How can I stop getting easy, short passage questions wrong

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1

<p>Short CR's a pain for me too because the questions trap me when I come down to 2 choices after eliminating the answers that cannot be correct. For example, quickly read this passage:</p>

<p>Dr.Jane Wright insisted in later years that her father, surgeon Louis Wright, never pressured her to study medicine; indeed he warned her how hard becoming a doctor would be. His very fame, within and beyond the African American community, made her training hard in some ways. "His being so good really makes it difficult," Wright told an interviewer soon after she graduated from medical school in 1945. "Everyone knows who Papa is." (BB pg.455)</p>

<p>Now onto the question ...</p>

<p>The passage suggests that Jane Wright's medical training was made more difficult because ...</p>

<p>A) her father warned her not to study medicine
B) her father flaunted his success
C) she did not spend adequate time studying
D) she shared her father's desire for fame
E) she was inevitably compared to her father</p>

<p>So, I eliminated the not-so-possible answers. A should def. be eliminated so I eliminated A, then C, and was stuck with B, D, E. Easy questions to you guys for some reason give me a tough time. I did not know what "flaunt" meant so I had a tougher time. I eliminated it anyways and was stuck between D and E because I thought both could work. I pulled the trigger and went with D, but the answer was E. It's situations like these where I just want to give up -__- Can't D work as well? I don't know ...</p>

2

<p>Nowhere in the passage is told that the girl shared her father`s desire for fame .Whats more,the Jane Wright didnt even say that SHE had desire for fame
‘‘Everyone knows who Papa is’’ definitely tells that she was inevitably compared to her father.It makes sense when you think about it .If everyone know your father,people will always compare you to him.
flaunt means to show off ,to brag your achievements .Completely wrong answer</p>

3

<p>You have to read the shorter passages more carefully and slowly.</p>

<p>A - he didn’t warn her NOT to study medicine, he just said it would be tough
B - he was a well known doctor, but the passage never said he was arrogant
C - nowhere in the passage is this stated
D - it does not say this. It implies that her father’s fame would make it difficult to live up to others’ expectations as her father’s daughter, but does not say that she desired his fame (nor does it say that the father himself wanted fame).</p>

4

<p>The answer is directly stated in the passage:</p>

<p>“His very fame, within and beyond the African American community, made her training hard in some ways.”</p>

5

<p>CR7_ManUtd has said ’ ‘‘Everyone knows who Papa is’’ definitely tells that she was inevitably compared to her father. It makes sense when you think about it .If everyone know your father,people will always compare you to him.’</p>

<p>I don’t understand how you know people will always compare you to your father if everyone knows him. It just doesn’t make sense. How can one assertion imply the other?</p>

<p>Same thoughts regarding what eg2333 adds.</p>

<p>'The answer is directly stated in the passage:</p>

<p>“His very fame, within and beyond the African American community, made her training hard in some ways.” '</p>

<p>How does this sentence imply that she would inevitably be compared to her father?</p>

6

<p>the thing with reading passages is this, when it comes to answering them its best to come up with your own answers before looking at the given choices. More often than not, the answer choices given by CB are true but not related to the question or they have one word in it that makes it completely wrong. So it best to answer it in your own words and then look for the answer choice that matches your idea.</p>

<p>trust me this works my CR score was 570 but when i started doing this in practice test my score jumped to 700+</p>

<p>when i made up my own answer for the question i got, it was difficult because she was in her father’s shadow and looking at the choices E came close to it</p>

7

<p>Thanks for posting, DMA017.</p>

<p>Actually, I do something very similar. I read the question and then read the relevant lines and infer as much as possible from what I read. Then, I go back to the question, read the answer choices.</p>

<p>In doing so, I find that some of the choices are factually incorrect, so I ignore them. Others could be construed as interpretations of the text, so they might be correct. However, they do not answer the question that is asked, so, again, I ignore them. This usually leaves me with only one choice, which I find overwhelmingly more ‘sensible’ than the other choices anyway, that is, the right answer conforms in some sense to my interpretations of the text.This kind of analysis leads me to the right answer in every case I have encountered so far.</p>

<p>Now, the problem I face is this: you said that as soon as you read the text, you knew that ‘it was difficult (for her) because she was in her father’s shadow’, but I wouldn’t.</p>

<p>When I read ‘Dr.Jane Wright insisted in later years that her father, surgeon Louis Wright, never pressured her to study medicine’, the word ‘insist’ told me that she had to convince other people about it; ‘in later years’ told me that the passage is a continuation from a previous paragraph or sentence which is missing from the execrpt. That was all I could infer.</p>

<p>‘indeed he warned her how hard becoming a doctor would be’: the word ‘indeed’ told me what was to come after ‘indeed’ would strengthen her previous assertion. That was all I could infer.</p>

<p>‘His very fame, within and beyond the African American community, made her training hard in some ways.’: I can’t understand why. The sentence doesn’t make it clear. I could think of a lot of reasons. Perhaps, her socioeconomic status during her years in training was elevated because her father was a doctor and she was studying in a doctor’s school, which made it difficult for her peers to treat her as their equal. Or perhaps, she was the focus of constant media attention and was a public limelight, so she might not have have been able to concentrate on her studies (which is what is in answer choice c!!!: can you explain?).</p>

<p>“His being so good really makes it difficult,”: Her father was a very good surgeon. That made it difficult to continue her studies. But why?</p>

<p>‘Wright told an interviewer soon after she graduated from medical school in 1945.’: can’t infer anything.</p>

<p>“Everyone knows who Papa is.”: same interpretation as above.</p>

<p>Then I read the answer choices and find that e is plausible with “His being so good really makes it difficult” because I have seen the same things happen with the kids of a lot of big time celebrities. If I had not had that knowledge, I would picked c.</p>

<p>So you can understand my problems.</p>

<p>I’d appreciate any comments.</p>

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<p>hmm, I see what you’re getting at, but I think you may be inferring to much from the passage. Remember the whole goal of the thing is to answer the question based on the information given. If they ask you to infer something then that inference will not be far off from the idea being put forward in the passage. It will not call for any outside knowledge of the subject matter.</p>

<p>To me the excerpt given is solely concerned with stating that her father’s success made it difficult for her to pursue medicine. So any inference given shouldn’t be too far off from that main idea. You said “The sentence doesn’t make it clear. I could think of a lot of reasons.” that’s where you started to stray. You started to draw on outside knowledge instead of looking at he passage and seeing the bigger picture.</p>

<p>her father’s success made it difficult for her to be her own doctor and not the daughter of “Papa”, the passage supports this by saying “His being so good really makes it difficult” So finally with this knowledge you look at the answers and go through a process of elimination just as how @jamesford did. </p>

<p>I hope this helped "/, your main issue is that you began to over-analyze the passage.</p>