Q14

 
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PT 46 S1 Q14 P2 The passage suggests that Joy Kogawa

by deanmx Wed Sep 01, 2010 11:48 am

Can someone please explain why choice A) is wrong? I thought A) was correct because of line 37-40, which says "cultural screens of silence and secretiveness that have enshrouded her past". Thanks
 
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Re: PT 46 S1 Q14 The passage suggests that Joy Kogawa

by aileenann Wed Sep 01, 2010 9:11 pm

Hi there,

I'm glad to see you had a line of proof - it's so essential to train yourself to be really precise and demanding when it comes to proving your answer choice.

That said, I think you took this text for more than it means. In particular something being shrouded is not necessarily the same as people being discouraged from seeking it out. Discouragement is more active and purposeful whereas "shrouded" might just be talking about a side effect.

Does that make sense? Any chance I can get you to explain why (C) is the right answer :) ?
 
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Re: PT 46 S1 Q14 The passage suggests that Joy Kogawa

by deanmx Fri Sep 03, 2010 11:42 am

Thanks for the explanation.

For c) I think it came from line 41-43, "critique of the professed ethics of the majority culture". I think the reason I didn't pick this at first was because I didn't equate critiquing someone's ethics as calling someone a hypocrite.
 
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Re: PT 46 S1 Q14 The passage suggests that Joy Kogawa

by aileenann Mon Sep 13, 2010 3:37 pm

Thanks for following up with this explanation. I like the text you picked, and I think it matches up well with the wording of the answer choice. If you look further along in the same paragraph, I think you will find other parts of the text that also resonate with this.

Good luck with your studying!
 
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Re: PT 46 S1 Q14 The passage suggests that Joy Kogawa

by cyruswhittaker Wed Sep 22, 2010 1:22 am

Could you elaborate a little more on the support for C? I also chose A but see that it is not supported.

My support would come from the wording used, especially "a subtle crtique of the professed ethics of the majority culture that has shunned Naomi" and that in the first sentence we get the link between Christianity and the majority cultures' ethics.

And then the author proceeds to provide a specific example of her use of symbolism.

Thank you for the help.
 
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Re: PT 46 S1 Q14 The passage suggests that Joy Kogawa

by aileenann Wed Sep 22, 2010 8:37 am

I'd point to most of the text in that last paragraph - especially the first sentence, which points out that L specifically adopts motifs from Christian rituals as a "subtle critique" - the pairing of the critique with the motifs is good evidence of her intent and beliefs. We also see the critique repeated again in the last sentence, "critique of the majority culture," reinforcing this message that Christianity is being used to critique the very culture that practiced it, especially highlighted in the "abuse" on line 49.

I don't think this is the most well supported answer choice any of us have ever seen on the LSAT, but it's enough.
 
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Re: Q14

by irenewerwerwer Mon Oct 24, 2011 10:02 pm

aileenann could you suggest what skill to apply on this quesiton please? "Chirtian rituals" appears in the passage for just one time and the way it relates to "abuse" is very implicated and unclear, and I tend to pass it as one of the numerous details. So after reading the whole passage when confronting Q14 I have no idea the author has ever mentioned anything about religion. By what means could one balance the speed and still able to local such details?

Thank you!
 
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Re: Q14

by shirando21 Mon Aug 27, 2012 5:05 pm

I picked B.

I don't understand where the religious ethics comes from in answer choice C.

Please help.
 
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Re: Q14

by xinglipku Mon Sep 03, 2012 11:02 pm

Hi, I don't quite understand how can you link "Christian" to the "professed ethics and majority culture"?
 
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Re: Q14

by soyeonjeon Sat Aug 03, 2013 12:00 am

Could one of the experts explain why C is the answer?
I picked A and after going over the last paragraph and reading this thread, I still fail to grasp the answer for this particular question.
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Re: Q14

by ohthatpatrick Mon Aug 05, 2013 12:50 pm

Any time I see an "inferred/implies/suggests" question stem that gives me keywords, I begin by finding those keywords in the passage. The correct answer is normally just a rewording/reinforcement of wherever you find the keywords (+/- 1 sentence).

We knew from the last sentence of the 1st paragraph that the 2nd paragraph would discuss how the form of the novel emphasized Naomi's heroism, and we knew that the 3rd paragraph would discuss how the symbols the author used would subtly critique the majority culture.

