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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
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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 3.2 Sentence Completion 700 Views


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Description:

SAT Reading Sentence Completion Drill 3, Problem 2

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:03

And here's your Shmoop du jour...

00:05

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

00:08

John's friends were surprised by how little his breakup with Lisa seemed to affect him:

00:13

Despite the tumultuous nature of their relationship, he appeared almost blank after the split.

00:23

And here are the potential answers...

00:33

Yeah, so we're dealing with a relatively overstuffed sentence here.

00:36

But only one context clue truly matters: the fact that the breakup didn't affect John as

00:41

much as his friends probably worried it would. Since this sentence indicates that John didn't

00:47

spend his days spewing tears and making scenes in public places....

00:52

...we can break-up with most of these answers without too many tears of our own.

00:56

(A) doesn't work at all. If John didn't care about the break-up, he definitely wouldn't

00:59

be intense about it. (B) doesn't work either, because John wouldn't

01:03

be anxious about something he didn't care about.

01:06

"Burdensome" makes zero sense in this context, because it means something that's

01:10

heavy or worrisome in some way. "Attentive" means to pay special extra attention

01:17

to something, so it definitely doesn't work either.

01:19

Looks like "nonchalant" wins the day.

01:21

It totally makes sense, because the word means to be casual and uncaring about something.

01:30

So the answer is (C).

01:31

As in, "Could he care any less?"

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