I have decided to start a new thread aimed at helping people read more critically and actively (since these skills are essential to success on the SAT). My goal is not only to help people raise their CR scores, but also to help them become better readers since this is also a critical skill in college and in life more generally. People often want to do some extra reading on the outside to become better readers but they don’t know what to read (they choose to read fiction, when most of the SAT passages are non-fiction) or they just don’t know how to read the articles or books that they have chosen. And full disclosure: I am doing something similar on my website for my own students, but I am hoping that by posting on CC I can reach and therefore help more people (and also learn more myself from any discussion that the posts generate).
So as often as I can (if people respond positively to this idea), I will post a link to an article and then post some questions with it that will sort of force one to read critically. I am obviously not presenting a whole treatment on how precisely to read critically (there are whole books devoted to that), but the questions themselves and the explanations (and whatever discussion they generate) will shed light on how one should really read the articles.
If anyone would like to improve their reading ability and more specifically their ability to read critically and actively in the way that is required on the SAT (and in college and beyond) I think this will be a good way to do it.
So a quick introduction on this first article (link below). First of all it is longer than what would appear on the SAT, as most of these articles will be. I also think it is a pretty difficult article (though there are so many really smart people on this forum that maybe people will not find it to be so). One thing that makes the passage a good one, in my opinion, is that although it is a bit long and perhaps difficult, there are definitely parts of the passage that can be skimmed if (big if here) you understand where the author is going and what his overall purpose is. This is one of the keys to reading critically.
The link and questions are below. Hopefully some people will post answers to the questions to help create some discussion. If not, I will do it so that that people who read the thread but don’t want to post can still benefit.
What is the purpose of paragraph 5 (“I read on.”)? Could you have inferred what the paragraph was going to be about as you began it (thus allowing you to skim the paragraph) and if so, how?
What does the author think of “self-reporting”?
What is the purpose of the 3 examples that the author gives in paragraph 14 (“It is a cohort that embraces…….home theater in Scarsdale”)?
Well given how many responses this has so far elicited, it may be a bit ambitious to say that this will help thousands, but that is very nice of you to say!!! Lol. If nobody chimes in with answers I will at a certain point post answers to the questions so at least if people read the article and the post they can benefit.
Unfortunately, it might be wishful thinking to hope for lengthy answers. You will increase the responses by adding a few multiple choices in the first round. Many lurkers are not confident enough to reply and expose their thoughts.
My initial hope was to just make this about reading, because once I start providing answers we get into the issue of how to choose the right answer, which is a different skill really, not to mention my own ability to write answer choices that properly mirror the logic of authentic questions. But I think you are right Xiggi. I may have to succumb and do that!
Lurkers? Are you there? A penny for your thoughts!
Hi. Lurker, here. Thanks for the article. I think your idea of a CR thread is awesome and can help many people still struggling with the session. Like me.
OK, on with the answers:
Purpose: to discredit the Generation Analysts and their banal “studies”. People’s personalities aren’t determined by the years they were born in.
Tone: Mocking.
Purpose: to show that even among themselves, the generation analysts couldn’t agree on what exactly “the uniqueness” of the millennial generation was.
Yes, I could predict what the paragraph would say by the tone of the previous paragraph (Generation Nice vs Generation Not Nice).
According to the author, self-reporting:
was “a respondent characterizing his own intentions and tendencies and states of mind”, so said the pollsters.
was shamelessly bias, especially when people knew that they were going to be quoted. Of course they would go for the answers that would reflect well on them!
was no more reliable than mirror-gazing when the generation analysts’ arguments lacked factual unbiased evidence.
reflected the millennia generation’s self-delusion. People usually don’t always do what they intended to do in the past.
Purpose: to show that the typical “personality traits” of the millennial generation, according to the generation analysts, were all over the place => Both Generation Nice and Generation Not Nice was nothing more than gross over-generalizations.
