ShmoopTube

Where Monty Python meets your 10th grade teacher.

Search Thousands of Shmoop Videos

ACT English 1.14 Passage Drill 216 Views


Share It!


Description:

ACT English: Passage Drill Drill 1, Problem 14. Checking for redundant or irrelevant information.

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:03

Here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by true nuts. The Coen Brothers' wacky sequel to True Grit.

00:40

The writer is considering omitting the underlined sentence:

00:43

A true nut, such as the acorn, are indehiscent or do not open at maturity to release its seeds.

00:51

If the writer were to make this deletion, the essay would primarily lose which of the following?

01:00

It's important for us to take a good look at our writing and ask ourselves if there's

01:00

It’s important for us to take a good look at our writing and ask ourselves if there’s

01:03

any material that can be removed. If there's redundant or irrelevant information, it needs

01:09

to be cut because it can obscure the main point.

01:11

However, it's also important to be sure that we don't cut too much from our work.

01:15

If we go edit-crazy, then we run the risk of losing essential thoughts and ideas.

01:19

So we're going to put ourselves in this writer's shoes and assess how the sentence

01:22

fits in with the big picture. (Let's hope those shoes have been deodorized.)

01:27

Choice (A) is a cinch to eliminate because it's flat-out wrong. The sentence doesn't

01:31

give us one clue about the formation of nuts, so cutting it wouldn't remove that information

01:36

from the essay as a whole.

01:37

Freud would tell you that nuts are formed by bad childhoods.

01:41

We may be oversimplifying on that one.

01:43

(B) is an easy elimination as well. Nowhere does the sentence say that nuts grow slowly.

01:47

Anyway, whoever thinks that nuts grow slowly has never heard of the ever-expanding acorn

01:52

of Guadalajara.

01:52

OK, that was an example of a sentence that could be cut from our own writing because

01:56

it was totally untrue. This brings us to choices (C) and (D).

02:01

(D) disses the sentence by calling it irrelevant, but (C) disagrees, saying that if the sentence

02:06

were cut, we'd lose this scintillating explanation of what qualifies as a true nut. We're going

02:11

to side with (C) on this one and dub it the correct answer. The topic of nuts is introduced

02:16

so that the reader understands the difference between nuts and coconuts, especially because

02:20

the word "nut" is part of the fruit's name. This particular sentence identifies what it

02:24

is about a true nut that makes it different from a coconut.

02:29

We guess that means a coconut is a false nut. Can we ever trust one again?

Up Next

ACT English 2.2 Punctuation
2058 Views

ACT English: Punctuation Drill 2, Problem 2. Where should the semi-colon be placed?

Related Videos

ACT English 3.1 Punctuation
1059 Views

ACT English: Punctuation Drill 3, Problem 1. How should this sentence be changed so that it is grammatically correct?

ACT English 3.2 Punctuation
962 Views

ACT English: Punctuation Drill 3, Problem 2. How should we properly hyphenate the words in this sentence?

ACT English 3.4 Punctuation
517 Views

ACT English: Punctuation Drill 3, Problem 4. Which choice best formats this list of items?

ACT English 2.1 Punctuation
509 Views

ACT English: Punctuation Drill 2, Problem 1. Which choice of punctuation best completes the sentence?