<p>The announcement that his vaccine worked was a landmark in twentieth-century history, and one of the few events that burned itself into the consciousness of the world because the news was good.</p>
<p>Lines 9-12 ("The announcement... good") imply that</p>
<p>a. the reaction to the news of the Salk vaccine was somewhat overblown
b. the media had a great deal of influence on the public response to the Salk vaccine
c. the twentieth century had more medical achievements than did any previous period
d. people usually overlook problems until they become impossible to ignore
e. disasters were usually more widely known and better remembered than were successes</p>
<p>The correct answer was E. However, I did not choose it because I interpreted the sentence (... one of the few events that burned... news was good) to mean that because the news was good, it was one of events, although few, remembered by people. However, CB interpreted it to mean that because it was the few events that people actually remembered.</p>
<p>From what I have read and noticed the implied answer is usually clearly stated. I read it the same way as you first, but there is no logical answer for that interpretation. It took me a while, but eventually I understood exactly how it was supposed to be read.</p>
<p>My understanding of the passage matches up exactly with what choice E is saying, so CB is not alone in their “interpretation.”</p>
<p>For me, I really think it had to do with “common sense” knowledge outside the passage. Many, many, notable events occurred in the 1900’s: WWI, WWII, Space Race, etc., definitely not a few were remembered because they were good.</p>
<p>Sometimes, there will be many possible interpretations of a line. In this case, your particular interpretation didn’t match any answer choice, so therefore I would at least re-read that line until a second interpretation is grasped. I personally think CB did not include the answer choice of your interpretation on purpose to remove potential ambiguity.</p>
<p>a. the reaction to the news of the Salk vaccine was somewhat overblown
b. the media had a great deal of influence on the public response to the Salk vaccine
c. the twentieth century had more medical achievements than did any previous period
d. people usually overlook problems until they become impossible to ignore
e. disasters were usually more widely known and better remembered than were successes</p>
<hr>
<p>At initial glance I easily crossed out B,C, and D.</p>
<p>a. Easy trap answer. Overblown usually refers to something that has an insignificant or less significant meaning being inflated. However, this is not the case as described by the sentence, “his vaccine worked was a landmark in twentieth-century”.
b. I don’t see anything related to media.
c. Could be true, but did it talk about other centuries? NO!
d. Sure, ■■■ does this have to do with anything?
e. Correct!</p>
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<p>The key thing that makes me gravitate towards “E” is this, “one of the few events that burned itself into the consciousness of the world because the news was good”.</p>
<p>The quoted portion is saying or implying that most invents burned into the consciousness stemmed from bad news.</p>
<p>My recommendation is cross-out all the answers that are CLEARLY wrong. When you get down to the final two or three re-read the sentence and re-read the answers looking for minor adjectives like “few” and “bad”.</p>
<p>Whenever you see the word “imply” don’t read it in the conventional way with the meaning be “infer” see it as “what information in this sentence CLEARLY coincides with one of the answers”.</p>
<p>A comma, separating “burned itself into the consciousness of the world” and “because the news was good,” would make your interpretation more likely. As it is, without a comma, the sentence seems unlikely to be interpreted in the way you interpreted it initially, because the clause “the announcement … was … one of the few events …” (which is crucial in your interpretation since it is what is being explained in the “the news was good” statement) is not as coherent as the relative clause “[that] burned itself into the consciousness” (which is crucial in the original [correct] interpretation), which (significantly) comes immediately before the “because …” statement.</p>
<p>EXAMPLE: “I met a guy who was running while I was walking down the street.”
One is tempted to connect “who was running” to “while I was walking down the street”; i.e., it is tempting to interpret the sentence as saying that the object (the “guy”) was running while the subject was walking. If we effectively separate the relative clause “who was running” from the conjunction “while,” for example if we say "I met a guy (who was running) while I was walking down the street, we can make the alternative interpretation (that, grammatically speaking, the meeting, not the running, was precisely what occurred with the walking) more likely.</p>
<p>Either way, the usage of the comma very often leads to technical ambiguity. But common sense and context often tell you what a sentence means to say.</p>
<p>(Also, I’m not so sure the original sentence is grammatically correct. “one of the few events that burned itself into the consciousness of the world” should be “one of the few events that burned themselves into the consciousness of the world,” since the event is one event among several events that burned themselves into the consciousness of the world–although the original sentence doesn’t sound all that bad to me for some reason.)</p>
<p>The key word is “because.” (Also, are you sure the comma is in the original sentence? It shouldn’t be.)</p>
<p>The announcement that his vaccine worked was a landmark in twentieth-century history and one of the few events that burned itself into the consciousness of the world because the news was good.</p>