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Description:

AP English Language and Composition 8.6 Passage Drill. Which of the following best sums up the sentence that begins, "The art of man..." (Line 54)?

Language:
English Language

Transcript

00:00

Thank you We sneak in and here's your shmoop du

00:05

jour Brought to you by arrogance from calvin klein The

00:08

scent that says i'm not just better than you I

00:11

smell better than you two All right Lookit lines forty

00:14

six fifty eight This area right here and going down

00:18

and anything for you agent are the question is which

00:22

of the following best sums up the sentence that begins

00:26

the art of man and here the potential answers expected

00:31

Wait a minute All right well to get a sense

00:34

of the question let's break down the first part of

00:35

the sense that says the art of man could hardly

00:38

discover a more effectual antidote to improvement than this persuasion

00:43

Okay well since that doesn't really make any sense why

00:46

don't we try rewriting it into modern day english First

00:49

of all the phrase art of man clearly does not

00:51

have anything to do with art as it's typically defined

00:54

we're not talking painting or sculpting here In this case

00:57

the words art of man are being used as a

01:00

synonym for society So in other words the other is

01:03

saying society could hardly discover so on and so forth

01:06

Secondly the ward effectual means successful or effective but now

01:11

are slightly more understandable Sentence reads Society could hardly discover

01:15

more effective yada yada yada The next bit of the

01:18

senses antidote to improvement Well anyone who's ever seen a

01:21

spy movie knows that the antidote is the cure for

01:24

poison But in this sentence the author isn't referring to

01:27

poison she's referring to improvement or making one self better

01:31

which means the antidote we're talking about would keep someone

01:34

from improving themselves Sounds counterintuitive but well whatever So now

01:39

our sentence reads society could hardly discover a more effective

01:42

stumbling block to improvement Blah blah blah This is beginning

01:46

to make sense moving on to the final portion of

01:48

sense We see then this persuasion well for our super

01:52

understandable english sense a better word than persuasion would be

01:57

example So our sentence would read society could hardly discover

02:01

amore effective stumbling block to improvement Then this example But

02:05

wait what example is the author talking about it's Okay

02:08

we've got this Hang with us let's Just look at

02:10

the paragraph before this one to see if we can

02:12

find something Oh look there's that word Persuasion again in

02:16

line fifty one and in this situation it's referring to

02:19

american society on the whole believing that they are the

02:23

first and best of the human race that nothing is

02:26

to be learned but what they are able to teach

02:30

and that nothing is worth having which they do not

02:33

possess Okay so the persuasion or example that the author

02:36

is referring to is that americans are incredibly arrogant Haram

02:41

So if we plug that into our rework sentence it

02:44

would now read society could hardly discover a more effective

02:48

stumbling block to improvement than arrogance What's interesting is that

02:52

another way to write that sense in modern english modern

02:56

ish anyway is betterment is not possible without some modesty

03:01

and humility and there's our answer food it's option c

03:06

it does make a person wonder though what kind of

03:08

people did this author me when she came to america

03:10

Like seriously who on earth is this self centered in

03:13

devoid of human compassion Is the people she describes Yeah 00:03:17.16 --> [endTime] so

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