SAT Reading Comp Exercises

For anyone new to the posts in this series feel free to go back to the first post to get a little background about what is going on here…..

Below is the link for the article that was the subject of the 4th installment of the series:

http://www.historytoday.com/fern-riddell/curiouser-and-curiouser-case-lewis-carroll

Before I get into the questions themselves, let me first point out that one of the things that makes this passage so difficult is that there are multiple viewpoints being expressed and its almost as if there are layers of opinions that need to be peeled back like an onion. A similar thing happens on very difficult SAT passages so this is something that you should be prepared for.

On this particular passage, there is the author who is expressing her opinion about the viewpoint of a filmmaker who is herself expressing a viewpoint about another author: Lewis Carroll. Both the filmmaker and the author of this passage refer to other authors who themselves have an opinion of Lewis Carroll. And to make matters even worse, you have authors (like Karoline Leach and Jenny Woolf) who draw upon previous authors who wrote about Lewis Carroll (the author). I had to throw that last “the author” in there because its almost comical, but really it’s helpful to view it as an onion where on the outside you have the author who wrote the passage and then the authors (and filmmakers) to whom she is referring and then at the inner most layer you have Lewis Carroll who is obviously the focus of all of the other author’s attention.

SAT passages won’t be quite as hard as this one, but they will occasionally express multiple viewpoints in a similar way, so it is good to get exposed to this sort of passage.

Now, on to the questions…

1) What is the author’s purpose in the passage?

The author’s purpose is to criticize the recent documentary and its makers for their treatment of the issue of Carroll’s alleged pedophilia. The author believes that the evidence does not support the view that he had an inappropriate relationship with children and accuses the filmmakers of distorting the truth for the sake of being sensational.

As with many articles the title itself gives a good indication of where the author is headed and although the blurbs that precede real SAT passages don’t always give quite as much information, they often hint at the author’s purpose.

2) What can we infer about the opinion that Karoline Leach and Jenny Woolf have of Carroll’s relationship with children?

This is a really difficult question because the paragraph that first mentions them is really confusing and talks about multiple viewpoints (as I explained above)!!! You have to try to unravel the paragraph, but the author says that Leach and Woolf “exposed” the reliance on the biographers who (with good intentions) reduced the age of the children with whom Carroll had a relationship (the unintended consequence of this was that people were MORE apt to believe that his relationship with them was inappropriate). So because these authors tried to “expose our reliance” on these biographers they were trying to show that the children weren’t as young as we were led to believe and that he therefore probably did NOT have an inappropriate relationship with them. That is really, really difficult.

The other key, however, is that 2 paragraphs down the author mentions Jenny Woolf again and cites the fact that in her book Woolf brings forward information to show that Carroll donated money to causes that helped exploited children. She also mentions that the producers of the documentary seemed to have ignored this information (this gets at the next question). But from this we can infer that Woolf defends Carroll in her book and that she (and by association Leach) do not believe that Carroll was a pedophile.

3) What does the author imply in her statement about Professor Robert Douglas-Fairhurst?

This is another tough question. As per my explanation above, the author faults the producers of the documentary for not mentioning the evidence revealed in Woolf’s book that would support the view that Carroll was not a pedophile even though it was “was well known to the programme’s consultant, Professor Robert Douglas-Fairhurst.” There is nothing really to suggest that the professor himself withheld that insight from the filmmakers. The author of the passage is, overall, faulting the filmmakers for offering a skewed and inaccurate portrayal, so it seems that she is suggesting here that since the professor was aware of the research, its not that the filmmakers themselves would have been unaware of it – they just chose not to present it because it would conflict with their view.

4) In context, what does the expression “shoe-horning” (in the first sentence of the second-to-last paragraph) most probably mean?

It helps a lot here to know what a shore horn is and to be able to picture how it is used!!! But the context also provides clues because the author says that the “sudden” shoe-horning in of the photograph at the very end “smacks a little of desperation.” Its sounds like the author is kind of squeezing in or quickly dropping or wedging in something that doesn’t really fit or is out of place. Again it helps to be able to picture a shoe-horn but in this context it means to push or squeeze something into a place where it doesn’t really fit.

5) In context, what does the word “scant” (last sentence of the article) mean?

This question is not completely SAT-like because vocab-in-context questions almost always test a secondary or tertiary definition of a word that can be gleaned from the context and that does not match the obvious definition that you might think of if the word was not placed in any context. In this case, however, scant is being used in its primary way: it means a very small amount or an insufficient amount. Still, even if you didn’t know what the word means you could have gleaned it from the context because the author is overall faulting the filmmakers for presenting a biased view and basically argues that the evidence does not support their perspective. So you could guess that their view is based on “non-existent” evidence or something like that.

