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AP English Language and Composition: Passage Drill 2, Problem 3. The subject of the passage can best be described as what?
Take a look at this shmoopy AP English Language and Composition question and see if you can figure out which answer best describes the development...
AP English Language and Composition 8.6 Passage Drill 180 Views
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Description:
AP English Language and Composition 8.6 Passage Drill. Which of the following best sums up the sentence that begins, "The art of man..." (Line 54)?
Transcript
- 00:00
Thank you We sneak in and here's your shmoop du
- 00:05
jour Brought to you by arrogance from calvin klein The
- 00:08
scent that says i'm not just better than you I
- 00:11
smell better than you two All right Lookit lines forty
- 00:14
six fifty eight This area right here and going down
Full Transcript
- 00:18
and anything for you agent are the question is which
- 00:22
of the following best sums up the sentence that begins
- 00:26
the art of man and here the potential answers expected
- 00:31
Wait a minute All right well to get a sense
- 00:34
of the question let's break down the first part of
- 00:35
the sense that says the art of man could hardly
- 00:38
discover a more effectual antidote to improvement than this persuasion
- 00:43
Okay well since that doesn't really make any sense why
- 00:46
don't we try rewriting it into modern day english First
- 00:49
of all the phrase art of man clearly does not
- 00:51
have anything to do with art as it's typically defined
- 00:54
we're not talking painting or sculpting here In this case
- 00:57
the words art of man are being used as a
- 01:00
synonym for society So in other words the other is
- 01:03
saying society could hardly discover so on and so forth
- 01:06
Secondly the ward effectual means successful or effective but now
- 01:11
are slightly more understandable Sentence reads Society could hardly discover
- 01:15
more effective yada yada yada The next bit of the
- 01:18
senses antidote to improvement Well anyone who's ever seen a
- 01:21
spy movie knows that the antidote is the cure for
- 01:24
poison But in this sentence the author isn't referring to
- 01:27
poison she's referring to improvement or making one self better
- 01:31
which means the antidote we're talking about would keep someone
- 01:34
from improving themselves Sounds counterintuitive but well whatever So now
- 01:39
our sentence reads society could hardly discover a more effective
- 01:42
stumbling block to improvement Blah blah blah This is beginning
- 01:46
to make sense moving on to the final portion of
- 01:48
sense We see then this persuasion well for our super
- 01:52
understandable english sense a better word than persuasion would be
- 01:57
example So our sentence would read society could hardly discover
- 02:01
amore effective stumbling block to improvement Then this example But
- 02:05
wait what example is the author talking about it's Okay
- 02:08
we've got this Hang with us let's Just look at
- 02:10
the paragraph before this one to see if we can
- 02:12
find something Oh look there's that word Persuasion again in
- 02:16
line fifty one and in this situation it's referring to
- 02:19
american society on the whole believing that they are the
- 02:23
first and best of the human race that nothing is
- 02:26
to be learned but what they are able to teach
- 02:30
and that nothing is worth having which they do not
- 02:33
possess Okay so the persuasion or example that the author
- 02:36
is referring to is that americans are incredibly arrogant Haram
- 02:41
So if we plug that into our rework sentence it
- 02:44
would now read society could hardly discover a more effective
- 02:48
stumbling block to improvement than arrogance What's interesting is that
- 02:52
another way to write that sense in modern english modern
- 02:56
ish anyway is betterment is not possible without some modesty
- 03:01
and humility and there's our answer food it's option c
- 03:06
it does make a person wonder though what kind of
- 03:08
people did this author me when she came to america
- 03:10
Like seriously who on earth is this self centered in
- 03:13
devoid of human compassion Is the people she describes Yeah 00:03:17.16 --> [endTime] so
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