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Playlist AP® English Language and Composition: Passage Drills 40 videos
AP English Language and Composition: Passage Drill Drill 1, Problem 7. What is the principal rhetorical function of paragraphs one to three?
AP English Language and Composition: Passage Drill 1, Problem 8. The quotation marks in the third paragraph chiefly serve to what?
In this AP Language and Composition drill question, read the provided passage and infer information based upon footnote two. AP Language and Com...
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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