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SAT Reading: Citing Evidence to Identify a Theme in Walden
35 Views

Contemplating one's life is key to fulfilled happiness. Thoreau's theme revolves around the simple life well lived. He clearly never tried virtual...

What Does the Author Mean by "Front" in this Context?
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Thoreau uses "front" to mean "face". He wants to face The Facts of Life without shying away from our natural tendencies, roots, and the simply way...

SAT Reading: Using Context to Define a Word
12 Views

What does "frittered away" mean in this context? Wasted. Wasted by the way. Thoreau claims we fritter away our lives praying to modern complex dist...

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SAT Reading 6.5 Sentence Completion 164 Views


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Description:

SAT Reading: Sentence Completion Drill 6, Problem 5

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:03

Shmoop, it's what's for dinner. Which word could fill in the blank so that

00:07

the sentence below makes sense?

00:09

Researchers and philosophers have studied the influence of nature versus nurture for

00:12

years to determine whether humans are indeed born with a(n) blank sense of right and wrong.

00:18

And here are the potential answers...

00:24

The word "born" tells us that we're looking

00:26

for a word that helps get across the theory that humans come into the world with certain

00:29

characteristics...

00:32

It would be very unfortunate if (B) and (C) were the right answer, because "flawed"

00:36

and "questionable" imply that we're all born with serious moral issues.

00:41

In some cases this might be true, but we're going to cross out this one as we look for

00:45

a word that jibes with born. Sure, a lot of people have "inconsistent"

00:49

moral codes...

00:52

But again, we're looking for a word that zeroes in on the "nature" side of the

00:55

debate. "Acquired" is kind of the opposite of

00:58

what we're looking for, because it implies that we learn our moral codes rather than

01:02

being born with them.

01:04

"Innate" means natural or inborn, so (A) is the correct answer.

01:08

Here's hoping that for every baby who's innately born a super villain, there's also

01:12

one who's a super hero. Ah the balance.

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