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AP English Language and Composition 3.10 Passage Drill 218 Views


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Description:

AP English Language and Composition 3.10 Passage Drill. Which of the following devices does the passage not include?


Transcript

00:00

[ musical flourish ]

00:04

And here's your Shmoop du jour, brought to you by the laws of nature,

00:08

the one set of laws that's impossible to break.

00:12

At least on Earth. [woman holding a boy by his collar]

00:13

All right, so we're skimming, we're skimming.

00:16

And how many times have we skimmed this?

00:20

[ mumbles ]

00:27

Okay, let's just get to it.

00:29

Which of the following devices does the passage

00:31

not include? [sound of a baby laughing]

00:33

We're not seeing an iPhone 6 here.

00:35

[ mumbles ]

00:38

Okay, let's get to it.

00:40

All right, well, the only thing to do here is go down the list

00:42

and root through the passage to see what we find. [Man in the farm, holding a plant root]

00:45

Choice B says that the passage doesn't exaggerate.

00:49

Huh. Well, the author might agree for the most part because he's just that hardcore about science. [Woman describing the size of a spider to a man]

00:54

The bit about water crystallizing into stars is

00:56

an exaggeration, though. Like our closest star, the sun,

00:59

the other stars out there are fiery balls of exploding atoms.

01:04

Like that.

01:05

If the author isn't intentionally exaggerating here, well, then Like that.

01:05

If the author isn't intentionally exaggerating here, well, then

01:08

he doesn't know his science as well as he should.

01:10

Option C claims that there aren't any analogies in the passage, [Man disgusted after seeing the spider]

01:13

but we have to disagree.

01:15

An analogy is a comparison of two things that are somehow similar.

01:20

So how about when Professor Huxley equates the necessity of learning about science

01:24

to the necessity of learning about chess?

01:26

All in a world where our lives depend on winning a game of it. [A professor writing something on the blackboard]

01:30

Yep, the Hux gives us a big, whopping analogy, so that makes

01:33

C a no-go.

01:35

And then we have answer D, which clearly misses the fact

01:37

that the passage is chock-full of metaphors.

01:40

Our favorite is when "our perturbed minds" are

01:43

compared to "dark waters." [image of a brain, dark water and a tornado]

01:46

But, maybe that's because we're a little bit twisted.

01:48

Yeah, welcome to Shmoop.

01:50

All right, choice E tries to convince us that the passage has

01:52

no reiteration.

01:54

Seriously, E?

01:55

This passage is continually repeating itself.

01:58

If we really wanted to boil it down, it'd read like this: [image of water boiling]

02:00

"Science is awesome. Really awesome.

02:02

Science is so, so, really awesome."

02:05

All right, well, the best answer is A.

02:06

A counterargument is an argument or set of ideas that

02:09

opposes another argument or set of ideas.

02:12

Using a counterargument in an essay can be a good thing.

02:15

Pointing out where the other side may be right gives us a great

02:18

chance to show exactly why we're more right [woman arguing with her husband while lying on a sunbed]

02:21

than the other side.

02:22

However, it seems like nobody ever told the author of this passage [Crackers bursting in the sky]

02:25

about the joys of counterarguments.

02:27

He never makes the case for why science might lead to bad things. [someone performing an experiment and it explodes]

02:31

Guess he never read Frankenstein.

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