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ACT Reading: Humanities Passage Drill 1, Problem 1. Which of the following best describes the main purpose of this passage?
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SAT Reading 1.5 Sentence Completion 179 Views
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Description:
SAT Reading Sentence Completion Drill 1, Problem 5
Transcript
- 00:03
Alright, so if you're over 18, put this question in your pipe and shmoop it...
- 00:08
Which words could fill in the blanks so that the sentence below makes sense?
- 00:12
From the moment the United States was founded as a free and independent republic, dedicated
- 00:16
to the blank that "all men are created equal," slavery represented a fundamental blank to
- 00:21
the nation's most cherished values.
Full Transcript
- 00:28
The phrase "all men are created equal" is one of the self-evident truths mentioned in
- 00:33
the Declaration of Independence. So whatever goes in the first blank has to refer to a
- 00:37
statement of equality as a belief.
- 00:39
(A), (B), and (C) all might work...
- 00:42
But (D) looks a little suspect to us.
- 00:44
"Foundation" sort of makes sense because it means the basis on which something stands.
- 00:48
Still, we have to get rid of it because it doesn't organically refer to a single idea
- 00:52
in the context of this sentence.
- 00:54
Now, we'll move on to the second blank to see which answers it can help us get rid of.
- 00:59
(A) can definitely be crossed off. Embellishment is the act of decorating something or making
- 01:04
it more beautiful, which doesn't exactly jibe with the idea of slavery.
- 01:07
(B) kind of makes sense, because deviation can mean to diverge from an established belief.
- 01:13
However, we can eliminate it because the prepositions don't line up. We'd say "deviation from"
- 01:19
not "deviation to."
- 01:20
Grammar police.
- 01:22
(E) evasion almost makes sense as well. An
- 01:25
evasion can happen when something is avoided. You know... like the evasion of fulfilling
- 01:30
one of the most fundamental beliefs on which a country is based.
- 01:34
We get into preposition trouble again here, though. We'd say "evasion of" not "evasion
- 01:39
to," so choice (E)...no good.
- 01:41
OK, we've eliminated everything but (C), so hopefully this one fits the bill.
- 01:46
Uh...this bill.
- 01:48
We gave "proposition" the go-ahead earlier, and "contradiction" works too.
- 01:53
No doubt slavery was a contradiction to the idea that all people are created equal.
- 01:57
(C) it is. C for "Couldn't we just get it right in the first place?"
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