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AP English Language and Composition Videos 152 videos

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Description:

Feel like shifting gears and answering a question about shifting tones? We've got you covered. Take a look at this question and see if you can follow the change in tone.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:03

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by a fear of public speaking.

00:07

Some say you should picture the audience naked, but

00:10

we've always come to regret that choice.

00:15

[ mumbles ]

00:22

[ mumbling continues ]

00:34

[ further mumbling ]

00:41

Okay. The shift in tone from the first two paragraphs

00:45

to the rest of the passage can be best described as... what?

00:48

And here are the potential answers.

00:51

[ mumbles ]

00:55

All right. Wow, this question is vocab city. Good thing we brought a map.

01:00

And by map, we mean the dictionary and our brains.

01:04

All right, option E says the speaker is being enigmatic,

01:08

or mysterious, in the first paragraph, which could be true

01:11

with all the question-dodging he's doing.

01:15

But E also says that in the second paragraph, the speaker acts

01:19

indifferently, meaning that he acts like he couldn't care less.

01:22

Well, this just isn't true. It's clear the speaker has

01:24

thought a lot about what he's saying, so he's bound to care about it.

01:27

If he didn't care, well, he probably wouldn't have shown up to speak in the first place, right?

01:33

How about answer D?

01:34

Eh. "Succinct" means short

01:37

and to the point, while "verbose" means

01:40

wordy, wordy, wordy. Like lots of words to describe something

01:42

that you could've said just in two.

01:45

So D would be a contender if it said

01:47

verbose to more verbose, but, uh, well, zing.

01:52

We can see where C is coming from.

01:54

The speaker does sound a little argumentative when he begins by

01:57

telling the committee that they asked him to speak about a stupid question.

02:00

He doesn't get conciliatory, or apologetic, in the next paragraph, though.

02:04

He just keeps on dissecting exactly why the question's unanswerable.

02:11

Well, A would be plausible only if the order were reversed.

02:14

The speaker sounds way more imperious, or arrogant,

02:17

in the first paragraph when he's dissing the committee's question.

02:20

But in the second paragraph, he confidently lays out the rationale behind his opinion.

02:24

Choice B does the speaker the most justice.

02:27

At first, his tone is searching.

02:29

He's pulling apart the question and honestly trying to figure out

02:31

how best to answer it.

02:33

Then in the second paragraph, he illustrates just why he thinks

02:36

the things he does. How much you wanna bet that half the audience

02:39

walked out thinking he was brilliant

02:42

and the other half thinking he was a jerk?

02:47

[ shout ]

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