ShmoopTube

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[ musical flourish ]

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And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the Lego Movie.

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Why? Because everything really is awesome.

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[ singing ] Everything is awesome... Everything is...

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Yeah. Like that.

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All right, we're skimming, skimming...

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[ mumbles ]

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Okay.

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Which of the following best describes the development of the passage?

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And here are the potential answers.

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[ mumbles ]

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All right, well, here we go.

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When the question tells us to think about the development of the passage,

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it's just asking how the whole thing goes down.

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How does it start and where does it go from there?

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What does it like to eat? Where does it like to hang out on the weekends?

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Well, strike those last two questions. They're getting a little stalker-y.

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Okay, let's keep going.

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This is probably gonna be easiest if we go through and cross out

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what the passage is not.

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For example, we can cross out choice A because the narrator never gives us

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any opposing ways of interpreting anything.

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In this passage, we only get the author's point of view

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and the points of view of people that probably agree with him.

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What a tyrant.

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We can nix choice C for a similar reason.

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The author doesn't talk about different fields.

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In the passage, it's all science all the time.

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Option B isn't a contender, either.

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As far as we can tell, this author isn't having any

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personal revelations.

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Maybe B is thinking about some other passage in which the author

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gets his groove back.

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All right, we're also gonna say no to answer E.

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The author doesn't kick off with any widely held beliefs

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and he doesn't end with any modern perspectives.

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This option's a real phony.

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It sounds smart, but it doesn't have anything to do with the development of the passage.

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Option D, on the other hand, totally nails it.

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The passage begins as a closer look at the nature around us.

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After a slightly random mention of some guy's glass eye,

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the author hits us with the thesis:

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Science is awesome,

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and, in fact, necessary if we wanna live a worthwhile life.

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Next, the author starts supporting his argument with a bunch of

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quotes from people who must have mattered back when the passage was written.

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Well, there we go. That's choice D to a T.

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Incidentally, if we ever got a glass eye, we'd put

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a tiny lightbulb inside so that it glowed.

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That'd be kind of cool. Thoughts?

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[ belly laughter ]

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