He pulled the crate from under his bed and sighed. Diffidently, he moved a baseball glove

aside, lifted out a bag of seashells and stopped. Beneath the bag was an old comic. Slowly, he lifted down and picked the dog-eared book up and opened it.

a. insipid b. nostalgic c. didactic d. respectful e. somber


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1. E 2. D 3. B 4. B 5. A 6. C 7. D 8. D 9. D 10. B Once more unto the breach, dear friends!! 1. If you will turn to the third chapter, diagram three, you will see why we should re-explore the

background that led to the present approach and perhaps reconsider the paradigm that the company might consider implementing.

a. authoritative b. impartial c. ambiguous d. insipid e. effusive 2. Well, the car accident was a drag, but I did find that watch I’d lost, which was pretty great!

a. jocular b. exuberant c. melodramatic d. urbane e. flippant 3. Clearly this was destiny! She climbed the marble steps and bowed her head briefly before

the massive inscribed doors, then looked to the sky and entered.

a. ecstatic b. benevolent c. elegiac d. cloying e. grandiose 4. With measured stride, the young boy carried the cardboard coffin with the remains of Trevor

the toad into the yard. The sky was gloomy with clouds and though he walked steadily, tears flowed down his face in advance of the rain that pended overhead.

a. somber b. remorseful c. nostalgic d. petulant e. patronizing 5. She stomped around her apartment and each small tragedy brought her to fresh bouts of

temper. A dish not done. A newspaper on the floor. A television left on. She huffed and slammed and generally threw a series of small but mounting tantrums.

a. facetious b. emotional c. satiric d. derogatory e. petulant 6. Meanwhile, the offending roommate sipped coffee and absorbed a novel he had rescued

from her room, like a tree on a rock in a raging ocean.

a. sedate b. fanciful c. anxious d. lugubrious e. turgid 7. Their dog stared out the window as squirrels circled in the yard. He did not bark, but merely

rested his head on the sill and seemed to wish…

a. diffident b. sentimental c. indifferent d. wistful e. mournful 8. Out-of-doors the air sparkled as though it had been fresh-cleaned, and the squirrels had

nothing to do, it seemed, but play tag. They circled among the leaves, shot up and down trees and, above all, never stopped their constant patterns of movement that seemed to trace the words “We are alive!”

a. admiring b. energetic c. flippant d. benevolent e. contentious 9. Hands trembling slightly, he took down the worn, almost decayed, glove from its perch in the

old closet. Carefully, he bore it to the bed and placed it in a patch of sun that had leaked through the window. For a long time he simply looked at it.

a. mournful b. reflective c. respectful d. reverent e. didactic 10. Sitting on the sun-warmed stone wall, he traced back over the days since his return home.

Examined each relative’s reaction to him and catalogued the first expressions on each old friend’s face. There was something he had missed.

a. critical b. fanciful c. reflective d. nostalgic e. lofty


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1. D 2. E 3. E 4. A 5. E 6. A 7. D 8. B 9. D 10. C Time for another drill. Three questions each on three passages, including some old favorites. Answers follow the third passage:

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Jack Lindsay

1. The main idea of the quoted paragraphs is that a. there are many kinds of learning b. too much wine can be dangerous c. education is critically important d. the Muses can drive men mad e. Apuleius has studied broadly

2. This passage is most likely an excerpt from a(n)

a. biography b. travelogue c. autobiography d. history book e. memoir

3. The tone of the passage moves from

a. earnest to lofty b. authoritative to strident c. scholarly to inflated d. critical to pretentious e. instructive to sardonic


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One woman could sense “magnetized” water. Lavoisier filled several cups with water, only one of which was supposedly magnetized. After touching an unmagnetized cup she “fell completely into a crisis,” upon which Lavosier gave her the “magnetized” one, which “she drank quietly and said she felt relived.”



Michael Shermer

4. The author’s primary purpose is to a. debunk a popular myth b. provide a positive example c. give a historical context d. verify the truth of a phenomenon e. describe important experiments

5. The author is most likely a(n)

a. modern-day historian b. historical scientist c. teacher of scientific method d. true believer in magnetism e. contemporary doubter

6. The author’s attitude towards true-believers (line 29) could best be described as

a. melancholy b. cynical c. scornful d. hopeful e. mocking


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7. The main idea of the passage is that

a. scientists rarely contribute to society b. some phenomenon resist analysis c. scientific studies can be ridiculous d. most research is unnecessary e. luck plays a large role in discovery


a. letter b. diary c. biography d. magazine article e. novel

9. The author’s tone can best be described as

a. bantering b. fanciful c. obsequious d. condescending e. satiric


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Answers: 1. C 2. A 3. C 4. B 5. E 6. B 7. C 8. B 9. E Here’s another set of three passages and questions. Go!