6) What is the author implying by saying (in the last paragraph) that, “Popular culture is dangerously good at historical myth making”?

Again, the author is accusing the filmmakers of painting an inaccurate portrayal of Carroll for the sake of being sensational and making a splash. For example, she says, “The idea that the third most quoted literary work in the world, behind only Shakespeare and the Bible, was authored by a man harbouring a dangerous intent towards his young friends is obviously an attractive prospect for television.” So she seems to believe that the “history” of Lewis Carroll is being distorted for the sake of making a TV show that will be popular with audiences and draw a lot of viewers. So trying to appeal to “popular culture” will often lead to turning historical facts into inaccurate “myths.” Anyway, that is the author’s view.

This was a very hard passage….I wanted to pick a very difficult one just to challenge people a bit. I will not make the next one as hard as this…..I promise. Stay tuned for the next installment.

Below is the link to the next article in the installment. This one is pretty hard in my opinion, but it is also pretty short so it should make for a fairly quick exercise. Happy reading!!!

http://www.historytoday.com/fern-riddell/curiouser-and-curiouser-case-lewis-carroll

1) What is the author’s purpose in the passage?

2) What can we infer about the opinion that Karoline Leach and Jenny Wolf have of Carroll’s relationship with children?

3) What does the author imply in her statement about Professor Robert Douglas-Fairhurst?

4) In context, what does the expression “shoe-horning” (in the first sentence of the second-to-last paragraph) most probably mean?

5) In context, what does the word “scant” (last sentence of the article) mean?

6) What is the author implying by saying (in the last paragraph) that, “Popular culture is dangerously good at historical myth making”?

Answers and analysis will follow in the next post….

Below is the link for the article that I introduced in the previous post and below that are the questions and commentary. Please don’t just read the commentary – try to answer the questions for yourself first!!!

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/false-memory-crime?intcid=mod-latest

1) How would you describe the author’s purpose and tone in the passage?

This is a pretty neutral passage where the author is presenting some interesting information, but the author is not really arguing for something. Most of what the author says is through the voice of the experts who he refers to, so that is why I would characterize the tone as fairly neutral, though the author clearly agrees with the position he is presenting and seems disturbed by the evidence (he states, “these are troubling findings.”)

I would probably say that the author’s purpose was to present some troubling findings on the nature of memory as it relates to false confessions. Again, I wouldn’t characterize the purpose as “argue” or anything more emotionally charged because the tone is fairly neutral and the author is not really expressing his opinion explicitly.

2) What kind of evidence does the author use to support his point?

The author refers to historical cases, psychological studies, and some quotations and opinions from psychologists and other experts. This is really the bulk of the article – most of it is devoted to illustrating how it has become increasingly apparent that people can create false memories or be misled into doing so.

3) What does the word malleability mean (in the last paragraph) and what clues does the surrounding context provide in terms of helping you guess the meaning if you didn’t know it?

This is very much like a vocab-in-context question that would appear on the SAT. On a real SAT version of the question, however, there would probably be more concrete contextual clues that would help you determine the meaning than we have here. So its hard in this case to land on an exact understanding of malleability just based on the passage, but there are a few clues. Obviously the author has a negative view of memory and since the author says, “evidence of the inaccuracy and malleability of human memory” we can infer for sure that it is negative like inaccuracy and also that it can’t mean inaccuracy exactly since that would be redundant. The other clue is that the author says that the evidence has compelled some state supreme courts to view eyewitness testimony as “inherently unreliable.” So we know that the inaccuracy and malleability of memory make testimony that is based on it “unreliable.” Malleable means shapeable or bendable (in the way that a soft metal can be shaped or bent) so although you probably couldn’t arrive at that exact definition based on the context, you can get somewhere close.

4) In the last paragraph the cites some authors who question the accuracy of memory more generally. Do you think the author agrees with their assessment and why?

This is an important question because it gets at something that many readers don’t quite understand: if a passage presents other people’s views and says nothing to contradict them, we have to infer that the author probably agrees. In other words, sometimes a passage will be very neutral and the author will generally just be presenting some information or even the views of another expert. If the author doesn’t suggest that he disagrees then just by virtue of the fact that he is presenting the information unopposed allows us to infer that he agrees with that information. If he didn’t, he would have to say so.

So in the last paragraph of this article, the author really does go a bit further and begins to make a more general point about the unreliability of memory (even when false memories are not being implanted). Even though the author never says that he agrees with the experts that he is quoting in the paragraph, it is safe to infer that he does agree, because why else would he give their opinions without saying anything to oppose them?

Stay tuned for the next installment!!!