Passage Discussion

[andrewgong01]

P1: Intro to Proverb within the Mexican American Community. A lot of the origins seem unimportant. Not sure if this is a fair observation but I have noticed lately as I examine each answer choice in greater detail there seems to be almost always for a "Most supported"/ Inference questions a tempting wrong answer choice or the correct answer choice that revolves around a line or two they introduced at the start. For example line 5 was tested in Q12 . Line 16 was also tested in Q10. Usually it also is a sentence with "gentle" language.

P2: Use #1 of Proverb : To Teach


P3: Use #2 : To give a sense of community.


Do you think there was a place that was indicated earlier in the passage this passage will be structured around the use of proverbs. For some reason when I first read it I did not see this structure until P3 when it said "Another ...use" and thats when I looked back at P2 and realized this passage was about uses of proverbs and not s much on the origin or definition of proverbs as the the First 15-20 lines seem to suggest. I feel like had I not caught onto that transition in P3 I would have struggled a lot more in answering the questions and a risky move to have discovered it towards the end of the passage

[ohthatpatrick]

Nice observations.

Yes, a lot of answers to "inferred / implies / suggests / most likely to agree" question stems can often be an unimportant fact hidden somewhere near the beginning.

That's just the mean nature of those questions. We shouldn't try to make something unimportant feel more important in an effort to get ready for that type of answer choice, IF it exists.

The correct answers to those question stems skew towards gentle language. Filtering out strong claims is normally my 1st pass on those question stems.

There is not an obvious structural clue that the passage will be about proverbs and flesh out their two main purposes. Once we're done reading the passage, it looks like the first sentence is pretty close to a summary of the main point.

It really isn't until the beginning of P3 that we get the rhetorical purpose flourish we're otherwise looking for.

You shouldn't be mad that you didn't "solve the structure / main point" until the final paragraph. That's just how some passages are written. You should be proud it was still on your mind, "What IS the main point of this thing?" and proud that you recognized the start of P3 as an indication that retroactively revealed the purpose of P2.

There are a lot of instances like that, where a transition sentence will help you understand the function of the previous paragraph and that of the current paragraph.