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1. The primary purpose of the passage is to

a. describe the damage done to the city b. reminisce about the city’s past appearance c. explore the personalities of the occupants d. reveal information about the main character e. give an example of daily life.


a. letter b. travelogue c. biography d. short story e. memoir

3. The attitude of the people could best be described as

a. loquacious b. secure c. emotional d. sedate e. detached


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4. This passage is mostly likely an excerpt from a(n) a. text on the economics of the Depression b. textbook on financial theory c. biography on Roosevelt d. history of the presidents of the USA e. memoir written by Tugwell 5. The primary purpose of the second paragraph is to a. to point out flaws in an argument developed previously. b. show that Roosevelt does not possess a trait that others do. c. introduce a sense of Roosevelt’s connection to history. d. provide a specific example of a trait discussed in the first paragraph. e. develop an analogy that begins earlier in the passage. 6. Roosevelt’s attitude towards economists could best be described as a. dubious b. scornful c. condescending d. neutral e. respectful


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One line of disagreement with this familiar argument is that Coleridgean aesthetics are founded on an idea of Creation that few intellectuals now accept. Consequently, the Coleridgean position is continually undermined by the contemporary awareness that Shakespeare did not “make up” his stories, that Michelangelo invented neither the marble of his statue nor the iconography of his fresco, and that Virgil had no hand in creating the epic form that determined so much of his poem’s nature and success. And what was the name of that genius who designed Chartres? “originality,” “organic art,” and “the artist-god” are critical notions that fit nicely into the particular phase of bourgeois individualism from which they come, but they are not ideas sufficient for every day. If we live under the shadows of Flaubert and Beckett (watching fingernail clippings decompose on the floor of an empty room), we are also contemporary with John Cage and with Julian Beck and Judith Malina—with collective creation and creative chance. There is more to art than its inventiveness quotient.


7. The style of this passage could best be described as a. didactic b. moralizing c. critical d. elegiac e. clinical 8. The main idea of the passage is that a. Coleridge would not consider directors artists b. directors might fulfill one definition of an artist c. Shakespeare was not truly an artist d. artists are creators of original entities e. directors are more like conductors than artists 9. The probable audience for this passage would be a. fans of Coleridge b. regular theatre-goers c. theatre professionals d. artists of different disciplines e. students of theatre


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Answers: 1. A 2. E 3. E 4. A 5. D 6. A 7. A 8. B 9. E Let’s try it again. Three more passages:

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1. Which of the following BEST summarizes the passage’s main idea?

a. Lerice has undergone a surprising change in occupation b. Despite losing money, the speaker continues to hold onto the farm c. The couple have differing levels of interest in the farm d. The farm holds surprising appeal for Lerice and the speaker e. There are many differences between rural and suburban life

2. The style of the passage can BEST be described as

a. bantering b. didactic c. conversational d. turgid e. satiric

3. The passage is written from the perspective of an

a. involved participant b. omniscient observer c. inactive bystander d. impartial judge e. industrious partner


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4. The tone of the passage can be BEST described as

a. solemn b. authoritative c. strident d. pedantic e. irreverent

5. The intended audience of the passage is most likely

a. future computer programmers b. opponents of technology c. students of languages d. computer system designers e. programming language researchers

6. The primary purpose of the passage is to a. outline the role of humans in computer development b. list all of the types of programming code c. explain the ways in which researchers work d. give a complete history of programming progress e. lay out the progression of programming language


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As usual, movies provided succor. I even started going in the afternoon and felt again the guilty pleasure of coming out of a movie into daylight. When I had exhausted the first-run theaters, I would troll Forty-second Street for the B movies or the revivals, finding comfort in the familiar. The prints were worn and grainy, and the old, broken-down theaters smelled of urine and lost hope, but none of that mattered. You could find on the screen what you needed. I even found You Were Never Lovelier in a print where the sound was always a few feats behind the action. It bothered everyone except me; I already had a perfect print in my head.




7. The main idea of the passage is that

a. wartime movies are never done skillfully b. parents are responsible for child behavior c. movies have recently changed for the worse d. movie-makers had less ability in the past e. new films are noticeably different than old ones

8. The tone of the first paragraph can be BEST described as

a. somber b. ironic c. elegiac d. romantic e. reflective

9. This passage is most likely an excerpt from a(n) a. short story b. memoir c. allegory d. satire e. diary


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Answers: 1. D 2. C 3. C 4. E 5. A 6. E 7. C 8. E 9. B CONSTRUCTION Construction questions are less concerned with what’s in the passage and more concerned with how the passage is put together. These can be divided into Structure and Device questions. STRUCTURE These questions might ask you to identify the structure of a particular sentence, or, more often, identify particular parts of the sentence. Some basic rules to keep in mind:

The Subject of a sentence is the actor - the noun that is taking action. The Object of a sentence is what is acted upon. A Predicate is a verb and the objects on which the verb acts. Predicates

can be simple or compound. The Antecedent of a pronoun is the noun that the pronoun replaces. An Appositive is a noun that has the same relationship to the sentence as

another noun. For instance, “The writer Mark Twain was born under a different name.” Writer and Mark Twain are appositives.