Since the keywords here are "the society that shunned Naomi", I would initially be thinking: 3rd paragraph.

I find the keywords right away in the first sentence. I want to not JUST read the sentence with the keywords, but also re-familiarize myself with the context. As said before, we know the purpose of the 3rd paragraph is to convey the author's critique of the majority culture using subtle symbols (which we now learn are Christian symbols).

(C) seems to be the strongest match for this sentence.
"religious" reinforces "Christian"
"supposed ethics" reinforces "professed ethics"
and
"the society violated its ethics by shunning Naomi" reinforces that the 3rd paragraph is showing how Kogawa used symbols to "critique the majority culture" and that Naomi's country "abused her people".

As said earlier in this thread, nothing about this answer is perfect, but it does a better job of reinforcing the keyword sentence and its context than any other answer choices do.

(A) the closest textual support for this comes from the 2nd paragraph ... the 1st paragraph delineated a clear topic shift from 2nd to 3rd paragraph, so a question that's testing a line reference from the 3rd paragraph is not going to leave that paragraph for direct support

(B) this is also dealing with the 2nd paragraph, which focused on how the form of a transformational story emphasized Naomi's heroism.

(D) "prohibited" is extreme and "rites of passage" AGAIN is a 2nd paragraph idea.

(E) "demanded" and "replaced" are extreme, and I don't see where "loyalty" to family vs. government is ever talked about, but there's definitely not paraphrase of that in the 3rd paragraph.

Some of the most challenging RC questions you'll face are those in which the correct answer is not technically a legal paraphrase of anything written; it's just the MOST supportable answer. You have to live with picking the answer for which you CAN provide the best line reference and finding more convincing ways to eliminate the other options.

One previous poster seemed concerned that the detail being tested here is rather quick, fleeting, inconsequential.

Two thoughts:
1. Insofar as this answer is about "what the critique of the majority culture was", this is a BIG idea. The main idea of the passage is lines 8-12, and this is part 2 of the 2-part idea.

2. Insofar as this answer references the religious/Christian stuff, it's perfectly fair for an "inferred/implies/suggests" question to hone in on some nitty-gritty detail that's only mentioned once. These question stems aren't necessarily asking for BIG ideas, just true/supported ones.

The thing that helps me the most with these questions is initially using the keywords to find the window of the passage that is being tested (1-2 sentences, usually) and staying faithful to that window.

Hope this helps.
 
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Re: Q14

by stol1989 Mon Jan 13, 2014 4:08 pm

I have a question.
A) Line 37 says "Naomi breaks through the personal and cultural screens of silence and secretiveness that had enshrouded her past, and reconciles herself with her history."

Naomi breaks...and reconciles. When author uses such construction it is reasonable to assume that cultural screens of silence and secretiveness prevented Naomi from reconciling.
"A" says that society that shuns Naomi discouraged its citizens from seeking out their heritage. Does "A" try to play on subtle difference between prevented and "discouraged from seeking"? It could be true that people strove to know more but nobody dared to teach.
"C" Line 41: Kogawa's use of motifs drawn from Christian rituals and symbols forms a subtle critique of the professed ethics of the majority culture that has shunned Naomni.
Line 49: Of her country's abuse of her people.

Answer choice: It violated its own SUPPOSED RELIGIOUS ethics.
- How do we know that professed ethics is religious ethic. It could be derived from common sense, because we know that passage is about Canada an USA and the word "professed" is most commonly used in religious context.
- How do we know, that if religion is vulnerable to criticism from the Christian's perspective, it violates its own supposed ethics? Maybe Muslim religious is ripe for critics from Christianity point of view.
So again, do we need do use common sense to infer that majority religion in USA and Canada is Christianity? Otherwise "C" doesn't make any choice.

Any suggestion about when we should use common sense and when not? It seems to me that LSAT especially loves to employ our real world knowledge and common sense assumptions to create attractive wrong answers. How do you discern when do use outside knowledge and when not?
 
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Re: Q14

by chunsun.b Thu Jun 26, 2014 12:37 am

Now that I look at it, this question seems one of those hard RC questions that have two seemingly valid answer choices. For this question, the two candidates would be (A) and (C).

