<p>I just did Section 4 of blue book's 2nd SAT practice test and stumbled across one question to which CB's correct answer choice baffles me. The text plus corresponding question is relayed to you guys below. Good luck!</p>
<p><...pencil turned over and pretended to sketch in with the eraser an area that must have been around fifty miles long, through which the river hooked and cramped. "When they take another survey and rework the map," Levis said, "all this in here will be blue. The dam at Aintry has already been started, and when it's finished next spring the river will back up fast. This whole valley will be under water. But right now it's wild. And I MEAN wild; it looks like something up in ALASKA. We really ought to go up there before the real estate people get hold of it and make it over into one of their heavens." I leaned forward and concentrated...></p>
<p>The question is:</p>
<ol>
<li>In line 22, "Alaska" (spelled out in capital letters by me) serves as an example of a place that is...</li>
</ol>
<p>Now, which one is the answer? In order to not give you any bias, I will announce the seemingly correct answer after some responses have come in.</p>
<p>“But right now it’s wild. And I mean wild; it looks like something in Alaska.”</p>
<p>The answer is the synonym for wild–undeveloped.</p>
<p>Another context clue is that it is going to soon be developed by the real estate people. They want to get there while it is undeveloped, before it gets developed.</p>
<p>Thanks! I don’t quite get the reasoning process here, though…</p>
<p>My reasoning was:
“wild” must mean something like “great”
It’s great and the real estate people want to use it to set up a “heaven”, so it must be positive and relate in some way to real estate, e.g. scenic location. Perhaps they want to make it a heaven as in “holiday mansions situated within a beautiful scenery”.</p>
<p>How is this kind of thinking fallacious?</p>
<p>At any rate, I’ve got yet another question…</p>
<ol>
<li>The sentence in which “controversial” appears indicates that the narrator considers the word to be</li>
</ol>
<p>(A) WRONG
(B) WRONG
(C) an impression
(D) an overstatement
(E) an epithet</p>
<p>My guess would have been (E), the epithet. Why? The narrator mentions the symposiums he attended had been a series of “controversial” ones, meaning “controversial” is used to describe every single one of them. Now, when one looks at the definition of epithet (something like a defining or characteristic adjective with which you can identify something) its meaning clearly applies here. We’ve got a series of symposiums, their main characteristic being that each is one of the “controversial” lectures, so why wouldn’t the narrator consider the word to be an epithet? I’m puzzled. The concept of “overstatement” is not even hinted at in the sentence we are supposed to look at (perhaps later in the passage but that’s not really relevant, is it?).</p>
<p>Finally, has anyone got a good method for approaching the “quotation mark questions”? I am having a lot of trouble with these generally, so some tips would be more than helpful. :)</p>
<p>Cheers and good luck studying for the SAT to y’all</p>
</i>
<p>The professor is old and he’s talking against modern technology. Narrator said he/she thought it was cool, but “too romantic” - unrealistic, fanciful, impractical.</p>
<p>So, in the narrator’s mind, it couldn’t be a controversial lecture, because he/she thought the professor wasn’t being realistic/objective.</p>
<p>Without looking at the answers, I’m going to guess that the answer is a synonym of wild. I’d cross of A, C, and D. Between B and E I pick E because immense means big and that isn’t wild.</p>
<p>PSViki had it right. Your understanding of ‘wild’ is based on its use in slang (as in ‘a wild party’), but it has little to do with the meaning of the passage. </p>
<p>The word “controversial” in quotes means that the writer is emphasizing the word for a reason, usually because the writer disagrees with someone else’s use of the word. Think of it this way - is it really controversial that some old guy is complaining about such things as email and instant messaging? Is that really a controversy? Are people all over the country debating whether or not email is useful? It is only a controversy in the mind of that antiquated, totally out of it professor. So the writer puts quotes around the word ‘controversy’ to show he is amused by its use to describe the professor’s lecture. He is using the word in a satirical way. Quotes around a word can mean look out for irony, satire and sarcasm in the use of the word. To call the professor’s “earnest diatribe” a “controversy” is clearly an overstatement.</p>
<p>i think the word ‘controversial’ implies that it is an overstatement because the writer saii dthe speech was interesting but too romatic. in this case, ‘romatic’ means the speech is a hyperbole which is not realistic or based on fact. Surely it must be an overstatement.</p>
<p>for the 1st question, ‘undeveloped’ should be the only answer.</p>
<p>It’s unequivocally “undeveloped,” since it’s a fair synonym for “wild” and it’s contrasted with “the real estate people get hold of it and make it over into one of their heavens”–after all, what do “real estate people” do? The develop undeveloped land, build homes and subdivisions, and transform it from “wild” to “civilized.”</p>
<p>Thanks!
I see now how slang interpretations don’t really have a place in the SAT. I thought because it was part of direct speech… anyways, thanks for your help guys.</p>