A Gerund a noun formed from a verb by adding –ing. For instance, “swimming.”

An Independent Clause is a clause (it contains a subject and a verb) that could stand alone as a sentence.

A Dependent Clause contains a subject and a verb (like an independent clause), but it could not stand on its own as a sentence, since it begins with a subordinating conjunction such as “that” or “where”. (The italicized part of this sentence is a dependent clause.)

A Subordinate Clause is the same as a dependent clause. A Compound Sentence consists of two independent clauses connected

by a coordinating conjunction such as but or and—and a comma. A Complex Sentence consists of two or more clauses, one independent

and the rest dependent. For example (again from the Sophocles passage):

7. In line 2, “us” includes

a. the priests b. young men c. the rest of Thebes d. the priests and the young men e. Thebes’ entire population In this case, we must look at what “us” is doing and ask if it applies to each of the three portions of the population mentioned. “Us” are the people at the altars, which certainly include the priests

Further Work: With a partner, select columns from the editorial page of your local newspaper. Separately, determine what you think the main idea and tone are and compare your results. Did you agree? If not, what was unclear? Then, without revealing it to your partner, choose a tone from the list and rewrite the letter in that tone. Can your partner perceive the change in tone? Have you been able to keep the main idea the same?


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and the young men. In fact, the rest of the Thebans are also kneeling at various places, and they’re all included in the same thought, so the best answer here is E.

This question type seems to be drawing a lot of attention from the test-writers. Still, if you’re careful about understanding the parts of the sentence, you should be alright. Device: This popular sort of question asks you about particular figures of speech used in the passage. The major types of devices can be found in the Appendix. For example (once again from the Sophocles selection):

8. In line 17, the author makes use of

a. bathos b. oxymoron c. synecdoche d. personification e. circumlocution

It’s vocabulary time! A is the sudden appearance of the ordinary in otherwise heightened material. B is a combination of seemingly contradictory words. C is the use of a part to stand in for a whole. D refers to giving human qualities to non-human things while E is the use of unnecessary words to express an idea. When the speaker refers to enriching “Dark Hades with our groans and lamentations” he’s using groans and lamentations to stand in for the entirety of their beings. Therefore C is the best answer. This is, like tone, a sort of vocabulary question. So long as you know what each answer choice means, it’s not too difficult to decipher which one applies. For practice in finding devices, try the following drill.

Following is a passage from one of Shakespeare’s lesser-known plays, Hamlet8. Shakespeare used a ton of the devices you’ll be tested on to accentuate particular words and phrases and to make his text more interesting. After the passage is a list of devices all of which appear at least once, some several times in the passage. Find them and check the next page for the answers.

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To be, or not to be—that is the question: Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows or outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep— No more—and by a sleep to say we end The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to. ‘Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep— To sleep—perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub, For in that sleep of death what dreams may come When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause. There’s the respect That makes calamity of so long life. For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, Th’ oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely The pangs of despised love, the law’s delay, The insolence of office, and the spurns That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make

8 An example of irony, as Hamlet is clearly well-known! – Kevin


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With a bare bodkin9? Who would fardels10 bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country, from whose bourn No traveler returns, puzzles the will, And makes us rather bear those ills we have Than fly to others we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pitch and moment With this regard their currents turn awry And lose the name of action.

Can you find: Alliteration Assonance Consonance Internal Rhyme Metaphor Paradox Personification Synecdoche

9 A dagger. 10 A burden.


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Answers: Alliteration – Well, there’s a ton. (It is Shakespeare). Some notable examples: Line 11 – For in that sleep of death what dreams may come Line 21 – With a bare bodkin? Line 31 –Thus conscience does make cowards of us all, There’s plenty of other examples. Assonance – Line 10 – To sleep—perchance to dream: Line 19 – That patient merit of th’ unworthy takes, Line 24 – The undiscovered country, Again, there are other instances. This is just a sample.

Consonance – Line 1 – To be or not to be—that is the question:, Line 22 – To grunt and sweat under a weary life. Line 25 – No traveler returns, puzzles the will Metaphor –

Lines 23-24 – But that the dread of something after death, The undiscovered country,

Death is compared to an unknown land

Paradox – Lines 9-13 – Hamlet realizes that he might die to escape his troubles, but death

could bring with it it’s own dreams, and therefore troubles.

