Critical reading question

Test Preparation SAT Preparation
1

<p>This is a question in the official SAT practice test 2012-2013, the passage about the playwright disscussing her ideas about acting. I trust that most of you have done it, but I still cite part of the passage which I have doubt on here:</p>

<p>I had been trained in the tradition of acting called “psychological realism.” A basic tenet of psychological realism is that characters live inside of you and that you create a lifelike portrayal of the character through a processof realizing your own similarity to the character. When I later became a teacher of acting, I began to become more and more troubled by the self-oriented method. I began to look for ways to engage my students in putting themselves in other people’s shoes. This went against the grain of the
psychological realism tradition, which was to get the char-acter to walk in the actor’s shoes. It became less and less interesting intellectually to bring the dramatic literature of
the world into a classroom of people in their late teens and twenties, and to explore it within the framework of their real lives. Aesthetically it seemed limited, because most
of the time the characters all sounded the same. Most char-acters spoke somewhere inside the rhythmic range of the students. More troubling was that this method left an
important bridge out of acting. The spirit of acting is the travelfrom the self to the other. This “self-based” method seemed to come to a spiritual halt. It saw the self as the
ultimate home of the character. To me, the search for character is constantly in motion. It is a quest that moves backand forth between the self and the other.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>The author’s explanation in the fourth paragraph suggests that the “self-oriented method” rests on the assumption that:
(A) audience members appreciate complex nuances of character
(B) the playwright’s biography provides the main evi-dence for interpreting character
(C) actors have already felt the full range of human emotions
(D) actors are extremely independent and self-serving people
(E) actors’ lives become fulfilled through their dra-matic portrayals </p></li>
<li><p>The phrase “home of the character” most nearly means
(A) way of understanding eccentricities
(B) social context surrounding a character
(C) environment for practicing acting
(D) forum in which the self is presented publicly
(E) source of a role’s psychological truth</p></li>
</ol>

<p>I cannot find any evidence for these questions. Please lend me your assistance.</p>

2

<p>15 is C. The author mentions this “self-oriented” method which is explained by the lines above. “A basic tenet of psychological realism is that characters live inside of you and that you create a lifelike portrayal of the character through a processof realizing your own similarity to the character.” We can say that this self-oriented method sort of rests on the assumption made by the author that actors have already felt the full range of human emotions from this. The quote says that this method involves the “process of realizing your own similarity to the character.” basically, humans can adapt to a character, putting themselves into the character’s shoes. the author assumes that humans are able to connect with the character because of their “similarities”.we can assume that actors have felt the full range of human emotions if humans are able to embody characters (“characters live inside you” “you create a lifelike portrayal”) rather than having humans “travel to” the character.</p>

<p>hope u understood! i tried my best explaining!</p>

3

<p>My thanks, Green1997. Guess I have not put too much thought in this reading.</p>