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Friends, Shmoopers, countrymen, lend us your ears...

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Which word could fill in the blank so that the sentence below makes sense?

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In order to provide her audience with additional context, the speaker blank her lecture with

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a short explanation about her interest in the topic.

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And here are the potential answers...

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Before we dig into the nitty-gritty, we can

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start by eliminating (A) and (C)...

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...both of which describe the way our speaker, er, speaks rather than explaining what she's

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actually talking about. "Inflict" means to cause something unpleasant

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to happen to someone. Sure, the lecturer might've done this with her lecture...

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But we have a feeling that's not what this sentence is going for.

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The speaker's audience would probably be confused and bored if her context "followed"

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the lecture.

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We'll give her the benefit of the doubt and assume she gave her audience context before

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she started.

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When you stick the prefix "pre" on a word, it means the word is referencing something

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that comes before something else.

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This gives us a hint that "prefaced" means a preliminary statement that gives background

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on what's to come.

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Sounds like (D) is just what we're looking for.

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We hope any lectures in your future look like this.

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Instead of this...

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