Personification – Lines 3 – The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Lines 15 – For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,

Rhetorical Question – Lines 15-21 – Hamlet asks who would put up with crap from people it they could

just end it all. Lines 21-27 – He continues the thought by saying who would put up with it if it

wasn’t for the fact that they didn’t know what came next.

Synechdoche – Lines 7-8 -- The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks That flesh is heir to.

Flesh stands in for the whole living person. Odds are, there are many examples, and possibly even some devices, that I didn’t note here, but this is a good sampling.


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Try it again, this time with one of his sonnets.

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When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes, I all alone beweep my outcast state And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries And look upon myself and curse my fate, Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, Featured like him, like him with friends possess’d, Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope, With what I most enjoy contented least; Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns and heaven’s gate; For thy sweet love remember’d such wealth brings That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

Can you find: Alliteration Assonance Consonance Direct address Hyperbole Pathos Personification Simile Synecdoche


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Answers: Alliteration – Well, there’s a ton. (It is Shakespeare). A couple of notable examples: Line 6 – Featured like him, like him with friends possessed Line 10 – Haply I think on thee, and then my state, Assonance – Line 3 – Deaf heaven Line 12 – From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate; Consonance – Line 8 – With what I most enjoy contented least; Line 12 – From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven’s gate; Direct Address –

The entire passage is written in direct address – written for someone specific, in fact.

Hyperbole – The last two lines are an example of hyperbole. Scorning to change one’s state with kings can be considered an exaggerated expression, meant more as a figure of speech than as a statement of literal fact or intention.

Pathos – The opening four lines make use of pathos, portraying the author as an outcast and without recourse.

Personification – Line 3 – Deaf heaven

Line 12 – Sullen earth In both these cases, human traits are attributed to non-human things. Simile –

Starting line 10, the speaker compares his state to a lark using like. Synecdoche – Line 1 – Presumably, the speaker is not in disgrace with men’s eyes, he’s in

disgrace with men. He’s using men’s eyes (part) to stand in for men (whole)

Odds are, there are many examples, and possibly even some devices I didn’t note here, but this is a good sampling. Try it once again with this passage from Henry V:

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O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention; A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene! Then should the warlike Harry, like himself, Assume the port of Mars, and at his heels, Leashed in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all, The flat unraised spirits that hath dared On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object. Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt?

You should be able to find examples of: Alliteration Assonance Consonance Allusion Direct Address Hyperbole Metaphor Metonymy Rhetorical Question Simile


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Answers: Alliteration - Again, these are but a few examples Line 4 - …the swelling scene! Line 7 – Leashed in like hounds… Assonance – Line 2 - …heaven of invention. Line 11 – So great an object. Can this cockpit hold Consonance – Line 2 - …heaven of invention. Line 9 – The flat unraised spirits that hath dared Allusion – Line 5 – Shakespeare alludes to Harry without directly going into the story Direct Address – Line 8 – The whole passage is direct address, but this is made particularly clear

in line 8 when he says “But pardon, gentles all…” Hyperbole – Line 1 – We begin with an extravagant expression used as a figure of speech. Metaphor – Line 6 – Shakespeare doesn’t actually mean for Harry to dress like the Roman

god of war. He simply means that Harry will go to war. Metonymy – Line 13 – The wooden O is a reference to, and stands for, the theatre. Rhetorical Question – Line 11-14 – Both of the final questions here are rhetorical. Simile – Line 7 – Leashed in like hounds compares two things using “like” or “as.” As before, there may be other rhetorical devices not listed here. This is just a sampling. One more time! This passage comes from Two Gentlemen of Verona.

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Even as one heat another heat expels, Or as one nail by strength drives out another, So the remembrance of my former love Is by a newer object quite forgotten. It is mine eye, or Valentine’s praise, Her true perfection or my false transgression, That makes me reasonless to reason thus. She is fair, and so is Julia that I love— That I did love, for now my love is thawed, Which like a waxen image ‘gainst a fire, Bears no impression of the thing it was. Methinks my zeal to Valentine is cold, and that I love him not as I was wont. O, but I love his lady too too much, And that’s the reason I love him so little. How shall I dote on her with more advice, That thus without advice begin to love her! ‘Tis but her picture I have yet beheld, And that hath dazzled my reason’s light.

