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AP English Language and Composition: Passage Drill Drill 1, Problem 7. What is the principal rhetorical function of paragraphs one to three?
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AP English Language and Composition 3.3 Passage Drill 230 Views
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Description:
Take a look at this shmoopy AP English Language and Composition question and see if you can figure out which answer best describes the development of the passage.
Transcript
- 00:00
[ musical flourish ]
- 00:03
And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the Lego Movie.
- 00:07
Why? Because everything really is awesome.
- 00:10
[ singing ] Everything is awesome... Everything is...
- 00:13
Yeah. Like that.
Full Transcript
- 00:14
All right, we're skimming, skimming...
- 00:16
[ mumbles ]
- 00:20
Okay.
- 00:21
Which of the following best describes the development of the passage?
- 00:24
And here are the potential answers.
- 00:26
[ mumbles ]
- 00:31
All right, well, here we go.
- 00:32
When the question tells us to think about the development of the passage,
- 00:34
it's just asking how the whole thing goes down.
- 00:37
How does it start and where does it go from there?
- 00:39
What does it like to eat? Where does it like to hang out on the weekends?
- 00:42
Well, strike those last two questions. They're getting a little stalker-y.
- 00:45
Okay, let's keep going.
- 00:46
This is probably gonna be easiest if we go through and cross out
- 00:49
what the passage is not.
- 00:51
For example, we can cross out choice A because the narrator never gives us
- 00:54
any opposing ways of interpreting anything.
- 00:56
In this passage, we only get the author's point of view
- 00:59
and the points of view of people that probably agree with him.
- 01:01
What a tyrant.
- 01:02
We can nix choice C for a similar reason.
- 01:05
The author doesn't talk about different fields.
- 01:07
In the passage, it's all science all the time.
- 01:10
Option B isn't a contender, either.
- 01:12
As far as we can tell, this author isn't having any
- 01:15
personal revelations.
- 01:16
Maybe B is thinking about some other passage in which the author
- 01:19
gets his groove back.
- 01:20
All right, we're also gonna say no to answer E.
- 01:23
The author doesn't kick off with any widely held beliefs
- 01:26
and he doesn't end with any modern perspectives.
- 01:29
This option's a real phony.
- 01:31
It sounds smart, but it doesn't have anything to do with the development of the passage.
- 01:34
Option D, on the other hand, totally nails it.
- 01:37
The passage begins as a closer look at the nature around us.
- 01:40
After a slightly random mention of some guy's glass eye,
- 01:43
the author hits us with the thesis:
- 01:45
Science is awesome,
- 01:46
and, in fact, necessary if we wanna live a worthwhile life.
- 01:50
Next, the author starts supporting his argument with a bunch of
- 01:52
quotes from people who must have mattered back when the passage was written.
- 01:56
Well, there we go. That's choice D to a T.
- 01:58
Incidentally, if we ever got a glass eye, we'd put
- 02:01
a tiny lightbulb inside so that it glowed.
- 02:03
That'd be kind of cool. Thoughts?
- 02:06
[ belly laughter ]
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