Yes. Although there are some distinctions between this generation and the previous ones (due to the popularity of technology and other factors in its development phase), those distinctions are not enough to be classified as the uniqueness of only one generation. Alienating them, thus forcing them into an us vs them situation is just a no-go. In the end, they are humans, too.
Note: I’m not a native English speaker. There may be some mistakes and odd phrasings. Feel free to point them out.
I don’t think I am allowed to curse on the forum, but holy s##t!!! @Synonyms, that is one heck of a first post!!! You are not a lurker anymore, baby!!! Lol.
I mean, I wouldn’t have even know that you are not a native-English speaker had you not pointed it out (looking back, maybe there are a few odd phrasings, like “session”). But you are obviously a really, really good reader.
So I would say that you totally nailed it. You obviously understood the author’s overall purpose and the function of the smaller elements of the passage. Maybe that seemed easy for you, but I think that a lot of people would not have understood the passage the way you did and many would probably have believed that it was more about the millennial generation itself and not the generational analysts. So congratulations on a job well done!
I want to write a few comments about some of the questions just to tie it back to the SAT and how this is all relevant to the test, but I don’t have time right now to do it so I will write a little more commentary as soon as I have a chance. I just didn’t want to let this sit here unanswered given your bravery, former Lurker, in posting this great analysis!
On question 1 (What is the author’s overall purpose and tone?) you can get a pretty good jump on that by just looking a the title of the article. Again I think many people would think this passage is more about the millennial generation itself, but if you read the title before reading the article you already have an idea of where the author is going. I point this out because this is analogous to reading the little blurb that precedes the medium and long passages on the SAT. That is crucial to do because it gives you some context as to what you are parachuting into and it sometimes even hints at the author’s purpose.
One thing that makes this passage a little difficult is that the author is being sarcastic at times. So you sort of have to know that he is mocking the generational analysts early on otherwise you might miss the sarcastic derisive tone and purpose of everything that follows.
So for example on question 3 (What does the author think of “self-reporting”?), you could have a very good sense for what the author thinks of self-reporting if you already know what he thinks of generation analysts, because he says of self-reporting that, “it is a staple of generational analysis.” So without reading any further or perhaps if you didn’t understand some of what follows it doesn’t really matter. You already know that he is dismissive of self-reporting because it is something that is a feature of generational analysis.
FInally, on question 5 (Do you agree with the author’s analysis?), I put this in there because I wanted people to think about the extent to which the author proves his point and the extent to which you agree - this is a key feature of reading critically and people who struggle with an article like this one struggle in part because they are used to reading “facts” and are never taught to examine the biases and persuasiveness of an author. The SAT would obviously never ask a question like this but its a good habit to ask it yourself when you read an article or book.
And I also think it is interesting because although this author does a pretty good job of criticizing the generational analysts and making them look pretty ridiculous, I actually don’t 100% agree. Obviously the idea of trying to characterize an entire generation (with pretty arbitrary boundaries) is pretty silly. Clearly there will be tons of differences within a generation and even deciding what years would be included in a particular generation is almost arbitrary. That said, I do think that certain age groups do have some unique characteristics. Obviously you can’t say that everyone in a particular age group has a particular characteristic, but would it be inaccurate to say that on average a millennial is more likely to be technologically savvy than a baby boomer? So I do generally agree with the author that the way some people characterize whole generations or even what years they choose to include is kind of ridiculous, but I don’t think it’s completely wrong to suggest that people of certain age group may be more likely to have certain characteristics than other age groups. This is all obviously debatable and it doesn’t matter if you agree or disagree with me, but I just wanted to point out that one need not agree completely with an author and at the end of the day different people will have different opinions about the validity of an author’s argument.
I will try to post another article and questions this week for anyone who is interested…
And btw, one more thing. If you didn’t understand the passage or had trouble answering any of the questions (or have trouble with any of the future articles posted), please feel free to chime in and ask. You don’t necessarily have to post only if you think you have the answers. There is really more to be gained from not understanding and asking. This gives me or any other poster the opportunity to explain WHY or HOW we would arrive at the answers to the questions!
