November 2010 SAT - Critical Reading

<p>@alexxanderr: Yeah, it was sequestered. The quarantine one didn’t work cuz of the other word, can’t remember what it was.</p>

<p>Jeez did no one get this version?</p>

<p>no consolidated list yet?</p>

<p>I find the passages for artist and bats:</p>

<p>[Page</a> Title](<a href=“http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mDlM7WY9TdMJ:zoolander52.tripod.com/theartsection2.6/id1.html+french+artist+lulled+by+meaty+hand&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us]Page”>http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:mDlM7WY9TdMJ:zoolander52.tripod.com/theartsection2.6/id1.html+french+artist+lulled+by+meaty+hand&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)</p>

<p>To hear the author read the following excerpt from The Painter from Shanghai (published by W.W. Norton, 2008), please click here.</p>

<p>Doodlings, she thinks of them. Her little worthless scribbles: tiny images of fruits, flowers, monkey faces and occasional dragon, topped with Qian Ma’s head. These are figures that almost of their own impetus bud and unfurl in the blank margins of Yuliang’s copybook these days. To her eye, the small pictures are as inexcusably inexpert as was that first grief-stricken sketch of Jinling. More than once, appalled at how her pencil has mauled a plum, she’s vowed to stop altogether. And yet the little pictures keep coming, in a process both addictive and mystifying. It’s the same need that drove her to stay up through the early morning hours at the Hall, coaxing peonies and fresh-faced peaches onto cloth with her needle. But there, she’s discovering, is something liberating about ink or lead. Unfettered by thread, she can bring the whims of her thoughts—whispering trees, wilting flowers—to life quickly, if often ineptly. And even when the images are inept the solution is refreshingly simple. She simply rips the page out and starts over.</p>

<p>As more and more of her study time is devoted to art she starts to worry as she hands Zanhua her “study” sheets: it seems impossible to her that he won’t reprimand her for putting so little effort into them. To her astonishmenet, though, he doesn’t even seem to notice that the characters she once spent hours on are now dashed off in half that time. He continues to praise her brushwork and the delicacy of her execution. At least, until one afternoon when he is at home working in his office. </p>

<p>Yuliang is lying on his bed upstairs with her writing things. Lulled into a dreamy daze by the rain-patter on the glass, she is thinking about the old French priest from their outing; about the deft assurance with which those meaty hands captured a flowers frail beauty. The same feeling she’d had then—a thrill, blended with longing—fills her, and almost without thinking about it she pages past the day’s vocabulary in her copybook. Tongue between her lips, she makes soft gray sweeps on the paper. She adds more detail a faint line there, a smudge here. A dark crease to show the dainty fold of a leaf. The flower’s flaws—its unevenness; the unnatural cast of attempted shading—needle her. And yet she keeps on trying.</p>

<p>On her fourth try she takes a different approach. Instead of drawing line by line, she tries to tap into that flashquick association between image and meaning that is the key to her growing literacy. Orchid, she thinks. Orchid. And without letting her mind go any further, she puts her lead tip once more to the paper’s surface. When she is done she shuts her eyes, then opens them again. </p>

<p>To her thrilled surprise, what she has drawn is just that: an orchid. It’s still a bit crooked, a little chunky in the stem and stamen. She’d do better if she had one right in front of her. And yet anyone—a schoolboy, a child not yet capable of reading the word, even, looking at this picture, would know it for what it was. Flushed with victory, she’s just turning a fresh page to try it again when Zanhua flings himself on the bed, almost on top of her. “Ah-ha! Caught you!” he cries nuzzling her neck. “You didn’t hear me come up?” He pulls her, copybook and all, into a rough embrace. “The old sons-of-turtles are crazy,” he shouts. “There’s no way in hell we’re going to be able to check all small craft in the Harbor before they reach the docks!” </p>

<p>“No way, certainly,” she says, into the lime-sweet pomade of his hair, “if you don’t ever leave the house.” </p>

<p>He pulls back slightly. “Ah. You do want me out.” </p>

<p>She laughs. “Of course I don’t.” Snaking her arm out from under his weight, she tries discreetly to drop the book over the bed’s edge. But he catches her hand back. </p>

<p>“Not so quickly,” he says. “Let’s take a look at your work, little scholar.” And, still pinning her beneath him, he parts the book’s pages. She feels her face flush as he looks at her, then back. “Did you do this?”</p>

<p>She nods.</p>

<p>Ecolocation:</p>

<p>[The</a> blind watchmaker: why the … - Google Books](<a href=“The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe ... - Richard Dawkins - Google Books”>The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe ... - Richard Dawkins - Google Books)</p>

<p>Could we make a consolidate list? I may decide not to send me score to my ED school…</p>

<p>And what about one SC about comedian and audience? I put choice A and the second blank is interested. What is the choice for unnerved?
Could anyone tell me the wording about the retired Judge one?</p>

<p>Do you remember the exact wording for the comedian/audience question? Forgot what I put for that one.</p>

<p>i had it, i dont remember the questions though… hahah</p>

<p>yummehSooshi, i remember that the latter part is “,so—was he by the—audience” and the first blank i choose has the meaning relating to calm… and the second is interested…</p>

<p>what were the choices for Comedian one</p>

<p>Wait, you guys said there was a question about shading?</p>

<p>does anyone have the list of answers?</p>

<p>@blue2152001: Yeah, it was on the story about the Chinese lady who liked to draw. That one seems to have the controversy. I put down tinge but now that I think about it the other answer choices make sense too.</p>

<p>what did you guys put for dual passage one
for experts? or to reconcile?
I put reconcile opposing ideas…</p>

<p>Was the passage about the guy playing piano experimental?</p>

<p>no it was about the environmental etc</p>

<p>Can we get the list started please? i want to know whether i should cancle my score or not.</p>

<p>Sentence Completions:</p>

<p>1) derivation
2) menacing…audacity
3) posthumously
4) miscellany
5) something…monetary
6) confound? <–was that even a choice?
7) something…abashed
8) eclectic
9) languorous- langorous: a man being listless was the context.
10) neglible?
11) digression?
12) Distrust
13) Childish
14) quiescent…exacting. the court one. the judge or something’s life was far from ___<strong><em>; for her appeals she had to make _</em></strong> preparations
15)
16)
17)
18)
19)</p>

<p>btw the exp was about literacy and piano…</p>

<p>I’m pretty sure #2 is wrong… it should be baleful and trepidation because the first blank was describing the frightful look and the second one said that it made most people ______, and the blank should be trepidation = scared, not audacity which means bold…</p>

<p>^if that really was the experimental section, that just made my horrible experience a but better</p>