PrepTest 107

[lcid:3525] Prep Test 107 LSAT — Reading Comp — S2 Reading comp

Passage

Questions 8-15  .        Tribal communities in North America believe that  . their traditional languages are valuable resources that  . Remaining source text redacted.
Passage walkthrough
Passage Summary

Topic: Social Science


Paragraph 1

  • Paragraph note
    • Loss of traditional North American tribal languages has been stemmed by community self-teaching.
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Majority cultural influences contribute to loss of tribal languages (second sentence)
    • Some communities have opted for community self-teaching to preserve knowledge of languages (third sentence)
    • Author’s attitude: “valuable resources” (first sentence); “must be maintained” (first sentence); “serve as barriers” (second sentence); “overcome” (third sentence); “serious” (third sentence); “prevent it” (third sentence)

Paragraph 2

  • Paragraph note
    • Teaching a language demands that the language first be documented and analyzed.
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Example: Northern Utes documented grammar and linguistic structures, arranging them in terms of complexity (first-second sentences)
      • Lesson plans were made to present sequence of linguistic information in a useful and appropriate way to the culture (second sentence)
    • Author’s attitude: “must first document” (first sentence); “arranged in sequence” (second sentence); “useful and appropriate” (second sentence)

Paragraph 3

  • Paragraph note
    • Sub-problem 1: translating oral language into written form can be difficult.
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Spelling words can be a problem in a language that is primarily oral (second sentence)
      • Sometimes there is no written way to convey a sound (third sentence)
    • There can never be a unique written equivalent for every sound in a language (third sentence)
    • Author’s attitude: “certain obstacles” (first sentence); “primarily oral” (second sentence); “lack of acceptable written equivalents” (third sentence); “insistence” (third sentence); “desirable but ultimately frustrating” (third sentence)

Paragraph 4

  • Paragraph note
    • Sub-problem 2: choosing between dialects can be difficult
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Example: Northern Ute decided not to standardize all spellings and dialects (third sentence)
      • Problem for some who favored Western notions of standardization (fourth sentence)
      • Worked for the community, because elementary school children could write and speak language effectively after a year of instruction (fourth sentence - fifth sentence)
    • Author’s attitude: “many language traditions” (second sentence); “especially rigid” (fourth sentence); “made sense” (fourth sentence); “write and speak it effectively” (fifth sentence)

Paragraph 5

  • Paragraph note
    • Traditional languages can be preserved without writing them down only if community can effectively exclude influence of majority culture.
  • Views, minor Meta-Structures, and the author's attitude
    • Critics of writing down languages: languages can be preserved in oral form; writing them down is misguided and unnecessary (first sentence)
    • Defenders of writing down languages: should be written down because there is a decline in oral traditions (second sentence) and because oral preservation of language is possible only if the whole community is able to exclude the influence of the majority culture that tends to degrade the knowledge of traditional language (second sentence)
    • Author’s attitude: “precisely because” (second sentence); “decline in oral traditions” (second sentence); “made every effort” (second sentence); “eschew aspects of the majority culture” (second sentence)

Main Point: In order to counter the loss of traditional tribal languages, members of some communities have successfully navigated the difficult process of documenting their languages in written form in order to teach them to younger members of the community.

Key Lines?

Paragraph 1, Sentence 2 (P1 S2): Statement of general problem (loss of traditional languages)

P1 S3 - Solution to general problem: community self-teaching

P2 S1 - Necessary step to community self-teaching: writing language down

P3 S1 - Sub-problem 1: writing down oral language

P4 S2 - Sub-problem 2: choosing between dialects

P5 S2 - Justification of solution: writing down language necessary unless can exclude all majority cultural influences

Meta-Structure?

Problem/Solution: This passage uses a Problem/Solution Meta-Structure. The author lays out the general problem of the passage: traditional tribal languages are being lost because of the influence of majority culture. The general solution the author proposes is community self-teaching. The author then lays out the necessary preliminary step to teaching language: writing that language down. Next, the author presents two sub-problems that arise when tribe members attempt to write down an oral language, namely, spelling and dialect. The author introduces the example of the Northern Utes, who overcame the issues of writing down an oral language and deciding what to do with multiple dialects and successfully taught schoolchildren to write and speak their language after one year of instruction. Finally, the author counters the arguments of critics who insist that oral languages can be preserved orally by saying that this strategy will work only if the community is successful in excluding all majority cultural influences, a task which the author implies is impossible, especially since oral culture is already declining.

