ShmoopTube
Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.
Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos
Rhetorical Skills Videos 30 videos
ACT English: Passage Drill Drill 1, Problem 14. Checking for redundant or irrelevant information.
ACT English: Passage Drill 1, Problem 8. What would happen if we deleted the underlined sentence?
ACT English: Passage Drill Drill 3, Problem 2. What would the paragraph lose if the writer omits the underlined phrase?
ACT English 5.15 Passage Drill 185 Views
Share It!
Description:
ACT English: Passage Drill Drill 5, Problem 15. Would this essay have fulfilled the goal described in the video?
Transcript
- 00:04
Here’s your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by phylum arthropoda.
- 00:09
When spoken by a wizard, these magic words cause an orthopedic mattress to appear.
- 00:14
Check out the following passage...
- 00:23
Suppose the writer had intended to write a brief essay addressing how our ideas about
- 00:28
spiders often do not have much basis in reality.
Full Transcript
- 00:31
Would this essay successfully fulfill the writer's goal?
- 00:34
And here are your potential answers...
- 00:43
So the question is basically asking whether or not this essay helps debunk popular myths about spiders.
- 00:48
We like the one where the spider rides a flying horse to Mt. Olympus.
- 00:52
Hm, maybe we’re confused on that one.
- 00:54
(D) is incorrect because the type of spider mentioned doesn't have much to do with what
- 00:59
the question is asking.
- 01:00
(D), we’re seriously going to need you to try a little harder next time.
- 01:04
Choice (B) is wrong as well.
- 01:06
The writer comes in with a pretty extensive knowledge of spiders.
- 01:09
He or she spends most of the essay showing off that knowledge,
- 01:12
not learning new things. We wonder if that kind of knowledge is impressive on dates.
- 01:18
Probably not.
- 01:20
Option (A) claims that this essay does a great job of debunking the idea that spiders often
- 01:25
get trapped in their own webs.
- 01:27
However, the essay actually points out how most people know that spiders don’t normally
- 01:31
get caught in their webs, and they wonder how spiders manage this trick.
- 01:35
This is pretty much exactly what choice (C) tells us, making (C) the correct answer.
- 01:39
It’s widely known that any spider who reveals his secret will be
- 01:42
expelled from the sacred order of arachnids.
Related Videos
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 2, Problem 2. Where should the semi-colon be placed?
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 3, Problem 1. How should this sentence be changed so that it is grammatically correct?
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 3, Problem 2. How should we properly hyphenate the words in this sentence?
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 3, Problem 4. Which choice best formats this list of items?
ACT English: Punctuation Drill 2, Problem 1. Which choice of punctuation best completes the sentence?