You should be able to find examples of Alliteration Assonance Chiasmus Consonance Direct Address Internal Rhyme Metaphor Metonymy Simile


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Alliteration – A sampling: Line 7 – That makes me reasonless to reason thus. Line 14 – O but I love his lady… Assonance – Line 1 – Even as one heat another heat expells Line 5 – It is mine eye, or Valentine’s praise, Chiasmus – Line 16-17 – In the first line, dote is followed by advice, while in the second,

advice precedes love. Consonance – Line 2 – Or as one nail by strength drives out another, Line 6 – Her true perfection or my false transgression, Direct Address – This passage is also phrased as direct address. He bounces his ideas off the

audience as he tries to sort out his feelings Internal Rhyme – Line 6 – Perfection and transgression rhyme, illustrating the speaker’s confusion. Metaphor – Line 19 – “…dazzled my reason’s light.” This phrase illuminates11 the speaker’s

confusion by drawing a parallel between his ability to think and light. Metonymy – Line 18 – “her picture” stands in for her appearance. Simile – Line 1-2 – The speaker begins with two similes, comparing his love being driven

out to heat or to a nail forcing out another. Line 10 – He now compares his love’s thawing to holding wax to a flame. As has been mentioned previously, this is hardly a comprehensive list. There are surely more devices that don’t appear above.

11 Illuminate! Get it? Ha! – Kevin

Further Work: Repeat this exercise with the shorter selections assigned this year—hey, it can’t hurt!—or with any other poem of your choice, even poems by DemiDec team members. Also, try rewriting the newspaper column from the last Further Work exercise, using at least three of these poetic techniques. Can your partner figure out which you’ve used?


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And now, a drill to celebrate these two remaining question types. Once again, three passages with the answers after the third:

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Jack Lindsay 1. The quoted portion of the passage makes extended use of

a. simile b. metonymy c. hyperbole d. personification e. metaphor

2. The first sentence could best be described as

a. run-on b. compound-complex c. simple d. compound e. complex


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One woman could sense “magnetized” water. Lavoisier filled several cups with water, only one of which was supposedly magnetized. After touching an unmagnetized cup she “fell completely into a crisis,” upon which Lavosier gave her the “magnetized” one, which “she drank quietly and said she felt relieved.”



Michael Shermer 3. The commission’s conclusion is notable for its

a. circumlocution b. chiasmus c. synecdoche d. euphemism e. oxymoron

4. The antecedent of “he” (line 16) is

a. Mesmer b. Franklin c. Lavosier d. the subject e. representative


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5. In the second paragraph the author makes use of each of the following

techniques EXCEPT a. bathos b. metaphor c. oxymoron d. onomatopoeia e. direct address

6. The final sentence consists of

a. one independent and two dependent clauses b. two independent clauses c. two independent and one dependent clause d. one independent and one dependent clause e. one independent clause


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Answers: 1. E 2. E 3. A 4. D 5. B 6. C

More! Yes three more passages!!

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1. The passage makes use of each of the following techniques EXCEPT

a. allusion b. simile c. personification d. direct address e. metaphor

2. The structure of the first sentence of the passage could best be described as

a. compound-complex b. run-on c. compound d. simple e. complex


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3. In the first paragraph, the author described Roosevelt by employing a. hyperbole b. bathos c. a metaphor d. irony e. a simile 4. The object of the first sentence of the final paragraph is a. theory b. this c. state d. nineteen thirties e. prejudice


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One line of disagreement with this familiar argument is that Coleridgean aesthetics are founded on an idea of Creation that few intellectuals now accept. Consequently, the Coleridgean position is continually undermined by the contemporary awareness that Shakespeare did not “make up” his stories, that Michelangelo invented neither the marble of his statue nor the iconography of his fresco, and that Virgil had no hand in creating the epic form that determined so much of his poem’s nature and success. And what was the name of that genius who designed Chartres? “originality,” “organic art,” and “the artist-god” are critical notions that fit nicely into the particular phase of bourgeois individualism from which they come, but they are not ideas sufficient for every day. If we live under the shadows of Flaubert and Beckett (watching fingernail clippings decompose on the floor of an empty room), we are also contemporary with John Cage and with Julian Beck and Jusith Malina—with collective creation and creative chance. There is more to art than its inventiveness quotient.


5. The final sentence of the passage differs from others in the final paragraph in its a. simple structure b. subject being a pronoun c. lack of an object d. simple predicate e. use of prepositional phrases 6. The description of a Romantic poet (lines 8-9) makes use of a. metonymy b. hyperbole c. metaphor d. synecdoche e. simile


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Answers: 1. C 2. E

3. C 4. E 5. A 6. B

Encore! Three more passages for the Decathlete who has everything:

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1. The author uses each of the following rhetorical devices EXCEPT

a. hyperbole b. personification c. synecdoche d. metaphor e. simile

“Lerice, who I thought would retire there in Chekhovian sadness for a month or two, and then leave the place to the servants while she tried yet again to get a part she wanted and become the actress she would like to be, has sunk into the business of running the farm with all the serious intensity with which she once imbued the shadows in a playwright’s mind.”

