#7 - Global Reference, Main Point

[Administrator]

Please post below with any questions!

[mokkyukkyu]

Hi,

Why is A wrong and B correct?
At first I was not sure about the part "oversimplistic" in B...

[Nikki Siclunov]

Hi mokkyukkyu,

To help you figure out where you went wrong here, please provide a detailed breakdown of how you understood the question you’re asking about. Since you’re asking about a Reading Comprehension question, we expect to see evidence that you were able to do the following:

• Correctly identify the type of question in the stem.
• If the stem refers to a specific concept in the passage, identify where in the passage this concept was discussed.
• If the stem allows for a paraphrasable answer, tell us what it was. (Don't be afraid if your prephrase was off).
• Assuming this is a Must Be True question, as most RC questions are, tell us what textual evidence you have supporting your choice of (incorrect) answer.
• Explain why you believe the correct answer choice is not supported by the passage.

The more you tell us about your method of approach, the better we can help you figure it out.

Thanks!

[mollyquillin]

Hi PS,

I'd love some guidance on this question... I am curious about where the idea "overly simplistic" came from in the correct answer choice? I crossed this one out because I felt like that wasn't what the passage was saying...

I struggle with Main Point questions already, but I'll go through a bit of my process here as Nikki requested!

This was clearly a MP question, so the entire passage was in reference. I honestly didn't have a prephrase going into these questions, as I normally try to do (knowing that there will most likely be a MP question first). I re-read the passage after taking this PT and think in the test, I was distracted by the many elements in this passage: the two ways art was produced, the tastes of the different social classes, the Freudian analysis thrown in at the end - I wasn't sure what of all of that was the main point.

I chose answer choice D in my test and think I chose that because I saw the word "Freudian" and said "great." and moved on. I don't have a good reason for why I chose that answer. In redoing the question today while correcting my PT, I chose A, which is still off! I would love some guidance on how to distill the main point from this particular passage, with so much going on inside it.

Thanks!
Molly

[Jeremy Press]

Hi Molly,

This is a tough one!

I can see where answer choice D might be attractive, because it fairly well echoes the language in the last sentence of the passage. The problem with choosing answer choice D as a main point, though, is that the last sentence of the passage only forms one part of the author's critique of Taruskin and those like him. Notice the "moreover" at the beginning of the last paragraph? That tells me this paragraph is an additional piece of the argument, but not the only piece of the argument. Which part of the argument is this paragraph forming? Notice this language at the end of the second paragraph? It says that for Taruskin and the sociohistorical critics' analysis to work, "it must also be the case that we can eliminate the possibility that artists subverted the ideals of the patron for their own reasons." The last paragraph tells us we can't do this (undermining Taruskin). Bottom line: an answer that focuses on this last paragraph to the exclusion of all else in the passage is going to be too narrow.

Answer choice A does a pretty nice job of encompassing the third paragraph of the passage. The problem with choosing that as the main point is that the third paragraph is clearly intended to respond to the statement at the end of the second paragraph, that "For this [Taruskin's] kind of analysis to work, however, it must be the case that the elite had a recognizable identity and displayed some kind of consensus about the world and the way life was to be." The third paragraph tells us the elite did not have such a recognizable identity and consensus about the world ("the more talented artists sometimes had to find a place in the margins of the establishment—engaged by a rich patron with eccentric tastes"). Again, that's part of the argument, but only part (and misses the important stuff in the last paragraph).

What answer choice B does is it encompasses the whole argument in a way the other answers do not. Go back to the first paragraph, where the author says that the sociohistorical critics like Taruskin "view a body of work as the production of a class, generally a dominant or governing class, imposing its ideals." The author then says, "[w]hat Taruskin and others fail to clarify, however, is that there are two different ways that art, historically, was produced." There's the oversimplification. Taruskin and others reduce everything to art being produced as a means for the elite to impose its ideals, but they miss the different ways that art was produced (they oversimplify).

I hope this helps!

Jeremy

[mollyquillin]

This helps SO much Jeremy, thank you so much!! I really appreciate you taking the time to compile this detailed response. It makes total sense to me now.

Best,
Molly