Reading comp PrepTest 112 · Section 2 · Question 9

Passage

Questions 7-14  .        In Intellectual Culture in Elizabethan and  . Jacobean England , J.W. Binns asserts that the drama Remaining source text redacted.
Passage walkthrough
Passage Summary

Topic: Humanities


Paragraph 1

  • Paragraph note
    • Binns's view (important Latin Renaissance texts are underappreciated because of academic specialization)
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Binns's view:
      • People who learn Latin tend to leave alone texts on "theology and science, law and medicine," even though those writings "revolutionized Western thought" (fifth sentence)
    • Comparisons, according to Binns:
      • Latin was used by English intellectuals (especially for works of law, theology, and science) more than English during the Renaissance (second sentence)
      • Language specialists focus on poems and orations more than works of theology, science, law, and medicine (fifth sentence)
      • Unlike language specialists, specialists in theology, science, law, and medicine do not have philological (linguistic) training (fifth sentence)
      • Historians can find more guidance when reading Milton's Latin poetry than they can when reading the more challenging scientific works by Newton (last sentence)

Paragraph 2

  • Paragraph note
    • More on Binns's view (intellectual historians underestimate the importance of Latin on Renaissance England)
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Binns's view:
      • "Intellectual historians" love to dig into "historical, cosmological, and theological" topics, but they do so with texts that were either written in or translated into English (first sentence)
      • This means that they ignore important context for these English writers, including that English writers were taught Latin in school and grew up in a world that was dominated by Latin (second through last sentence)

Paragraph 3

  • Paragraph note
    • Author's view (limitations are understandable but distort our understanding of Renaissance England)
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Author's view:
      • This problem is understandable because no one is trained with all the skills that you would need to completely understand some Renaissance texts (first and second sentence)
      • Still, this problem keeps us from truly understanding some important texts (last sentence)
    • Author's attitude: "understandable" (first sentence), "No modern classicist" (second sentence), "difficult" (second sentence), "few students" (second sentence), "inability to cross boundaries" (last sentence), "each presents a distorted reading" (last sentence)

Main Point: Because so few academics are trained to read Renaissance Latin, some important texts from the English Renaissance have not been thoroughly studied.

Meta-Structure?

Problem/Solution: This passage uses a Problem/Solution Meta-Structure.* In such passages, the author will articulate a problem and then (usually) will discuss potential solutions.

In this specific passage, the first paragraph lays out the problem as it has been stated by one J.W. Binns. According to Binns, "because many academic specializations do not overlap, many texts central to an interpretation of early modern English culture have gone unexamined" (P1, S3). The rest of the first paragraph and the entirety of the second describes how people who can read Latin only read the literary stuff (like poems and stories) and the people who have the specialized knowledge to understand the more technical stuff (like science, medicine, theology, and law) haven't been trained to read Latin.

Now that we have identified the problem, we need to ask ourselves, does the author provide a solution? The answer is simply no. The author never identifies what could be done to fix this problem, but that's okay! In a Problem/Solution Meta-structure, the author is not obligated to fix the problem that the passage introduces. In this specific case, the author is content to simply tell us that the issue at hand is a problem.

Generally, the main point in a Problem/Solution passage will be either the solution the author endorses or proffers. However, since we know that our author does not tell us about any potential solutions, our main point will be our author's opinion on the problem. In the last paragraph, the passage gives us a sentence that summarizes just that. It says, "[T]he result of each side's inability to cross boundaries has been that each presents a distorted reading of the intellectual culture of Renaissance England" (P3, S2). Thus, our main point will be something like, "Because so few academics are trained to read Renaissance Latin, some important texts from the English Renaissance have not been thoroughly studied."

*This passage is almost a Reporting a Viewpoint passage but the author presents their view in the third paragraph. Still, if you treated this passage like a Reporting a Viewpoint passage, you'd come out with a solid grasp of the main point and organization. You could also think of this as a Phenomenon/Explanation passage (phenomenon: many English Renaissance texts go unexamined; explanation: few scholars can appreciate these texts in their original Latin)

Last Thoughts?

Whenever a RC passage discusses an author at length (as this passage does with Binns), it's important to analyze the relationship between this writer and the author of the passage. Does the author of the passage agree? Do they disagree? In this text, there's nothing explicit to tell us how our author feels about Binns, so we have to rely on inferring that attitude from the tone of the passage. 

To that end, we should note that the first two paragraphs are framed as Binn's argument. Sentences often say "Binn asserts" or "according to Bin." Nowhere in these two paragraphs is it apparent that the author has shifted into their own voice and perspective. Yet, in the third paragraph, where there is no "Binn says," it seems that we have shifted to the author's voice. Other than conceding that the limitations Binns observes are "understandable," the argument remains the same. Therefore, we can infer that the author implicitly agrees with Binn's thoughts. Understanding that relationships will almost certainly help us answer some of the questions about this passage.