2. The predicate of the above sentence is

a. has sunk b. tried c. would retire d. leave e. imbued


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3. The structure of the passage can BEST be described as a(n)

a. central thesis that is challenged then upheld b. opening image with supporting data thereafter c. introduction followed by specific examples d. analogy developed at length on several levels e. common belief that is refuted by expert description

4. The opening paragraph makes use of

a. simile b. metonymy c. chiasmus d. bathos e. metaphor


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As usual, movies provided succor. I even started going in the afternoon and felt again the guilty pleasure of coming out of a movie into daylight. When I had exhausted the first-run theaters, I would troll Forty-second Street for the B movies or the revivals, finding comfort in the familiar. The prints were worn and grainy, and the old, broken-down theaters smelled of urine and lost hope, but none of that mattered. You could find on the screen what you needed I even found You Were Never Lovelier in a print where the sound was always a few feats behind the action. It bothered everyone except me; I already had a perfect print in my head.




5. “Calculated fervor” (line 19) is an example of a(n)

a. metaphor b. simile c. hyperbole d. euphemism e. oxymoron

6. The structure of the final sentence can be BEST described as

a. complex b. simple c. compound d. compound-complex e. a fragment


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Answers: 1. C 2. A 3. C 4. D 5. E 6. A

Those are the major question types. On occasion, USAD will put out a question that doesn’t cleanly fit into any of the above categories12. However, The Questions Three and the other techniques outlined below give you the tools to handle any question from the straightforward to the bizarre. PROCESS OF ELIMINATION And then there were answer choices. There are two ways to get the correct answer to a question. The obvious one is to see the correct answer and choose it. This is a lovely thing when it happens, but it doesn’t always. The other way is to eliminate four incorrect answers. Most of the time we use some combination of the two techniques, eliminating clearly incorrect answer choices and then selecting the best remaining choice. There are some characteristics shared by many incorrect answers that we can look for in order to clue us in that a particular choice is wrong. Extreme Language rarely appears in correct answers. Extreme language means language that is easy to argue with. For instance, the statement, “Everyone loves Sammy Sosa.” All we need to do is find one person who doesn’t love Sammy Sosa and we can disprove that statement. A correct answer would read, “Many people love Sammy Sosa,” or “Sammy Sosa has many fans.” “Many people” is harder to contradict than “Everyone.” Extreme language is a little more likely to be correct if the passage itself is extreme. Then, extreme answer choices are merely matching the passage. Otherwise, be very suspicious of extreme language. Part Wrong = All Wrong: If part of an answer is incorrect, the answer is incorrect, even if the rest of the answer choice sounds good. This may sound obvious, but many students will try to persuade themselves that an answer choice is okay, because of the good-sounding portion. Don’t. An answer choice must be entirely correct to be the right answer. The Questions Three are an excellent way to confirm or deny answer choices. Answers that directly contradict the Questions Three are usually not correct because they will also contradict the passage. Attractors are answer choices that are written to sound attractive. They will use language found in the passage but in a different way. The answer choice sounds appealing because it mirrors something you’ve read, but it’s wrong because it’s been rephrased to mean something different. Agreement: All your answer choices should agree with one another. If two answers contradict one another, one of them is probably wrong. Right = Least Wrong: We are conditioned to look for the “right” answer, but you may find yourself choosing between unappealing options. Remember, these answers are, in many cases, subjective. You’re not really looking for the right answer in this case, but the one that sucks least. The correct answer may not be perfect; it only needs to be more perfect than the alternatives. Down to two: Here’s where the fun begins. What are the differences between the answers? Re-read each carefully, and also re-read the question. Go back to the passage to check each

12 Technically, these question types are referred to as “weird.”


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one. In the end, eliminate the answer that clearly has something wrong with it. You should be able to point to something in the passage or question that makes that a bad answer. This may seem obvious, but when students pick answers because “they feel better” they’re more likely to fall into a trap that the test-writers have laid for them. A note about EXCEPT questions. Most critical reading test-writers looove EXCEPT questions. It’s easy to forget about that word EXCEPT and find yourself frustrated with a question because you can only cross off one answer choice! That’s because that answer choice is, in fact, correct. If you have problems with EXCEPT questions:

1. Ignore the word EXCEPT 2. For each answer choice, write “yes” if it answers the question without the EXCEPT

and “no” if it doesn’t. 3. One of these things is not like the other. Four answer choices will have “yes” and one

won’t. That’s your answer! This may seem silly, but even the savviest test-taker among us can occasionally get thrown by an EXCEPT added to an otherwise innocuous question. LOOKING INWARD – SPEED BUBBLE Rather than bubbling as you answer each question, wait until you’ve done all ten, and then bubble all at once. This actually saves you time and prevents you from breaking your concentration. This also benefits you because in critical reading, the different questions can help answer one another. Of course, if you’re close to the end of the testing time, you should bubble as you go, lest the clock run out, but otherwise you should wait and do all ten questions at once.


