LSAT Forum
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- cyt5015
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Thanks Received: 6
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Elle Woods
- Posts: 75
- Joined: June 01st, 2013
Q1
I was debating between B and C, and finally choose B. Is the word "can" in answer C a bit too strong? My thought is even though Bertholet's study attests to the factuality and subjectiveness, we still cannot say "memoirs can be regarded as factual and subjective." Author seems to have a neutral point of view. Can someone help with this one please?
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- rinagoldfield
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Thanks Received: 308
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Atticus Finch
- Posts: 390
- Joined: December 13th, 2011
Re: Q1
Hey cyt, thanks for your post! (and happy new year...)
Let’s think about the passage for a minute before considering the answer choices. This passage is a hard one to synthesize, since it takes lots of unexpected turns.
Paragraph 1.
The first paragraph gives the impression that the passage will primarily concern gender and class in relation to French Revolutionary memoirs.
Paragraph 2.
This impression turns out to be false. The second paragraph jumps into the question of memory’s fickleness. Are these memoirs reliable? The second paragraph offers two methods for verifying memoirs. But it doesn’t answer the question of whether French Revolutionary memoirs written by women are reliable or not.
Paragraph 3.
We get our answer in the final paragraph: a study by Denis Bertholet confirms that these memoirs are credible. The author suggests that this is significant because these memoir-writers are predecessors of later French feminists.
Our task on Question 1 is to find the main idea of the passage. The right answer should talk about French Revolutionary memoirs written by women, discuss the credibility of these memoirs, and perhaps say something about their significance vis-a-vis feminism.
(C) is the correct answer on this one. The "can" in (C) isn’t too strong, since the passage does indeed conclude that the memoirs are reliable. The author states that "Bertholet’s study attests to the credibility of these accounts" (lines 53-54). This is the author’s voice, not Bertholet’s. (C) also gets at the doubts about reliability ("although written years later..."), which are important to acknowledge. (C) doesn’t discuss the feminist significance of the memoirs, but it’s the best of the bunch.
(B) is too weak. Studies HAVE drawn definitive conclusions about the memoirs’ accuracy. Bertholet’s study says they’re accurate, and the author implies his/her agreement.
(A) doesn’t tell us whether or not the memoirs are credible; it just says that there’s debate. We can eliminate (A) for this reason alone. But (A) also misidentifies the significance of the memoirs. The author thinks the memoirs are important because they foreshadow later feminist writing, not because they "reflect intolerance."
(D) is contradicted. The memoirs are credible.
(E) is unsupported. The author thinks questions of credibility are important, and wouldn’t write them off like (E) does.
Hope this helps!
Let’s think about the passage for a minute before considering the answer choices. This passage is a hard one to synthesize, since it takes lots of unexpected turns.
Paragraph 1.
The first paragraph gives the impression that the passage will primarily concern gender and class in relation to French Revolutionary memoirs.
Paragraph 2.
This impression turns out to be false. The second paragraph jumps into the question of memory’s fickleness. Are these memoirs reliable? The second paragraph offers two methods for verifying memoirs. But it doesn’t answer the question of whether French Revolutionary memoirs written by women are reliable or not.
Paragraph 3.
We get our answer in the final paragraph: a study by Denis Bertholet confirms that these memoirs are credible. The author suggests that this is significant because these memoir-writers are predecessors of later French feminists.
Our task on Question 1 is to find the main idea of the passage. The right answer should talk about French Revolutionary memoirs written by women, discuss the credibility of these memoirs, and perhaps say something about their significance vis-a-vis feminism.
(C) is the correct answer on this one. The "can" in (C) isn’t too strong, since the passage does indeed conclude that the memoirs are reliable. The author states that "Bertholet’s study attests to the credibility of these accounts" (lines 53-54). This is the author’s voice, not Bertholet’s. (C) also gets at the doubts about reliability ("although written years later..."), which are important to acknowledge. (C) doesn’t discuss the feminist significance of the memoirs, but it’s the best of the bunch.
(B) is too weak. Studies HAVE drawn definitive conclusions about the memoirs’ accuracy. Bertholet’s study says they’re accurate, and the author implies his/her agreement.
(A) doesn’t tell us whether or not the memoirs are credible; it just says that there’s debate. We can eliminate (A) for this reason alone. But (A) also misidentifies the significance of the memoirs. The author thinks the memoirs are important because they foreshadow later feminist writing, not because they "reflect intolerance."
(D) is contradicted. The memoirs are credible.
(E) is unsupported. The author thinks questions of credibility are important, and wouldn’t write them off like (E) does.
Hope this helps!
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