Question prompt

Which one of the Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: D

The notes below walk through why it fits the stem and how to eliminate the rest.

Question Type

Humanities

Strategy Overview

Refer to notes or what you highlighted/underline to locate where the passage discusses the relationship between English and Continental writers of the Renaissance era, and refer to the relevant part of the passage as needed to find that answer choice that must be true

Answer Anticipation

For questions that ask us to infer, from a few details in the passage, an answer choice that must be true, quickly finding and reviewing those details is critical. That is why we make brief notes describing the role of each paragraph and highlight or underline definitions and the minor Meta-Structures — doing so helps us find the salient information efficiently and reliably. Once we review that part of the passage, we can look through the answer choices to see which one is best supported by what we reviewed. Since the question stem asks us to make an inference, the correct answer probably won't restate something from the passage. Instead, the question will likely require us to draw a connection between a few different pieces of information.Here, the question asks about the relationship between English and Continental writers of the Renaissance era. Where did those show up in the passage? Our notes don't reference Continental writers, so we may need to run a CTRL/Command + F search function for "Continent," which will point us to the second paragraph.Reviewing the second paragraph, we can recall that scholars have underestimated "the influence on English writers of their counterparts on the European Continent" (P2, S2) because English writers were often educated in Latin-speaking schools and grew up in a world in which "what happened abroad and was recorded in Latin was of great importance" (P2, S3). The author also states that these writers shared an interest in "late Renaissance humanism (the rediscovery and study of ancient Latin and Greek texts)" (P2, S4). So, we can see that English and Continental writers during the Renaissance both wrote in Latin (a fact that current scholars underestimate) and were interested in humanism. Now, let's see if any answer choice can be inferred from this information.

Answer choices

  1. A
    Continental writers wrote in Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A is not credited

    (A) Can we infer this claim from the facts we reviewed about English and Continental writers from the Renaissance era?

    Nope. First, we don't know that writers in Continental Europe "wrote in Latin more frequently" than their English counterparts. This might sound intuitive, but there's no support for it in the passage. After all, we know that many English writers were taught in Latin-speaking schools (P2, S2). Also, we don't know that works written in Latin were inaccessible to "English readers." We know that they are inaccessible to modern scholars of history, but, as we just noted, more people learned Latin back then! (A) is out.

  2. B
    Continental writers, more intellectually Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B is not credited

    (B) Can we infer this claim from the facts we reviewed about English and Continental writers from the Renaissance era?

    No. Our review didn't reveal that "continental writers" were "more intellectually advanced than their English counterparts." Furthermore, nothing in the text tells us that Continental writers made English readers more familiar with Latin. We can cross off (B).

  3. C
    English and Continental writers Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited

    (C) Can we infer this claim from the facts we reviewed about English and Continental writers from the Renaissance era?

    Not quite. Although English and Continental writers both communicated their concerns in Latin, our review doesn't support the inference that their concerns were "for the most part different." On the contrary, the passage says the two groups influenced each other (P2, S2). For that reason, (C) is out.

  4. D
    The intellectual ties between Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D matches the stem

    (D) Can we infer this claim from the facts we reviewed about English and Continental writers from the Renaissance era?

    Definitely! In our anticipation, we pointed out that these scholars are guilty of "underestimating the influence on English writers of their counterparts on the European Continent" (P2, S2). We also know that the English writers were educated in Latin-speaking schools and were steeped in an intellectual world that was dominated by the Latin language (P2, S3-S4), so it's fair to say that English and Continental shared "a mutual knowledge of Latin." Perhaps most importantly, our main point attests that Renaissance English writers' use of Latin and Latin-based texts is understudied by modern scholars. Therefore, the passage completely supports this answer choice. We can select it and move on.

  5. E
    The intellectual ties between Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited

    (E) Can we infer this claim from the facts we reviewed about English and Continental writers from the Renaissance era?

    Not at all. Our author thinks that "the intellectual ties between English and Continental writers" have been underemphasized (P2, S2). (E) is directly contradicted by the text, so it's out.

What this tests

Question analytics

Based on historical answer selection rates for this question.

Answer choice distribution

  1. A 18%
  2. B 6%
  3. C 8%
  4. D Credited 59%
  5. E 8%

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Discussion

  • Ans Choice B 2 replies

    Started by ankita96

  • Why is A wrong? Thanks 3 replies

    Started by jingjingxiao11111@gmail.com

  • Help 1 reply

    Started by Theresaturner

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