My entry into Black women’s history was serendipitous. I recount the story of how Shirley Herd successfully provoked me to change my research and writing focus. Although I dedicate this volume to her and to her best friend, I still blush at the fact that I went to graduate school to become a historian to contribute to the Black Struggle for social justice and yet met her request to write a history of Black women in Indiana with condescension. I thought her invitation and phone call intrusive. Only later did I concede how straightforward and reasonable had been her request to redress a historical omission.
Questions:
The first sentence indicates that the author's entry was:
A. troublesome but worthwhile
B. challenging but rewarding
C. fortunate and inevitable
D. unexpected but agreeable
E. startling and provocative
Huh? Please explain. The first sentence alone as well as the context means that the author’s entrance into Black women’s history was both unexpected and agreeable. Something that is serendipitous isn’t expected, and it is also positive. What would you say the answer is—I see nothing else in the list that fits.
I disagree with the unexpected part. Yes, it was agreeable at the end as she said Only later did I concede how straightforward and reasonable had been her request to redress a historical omission. However, how is it unexpected? Why isn’t it troublesome because she was told to do her project so much that she was just convinced at the end?
Seriously, what part of “occurring or discovered by chance in a happy or beneficial way” is hard to understand? Also, the prompt asks specifically about the first sentence, so even if it was expected (which it isn’t, given the sentence you quote in #4) or unpleasant (which it isn’t, since she ultimately finds it to be a positive), the first sentence says that it is neither.
First, it was serendipitious, or fortunate. Look for a choice that says so.
A - nothing indicates it was troublesome
B - nothing indicates it was challenging
C - keep this one
D - keep this one
E - nothing indicates it was provocative, or controversial.
C has a synonym for serendipitous, but the inevitable part is incorrect. Here’s why: the author says she was arrogant when it came to her friend’s request, so she could have simply avoided her friend because she was too intrusive. So nothing guarntees that her friend’s pushing her to study black women history was inevitale, or not avoidable. The author could have shunned her.
Now D. Agreeable means fortuitious. Also, it WAS unexpected. Did the author expect her friend to be so insistent on having the author publish a book on black history? No. It happened by chance (which also defines serendipitious)
@dfbdfb You are right - except when one doesn’t know what the word means (and there is a good chance of that occurring). I was just arguing against the unexpected part. In summary, the woman was in grad school researching the Black Struggle, and at the same time she felt it ironic that she was against researching Black women in Indiana. That can be unexpected. But one cannot forget that she did have a negative attitude towards it at first (I mean, she labeled Herd’s calls intrusive). She felt troublesome even being convinced to start the project (though later she felt it was worthwhile). Just some thoughts against the unexpected part.
That’s why (a) the prompt asks about the first sentence, and (b) it’s important to remember that that first sentence is part of the context, too—if it wasn’t for it being described as serendipitous, then yes, it might appear to be negative. Having been called serendipitous, however, makes the whole thing, in the end, positive.
Really, this is ultimately a vocabulary prompt more than a reading comprehension prompt.
@marvin100 - I think your contributions are tops on this forum. You are clearly an expert on CR and Writing. With all due respect though, I disagree with your comment above.
Vocab is clearly an important part of every CR section, but I think it is far from the primary skill tested (at least for native english speakers). In fact, its not necessarily the primary skill tested on sentence completion questions. In my experience the ability to actually read critically and answer questions strategically is more important.
Sure, @CHD2013, that’s fine, and I’m quite comfortable knowing that many disagree with me about the primacy of vocab. That said, what you call “the ability to actually read critically” is not reducible to a single skill. Here are (in my estimation) the reading skills tested:
ability to identify paraphrases (vocab!)
ability to identify the relationships between claims and evidence
ability to define vocab from context (partly vocab)
ability to identify main ideas
ability to identify analogous situations/ideas/concepts
ability to identify tone (answers are always vocab)
ability to identify characterization (answers are usually vocab)
I strongly believe that vocab accounts for significantly more points than any of these skills, especially when we consider that #1, 3, 6, and 7 virtually always involve vocab and all of the others sometimes do (any given sentence in a passage might include “SAT vocab,” after all).
I also believe the CR test doesn’t test “critical reading” at all. Instead, I believe it tests “gullible reading,” because test-takers are supposed to take every element of a passage at face value–the passage is the final word on every question, regardless of the assumptions it makes and any knowledge the reader might have from other sources. One way many test-takers mess up, for example, is making perfectly reasonable inferences, extrapolations, and subjective interpretations, all of which are penalized by the test, which requires that virtually every answer be expressly verifiable in the passage.
@BeCambridge: I find social context and awareness to be as important here as vocabulary and comprehension. You did a fine job at explaining your resistance to comfortably being able to reconcile the author’s surprised reaction and hitherto unexplored feelings at being asked to research Black women’s history with the stated correct response of “unexpected.” As the author was arrogant at the request made to do research one might easily see as a component of the author’s grad school work, you accepted that “unexpected” could be offered up as a response, but only after some deconstructing of the passage.
This is where a social context and awareness would have worked to lessen the strife.
When one is, or at least this has been true for decades past, studying great movements and the acts, works, and history of a people, generally that means just “men,” and not “all men/mankind/women”. It had never been deemed worth noting that women had a life, consciousness, or works important enough to form a portion of the canon of a people. The story of Blacks in the Americas is no different in respect to that sociological preference for interest in, and therefore legitimacy of, the efforts of the men. It could not have been substantial to any degree to know what Black women - in Indiana?- were doing, or had done, or so went the author’s thinking at the outset.
@BeCambridge - xiggi strongly disagrees with me. He’s not around anymore, but he and I had a few back-and-forths about it. He’s not unreasonable, but after many such discussions, we remained at odds.
@marvin100 - that’s an extremely thoughtful post in support of your position re: vocab and clearly also supports my previous comments about your expertise. Perhaps, a reason for our differences on this topic is the assumed starting point of test takers. I’ve read your previous posts and know that you’ve had great success with students who have focused on learning vocabulary, so its hard to really argue with it.
Here’s a different view of where vocab fits into the SAT. In the extreme, someone with almost no english vocabulary will obviously have to obtain a large base of english words to answer any question. In the other extreme, kids with great vocab and test taking skills can walk into the test and get stellar scores with no prep at all. I’m a little more focused on kids that have strong academic records that need prep to get top SAT scores. From what I’ve seen, these kids need to review some basic skills then learn how to take the test and understand the patterns, types of questions and typical correct answers. Following this path can lead to enormous improvements in scores, without any specific study of vocabulary.
I see a lot of top kids who have great reading skills, but for them to ensure a 750+ score, they really must lock down the vocab because (on the current test) a lot of SAT vocab is esoteric, and even a great reader may not have come across several words on any given test. Since all it takes is two unknown vocab words to put a sentcom at risk (if you don’t know one word, you can reliably eliminate your way to the answer, but if you don’t know two words, the best you can do is narrow it down to 50/50, which isn’t reliable enough for a student who wants 750+ certainty). Just my two cents.