That is a tough one. I think the first thing to say is that in my experience many students just don’t even realize the range of tones that can appear on SAT passages, so I suppose the first thing is to just realize that one shouldn’t expect only neutral passages where the author’s intent is to just inform the reader. Sometimes SAT passages will be extremely critical in tone and other times the author will be not only critical, but even mocking and sarcastic. Obviously these passages don’t appear on every test but I have seen students clearly understand a passage on a comprehension level but then characterize the tone as much more neutral than it actually is in part because they just don’t think it can be as openly critical as it actually is!!!
Then I think the second thing is to realize right from the outset what the author’s purpose is. And again, the title itself helps with this since he is calling the generational analysts “crackpots.” And then the early paragraphs are also crucial (and I think this is true in general on passages on the SAT and articles in the real world), because you need to understand where the author is headed early on otherwise you just get lost and don’t understand the reason that the author is presenting the information that follows. In this case, once you know that the author is critical of generational analysis, then it becomes easier to understand the sarcastic comments when they do appear.
So when you come to the 4th paragraph you already have an idea of his opinion of generational analysts when he says:
“That’s the wonderful thing about the millennial generation. They are nature’s gift to “generational analysts,” those big thinkers who are able to grasp entire national cohorts in their meaty arms, lift them up, turn them upside down, and shake them till every last cultural insight falls from their pockets.”
Perhaps this excerpt is obvious to many readers on the forum, but I am sure that some students would think that the author is saying something positive when he says that they are “big thinkers who are able to grasp entire national cohorts in their meaty arms.” If, however, you already have a sense for the author’s purpose and attitude then it is easy to see that expression as mocking and sarcastic.
But I would love to hear anyone else’s opinion on how the would pick up on the sarcasm that might be less obvious to other readers!
My recommendation for identifying sarcasm in SAT PASSAGES is similar to my recommendation for identifying other kinds of humor: First, look for exaggeration; if you find it, then there may be some kind of humor. Second, see if there is anything that can’t be literally true; that’s a sure-fire sign that the answer may be “humorous” or “comical.”
Above all, don’t expect anything on the SAT to actually be funny. The College Board doesn’t really want test-takers breaking out in the giggles during an exam.
That is interesting about the “can’t be literally true” part. Its obvious now that you point it out but I never thought to think of it that way (at least not in terms of a method for identifying sarcasm or humor).
I wasn’t sure which way to go with this next post (harder, easier, shorter, longer, etc.), but I decided to go with an article that is definitely easier and more straight-forward than the last one. It’s also shorter and is a pretty interesting piece, I think. My hope is that I will get more eager responses, but it’s a little harder to formulate questions about this passage since it is a bit more straightforward. Still, I am sticking with questions that deal more with the author’s intention and rhetorical strategies and am foregoing answer choices so that it is really more about how you read the passage than about the navigating answer choices.
How would you describe the author’s purpose and tone in the passage?
What kind of evidence does the author use to support his point?
What does the word malleability mean (in the last paragraph) and what clues does the surrounding context provide in terms of helping you guess the meaning if you didn’t know it?
In the last paragraph the author cites some specialists who question the accuracy of memory more generally. Do you think the author agrees with their assessment and why?
Hopefully some people will be willing to respond but again if no one does eventually I will post some sample answers.
I find that I constantly have to go back and double-check or re-read sections of the passage when looking for answers and run out of time very quickly doing this. Do you recommend skipping parts of the passages and just focusing on line references or reading through the entire passage? How exactly do I go about just focusing the important details and ignoring the rest?
Regarding sections with two passages that are compared, how do you effectively approach these. I find that when they ask "how would author 1 respond to the comments made in passage 2?", I spend way too much time looking back and forth and end up reading sections 3-4 times in order to come up with an answer.
I find that I can easily ace the math and writing sections just through constant practice, but my reading methods seem to be quite ineffective in getting into upper 700’s because of my pacing.