The author’s position on this issue is clear, and, though it takes some consideration to get the general problem-sub problem structure of the passage laid out in your mind, the passage is clearly organized, which makes for an easier experience analyzing the various points the author makes in their argument.

Last Thoughts?

This passage only uses one example of a community that successfully implemented a self-teaching scheme: the Northern Utes. This community is used in a couple of different places as the author traces the various difficulties in writing down and teaching an oral language, but the fact that there is only one example deployed in support of the author’s argument also makes it easier to analyze this passage.

Question prompt

Based on the passage, Remaining source text redacted.
Why the credited answer is right

Credited answer: B

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

Question Type

Humanities

Strategy Overview

Review your notes to recall the views of the Northern Utes discussed in the third sentence of the fourth paragraph, then find an answer that must be true according to the passage.

Answer Anticipation

This question stem asks us to infer a belief the Northern Utes mentioned in P4 S3 would NOT agree with. Often, one’s views are described at length throughout the passage, so reviewing the passage or anticipating what the correct answer will say is not a wise investment of our limited time. In this case, however, the question stem asks about the views of the Northern Utes who decided not to standardize their language prior to teaching it, and these community members’ views are encapsulated in one sentence. Therefore, we can use our notes and what we highlighted/underlined to anticipate what the correct answer will likely say. So, what do the Northern Utes in question think?The author says the Northern Utes as a whole decided not to standardize their language (i.e. not to pick one dialect over the others to teach), and as a consequence agreed that multiple phonetic spellings of words would be formally accepted as long as their meanings were clear (P4 S3). So this group decided to be inclusive with their definition of what constituted their traditional language and decided not to adhere strictly to Western notions of standardizing spellings and dialects.Let’s look for these notions in the wrong answer choices; the right answer choice will be something the Northern Utes in question would NOT agree with.

Answer choices

  1. A
    Standardizing traditional languages requires Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice A is not credited

    (A) Is this answer choice something that the Northern Utes in P4 S3 would agree with?

    Yes. Given that the Northern Utes mentioned in the question stem decided not to standardize their language, and to accept multiple ways of spelling the same word (P4 S3), the statement in the answer choice is something they would agree with, because it summarizes the view they adopted.

    As such, this is not the right answer choice.

  2. B
    Written languages should reflect Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice B matches the stem

    (B) Is this answer choice something that the Northern Utes in P4 S3 would agree with?

    No. The Northern Utes mentioned in the question stem decided not to single out one dialect of their language to teach and instead to accept multiple dialects as long as the meanings of the words in each dialect were clear (P4 S3). However, the passage states in P4 S4 that some community members would rather have standardized these elements because they were influenced by Western notions of standardization.

    The principle stated in this answer choice touts standardization, which is a view that is opposed to the Northern Utes mentioned in P4 S3, thought it is in accordance with the views of the community members mentioned in P4 S4.

    So this is the right answer.

  3. C
    Traditional languages can be Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice C is not credited

    (C) Is this answer choice something that the Northern Utes in P4 S3 would agree with?

    Yes. Because the Northern Utes in question decided not to standardize their language before teaching it (P4 S3), and because this teaching was successful (P4 S5), the statement in this answer choice is something they would agree with.

    This is not the right answer.

  4. D
    Variant spellings of words Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice D is not credited

    (D) Is this answer choice something that the Northern Utes in P4 S3 would agree with?

    Yes. This answer choice echoes the reasoning of the Northern Utes in question. P4 S3 states that the tribe as a whole decided that multiple spellings of the same word would be acceptable as long as the meaning was clear. So the group of people referred to in the question stem would definitely agree with this answer choice.

    This is not the right answer.

  5. E
    The extent to which Remaining source text redacted.
    Why choice E is not credited

    (E) Is this answer choice something that the Northern Utes in P4 S3 would agree with?

    Not necessarily. This answer choice sounds appealing in a common sense way, but the paragraph that the question is asking about does not include any mention of the community’s needs. We thus don’t know where the Northern Utes would stand on the issue of the community’s needs; they might think this issue has no bearing on the standardization of language. They might think it has a large bearing. The individuals in question might differ on the topic. There is no way of knowing.

    Because of this ambiguity, this is not the right answer.

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