ACT English 1.14 Passage Drill
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ACT English: Passage Drill Drill 1, Problem 14. Checking for redundant or irrelevant information.
ACT English | Passage Drill |
Expository Texts | Relative Value of Evidence |
Language | English Language |
Product Type | ACT English |
Rhetorical Skills | Strategy |
Style | Diction |
Transcript
It’s important for us to take a good look at our writing and ask ourselves if there’s
any material that can be removed. If there's redundant or irrelevant information, it needs
to be cut because it can obscure the main point.
However, it's also important to be sure that we don't cut too much from our work.
If we go edit-crazy, then we run the risk of losing essential thoughts and ideas.
So we're going to put ourselves in this writer's shoes and assess how the sentence
fits in with the big picture. (Let's hope those shoes have been deodorized.)
Choice (A) is a cinch to eliminate because it's flat-out wrong. The sentence doesn't
give us one clue about the formation of nuts, so cutting it wouldn't remove that information
from the essay as a whole.
Freud would tell you that nuts are formed by bad childhoods.
We may be oversimplifying on that one.
(B) is an easy elimination as well. Nowhere does the sentence say that nuts grow slowly.
Anyway, whoever thinks that nuts grow slowly has never heard of the ever-expanding acorn
of Guadalajara.
OK, that was an example of a sentence that could be cut from our own writing because
it was totally untrue. This brings us to choices (C) and (D).
(D) disses the sentence by calling it irrelevant, but (C) disagrees, saying that if the sentence
were cut, we'd lose this scintillating explanation of what qualifies as a true nut. We're going
to side with (C) on this one and dub it the correct answer. The topic of nuts is introduced
so that the reader understands the difference between nuts and coconuts, especially because
the word "nut" is part of the fruit's name. This particular sentence identifies what it
is about a true nut that makes it different from a coconut.
We guess that means a coconut is a false nut. Can we ever trust one again?