Lucky1994 wrote:
Hello Experts,
Can you please explain me question 4 and how to reach out to answer of this question?
Hello,
Lucky1994. I read the passage cold and answered this question correctly in a little over 2 minutes. Let us take a closer look:
daagh wrote:
4. Which of the following expressions does the author of the text not allude to regarding the biography of Dumas written by an English author?
This is a form of an EXCEPT question, so you can take comfort in the fact that there are four justifiable answers from the passage. You just have to find the odd one out, specifically the answer that does
not follow from the text.
daagh wrote:
A. His style
Analysis: I will admit to pausing on this one for a moment. We have to interpret the pronoun here as referring to the English author, rather than the author of the text. The line from the middle of the first paragraph speaks to this exact point:
Style, grammar, taste, feeling, are all bad. The author of the passage is commenting on the English author's biography of Dumas. Since
style is mentioned explicitly, the author of the text
does allude to this
expression, as the question puts it.
Red light. daagh wrote:
B. The English author’s focus in his presentation
Analysis: Following the line that I just quoted in the previous analysis, we get more of a railing against the English author's biography:
The author does not so much write a life as draw up an indictment. The spirit of his work is grudging, sneering, contemptuous, and pitifully peddling. The great charge is that Dumas was a humbug, that he was not the author of his own books, that his books were written by "collaborators"--above all, by M. MaquetNo, we do not get the word
focus laid out for us, but we understand that the English author wrote a disparaging work on Dumas. If one line will not do for you from the above excerpt, then another ought to do just fine (
draw up an indictment... spirit of his work... great charge). Thus, this is NOT what we are looking for.
Red light.daagh wrote:
C. The English author’s glorification of Dumas
Analysis: This is a reversal of what we would expect. As mentioned in the previous analysis, the English author clearly did not think highly of Dumas, according to the author of the passage. Since there is no such
glorification of Dumas by the English author, this answer delivers on the EXCEPT framework of the question.
Green light.daagh wrote:
D. The English author’s envy and derision for Dumas
Analysis: Even if you are not necessarily on board with
envy here, the second part,
derision, is undeniable. If the upper-level vocabulary is throwing you for a loop, then you could mark this as a yellow-light response, but this choice is not as strong as (C), given that the English author clearly did not like Dumas, to put it mildly. If there is firm grounding in the text for even a part of the answer, then that puts the answer on thin ice.
Red light.daagh wrote:
E. The observations of the author of the text about the English biography of Dumas
Analysis: If you read the first paragraph, then this answer choice sums it up perfectly. The author of the passage offers statements or
observations about
the English biography of Dumas. It should be hard to blunder into this answer if you understood the content of the first paragraph.
Red light.I hope that helps. This is not the easiest passage, but if you work to understand the question first, what it is driving at, then the task becomes a lot simpler. Good luck to you in your studies.
- Andrew