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APPENDIX – THE LISTS

Transition Words: But Yet Nonetheless Although

Despite Except In contrast However

Nevertheless Admittedly Even though

This is, of course, only a listing of some of the most popular transition words. Publications:

an allegory will explore truths of human behavior through symbolism an autobiography will be a personal recollection in first person a biography will deal with an event in a real person’s life a diary will be a personal recollection of something that just

happened an encyclopedia entry will convey information in a formal style an epic will deal with some sort of hero in an elevated style an essay will present an author’s opinion on a single subject a fable will tell a story with some sort of moral, often featuring animal

characters a fantasy will be a prose piece that includes some fantastical element a letter will be directed towards a specific person a memoir is the same as an autobiography a newspaper article will be informative without a clearly stated opinion a novel will deal with fictional situations a satire will expose a vice or folly through sarcasm or irony a speech will be addressed to a present audience a travel article will describe a locale from the point of view of an outsider a power guide will contain every testable detail in the AcaDec curriculum

Tone and Style Words:

Abstract Admiring Ambiguous Amused Angry Antagonistic Anxious Apprehensive Approving Ardent

Argumentative Assertive Authoritative Bantering Benevolent Bitter Brilliant Candid Casual Caustic

Clinical Cloying Colloquial Concerned Condemnatory Condescending Confident Confiding Connotative Contemptuous


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Contentious Conventional Conversational Cool Critical Curious Curt Cynical Defensive Denotative Derogatory Detached Determined Didactic Diffident Dignified Disapproving Disdainful Disgusted Disparaging Dramatic Earnest Ecstatic Effusive Elegiac Elegant Elevated Embarrassed Embellished Emotional Energetic Entertaining Enthusiastic Excited Exhortative Exuberant Facetious Factual Fanciful Figurative Flippant Formal Grandiose Haunting Hopeful Humorous

Impartial Impassioned Impelling Impersonal Incisive Indifferent Indignant Inflammatory Inflated Informal Informative Insipid Instructive Ironic Irreverent Jocular Kind Learned Light Lively Lofty Logical Loquacious Lugubrious Lukewarm Lyrical Matter-of-fact Melodramatic Melancholy Mocking Moralizing Mournful Naturalistic Neutral Nostalgic Objective Obsequious Ornate Patronizing Pedantic Persuasive Petulant Picaresque Pleading Pleasant Pretentious

Primitive Professional Realistic Reflective Regretful Relaxed Remorseful Respectful Restrained Reverent Romantic Sanguine Sarcastic Sardonic Satiric Scholarly Scornful Secure Sedate Self-deprecating Sentimental Serious Shrill Sincere Solemn Somber Stately Straightforward Strident Suave Surprised Technical Theoretical Thoughtful Threatening Tongue-in-cheek Turgid Unformed Uninvolved Urbane Urgent Warm Wistful Wishful Witty

This is, by no means a complete list, and as you see further tone or style words, add them in. In the meantime, be sure you know and can recognize these tones and styles.


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Devices: Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sounds: A succinct sentence that sums up the author’s stand . . . Allusion is an indirect reference to something: Your request for money puts me in mind of Polonius’ words. Apostrophe is the address of an entity not present: Shakespeare, favor me in this endeavor. (Shakespeare is presumably not present to do so) Assonance is the repetition of vowel sounds: Soon the moon’s ooze will be caught in this spittoon. Bathos13 is the sudden appearance of the ordinary in otherwise elevated matter or style:

Thor roared his challenge to the sky, and popped into a nearby restaurant to use the bathroom.

Chiasmus is the inversion of the second of two parallel structures. Each throat was parched and glazed each eye. Circumlocution is the use of unnecessary words to express an idea: No man of woman born will be able to contradict my thesis. Consonance is the repetition of consonant sounds within words: Acquiesce to our exit or the duck gets axed14! Direct Address is speaking directly to the audience. Ah, no my hearers, the monument is made of sturdy materials. Euphemism refers to substituting an inoffensive expressive for a potentially offensive

one. I was so sorry to hear that your mother passed away. Hyperbole is an extravagant exaggeration used as a figure of speech. I will follow you to the moon and back! Internal Rhyme is rhyming that exists within a sentence: Their June swoon made him crazy as a loon. Irony15 is the use of words to express the opposite of their true meaning. A parking ticket. How wonderful. Litotes is a figure of speech when an affirmative is expressed by negating its opposite. This is no small problem.

13 Bathos, and his twin brother Pathos (definition appearing later in this list), are now confirmed by most historians as the sibling gods of the Greek equivalent of AcaDec. Sacrifices of erasers and #2 pencils are still made to them today in some parts of the world (probably at least Texas, Arizona, California and, since the triumph of Waukesha at nationals in 2002, Wisconsin.) – Kevin 14 Coincidentally, ducks and axes are important icons at my sister's former school, the University of Oregon, and my own very recent alma mater, Stanford, respectively. - Daniel 15 Like goldy or bronzey, but made of iron. - Kevin


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Metaphor is the use of one word or idea instead of another to suggest a similarity between them.