But when I first came across the question, I picked (C) without too much difficulty. This was because I thought that the answer choice would most likely be coming from the third paragraph. I knew this from the wording of the question: it asks for Kogawa's belief on "the society that shuns Naomi." The wording is extremely similar to the latter-half of the first sentence of the third paragraph.

Granted, (C) does seem more far-fetched (because of the words "violated" and "religious") than what the first sentence of the third paragraph is saying. Now that I think about it, though, I think we are supposed to infer from the first sentence of the third paragraph that the "professed ethics" that Kogawa intended to critique were the ethics from Christianity: after all, Christianity is part of the "majority culture" in North America; and Christianity emphasizes such "ethics" as tolerance and compassion. Thus, by "shunning" Naomi, the society "violated" its "supposed religious ethics" of tolerance and compassion.

If we make this inference, (C) makes sense.
 
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Re: Q14

by einuoa Fri Aug 08, 2014 1:05 pm

chunsun.b Wrote:Now that I look at it, this question seems one of those hard RC questions that have two seemingly valid answer choices. For this question, the two candidates would be (A) and (C).

But when I first came across the question, I picked (C) without too much difficulty. This was because I thought that the answer choice would most likely be coming from the third paragraph. I knew this from the wording of the question: it asks for Kogawa's belief on "the society that shuns Naomi." The wording is extremely similar to the latter-half of the first sentence of the third paragraph.

Granted, (C) does seem more far-fetched (because of the words "violated" and "religious") than what the first sentence of the third paragraph is saying. Now that I think about it, though, I think we are supposed to infer from the first sentence of the third paragraph that the "professed ethics" that Kogawa intended to critique were the ethics from Christianity: after all, Christianity is part of the "majority culture" in North America; and Christianity emphasizes such "ethics" as tolerance and compassion. Thus, by "shunning" Naomi, the society "violated" its "supposed religious ethics" of tolerance and compassion.

If we make this inference, (C) makes sense.


This is a great explanation, although I feel like this really does employ common sense knowledge that Christianity is supposed to be part of the majority culture that Kogawa discusses, and I think once that inference is made, the question is a little bit easier. Can someone explain more in detail how to make common sense inferences like this when we're supposed to? In other questions, I find that common sense usually does not lead to the right answer...
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Re: Q14

by ohthatpatrick Sun Aug 10, 2014 10:16 pm

I don't think you need to "know" that Christianity is the most common religion in the US and Canada.

You can still pick (C) just because it is the most supported option available to us, and from a test-taking / test-writing point of view, it is the closest textual match for the keywords given to us in the question stem.

The problem with (A) being supported by line 37-40 (in addition to the leap in strength between "cultural screens of silence and secretiveness" and "discouraging citizens from seeking out their heritage") is that this line reference is about what happens to Naomi within the novel.

This question is about what the AUTHOR, Kogawa, thinks about that society. We need Kogawa more directly involved in the line reference we use to support our answer.

The logic of line 41-44 gives some support that Christianity is related to the professed ethics of the majority culture. It probably wouldn't be the "subtle critique" if the author weren't using the majority culture's own symbols against itself.

In terms of the common sense question ... it gets a bad rap on LSAT. Common sense is fine ... it's indispensable on Strengthen, Weaken, Resolve/Explain, etc.

People think that they're not allowed to use common sense because sometimes questions make you state assumptions that are pretty common sensical. That doesn't mean they're not assumptions.

For example:
Should we feed poison to children? Of course not. That's like asking if we should punch babies in the face!

Assumption:
We should not punch babies in the face.

This IS a necessary assumption.

On a Strengthen/Weaken question, the test is fine with you making that common sense assumption. However, it's still true that it IS an assumption.

If I negated it and said "we SHOULD punch babies in the face", the original argument falls to pieces.

So don't think that just because the test sometimes asks us to articulate an assumption that is common sense that it doesn't want us to use common sense.

Assumptions are necessarily UNTRUE ideas, they're just unstated ones.

If I say:
Paul applied to Harvard. Thus, Paul applied to a highly ranked school.

That conclusion is correct, but that argument isn't logically valid.

Two different things.

We are assuming that "Harvard is a highly ranked school".
In order to make the argument logically valid, I have to add that assumption.

So use common sense throughout, but understand that the more you're justifying your answer using the words on the page, the safer you are. :)