The Titanic plowed the sea. Metonymy is the use of a concept to represent a related concept: The White House today released its new initiative. (White House substitutes for “the President” or “the government.” Clearly,

the White House itself isn’t likely to be releasing anything at all.) Onomatopoeia is when a word sounds like what it describes: Buzz. Slam. Creak. Moo. Howl. Groan. Oxymoron is a combination of contradictory words. Sharing his work was a solemn pleasure. Paradox is a phrase or phrases that sounds contradictory but may in fact be true.

To join the union you must perform in a union film, but only union members may perform in union films.16

Pathos is an element in experience or representation evoking pity:

Bambi struggled to stand as the hunter approached to finish him off. Personification is giving human qualities to non-human things: The parched earth greedily sucked up the falling rain. Rhetorical Question is a question the speaker does not intend answered, but instead

uses to make a point. Do I intend to sleep through this test? Of course not. Simile is the comparison of two unlike things through the use of “like” or “as” These “majority truths” are like last year’s cured meat. Synecdoche is the use of a part to stand for the whole: Hitler’s arm reached across the continent.

16 Become an actor and you too can experience this all-to-real paradox. Does this remind you of something in the 2001-2002 economics curriculum? Does anyone remember the 2001-2002 economcs curriculum? Boy, I’ve been at this for a while. - Kevin


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EXAM DAY SUPPLEMENT

1. Do these 10 questions last. Be sure you get all the easy points you can from the

questions you’ve spent months preparing to answer. Only then do the Critical Reading 2. Work the passage. Read actively, annotating main points, examples, etc. 3. Answer the Questions Three. What’s the subject of the passage? What does the

author want you to know about the subject? What’s the author’s relationship to the subject?

4. Attack the questions. Using your answers to the Questions Three answer the questions. Go back to the passage whenever necessary. Don’t count on memory when you can take ten seconds to check the passage and confirm.

5. Process of Elimination. Cross off clearly incorrect answers. Be sure your answers agree with each other. Avoid extreme language and use the Questions Three. Down to two? Re-read the question and the remaining answers and choose the one that is least wrong—not necessarily the one that feels right.

6. Speed Bubble. Unless you know you’re short on time, answer all 10 questions and then fill in all the bubbles.


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ABOUT THE AUTHOR This year, Kevin Heckman is embarking on his fifth—or it sixth?—annual journey into critical reading for DemiDec. Normally, he lives in Chicago with his cat, Trillian, and his girlfriend Chris, and works as the producing artistic director of Stage Left Theatre. Outside of theatre, Kevin teaches test preparation (mainly the LSAT) for The Princeton Review, writes a column for PerformInk Newspaper, and spends far too much time playing computer games. Originally, he hails from Maine, where, as a high school junior, he was the top scorer for his state champion Academic Decathlon team. His father, who remains the coach at Monmouth Academy, also recently joined DemiDec as a reviewer for the math event. ABOUT THIS YEAR’S REVIEWERS Mary Kathryn Keane joins DemiDec from the University of South Carolina, where she is majoring in physics and (hopefully) minoring in English17. She regularly donates her hair. As a Decathlete, she competed at the national level with Dreher High School. Some basic facts about Mary Kathryn from the DemiDec team directory: Favorite Books: Catch-22, Pride and Prejudice, The Power and the Glory, and many by Chaim Potok and Willa Cather. Favorite Movie: Dogma Favorite Songs or Artists: Paul Simon, U2, The Arrogant Worms18 (anyone heard of them?), REM, Ralph Vaughan Williams The place you’d most like to visit: Anywhere with mountains! A Favorite Quote to Share: "I've tried smart; I recommend pleasant." - Elwood P. Dowdeep Other Interesting Facts About Me: I'm shy and nerdy and I like to read and sew and run and ski and laugh a lot! Jesse Gomez, a self proclaimed Hugonaut… whatever that means19… is one of DemiDec’s star (and Starbucks) proofers this year. With beginnings as a lowly flashcard reviewer, he has fought his way up the ranks and has earned the title “all-around proofer,” DemiDec Dan’s right hand man as it were. Here he is pictured at a DemiDec proofing party in early August, working at the Starbucks in Larchmont. A few minutes later he and Dan discovered that their car had been locked in a parking garage overnight. Rather than sleep at Starbucks they took a subway home. Jesse will be attending UCSD this Fall, where he will hopefully take a class in his major.

17 What do you do with a B.A. in English? 18 This is something you shouldn’t call your Decathlon competitors. 19 Yes, a Simpsons reference.

Documents

Critical Reading Tutorial