The author would likely agree... Forum

[s0ph1e2007]

Ok, so I just realized that the only questions I'm getting wrong on RC are questions saying something about what the author would agree with.

does anyone have any pointers on these questions.
should i be looking at the passage should i be negating idk at all what sort of method i should be using for these questions and its really making me frustrated that its always the same freaking questions where i dont know what the heck is going on.

please please help
im taking this in 2 days and i've studied hard ive got the other sections and other questions down

how do i become one with the author??? lol

[s0ph1e2007]

bump

someone knows this answer

[viking138]

It really depends on the question. Most of the time, you just need to grasp the general big ideas that the author believes and then eliminate answers that way.

Some of the time, you'll get down to two answers in this way and then you'll just have to look even deeper for specific statements that the author made and whittle down the answer choices that way.

[maks25]

I like to look at it as "what would the author [not] agree with". Often you will find 4 answers that are obvious contradictions.

[TheTopBloke]

Look for hints as to the authors personal position. It is difficult because the author in most passages will not use extreme language, but rather subtle hints at how they feel towards either the subject matter, or the critics viewpoints, or what have you. you can usually find the hints in sentences that follow a certain statement of fact, such as what the critic believes or what the scientist has inferred, etc..

[TLS1776]

Give specific PT/S/Q numbers that you've gotten wrong.

You want to go into the question already knowing what the author believes; spending some more time on the passage on the first read-through and writing out the main idea of each paragraph may make it easier for you to internalize the passage (kind of like LG, where you can internalize the rules by making a few hypos). You can also make the question easier by having a visual memory of the different points of the passage where the author gives his/her opinion; this allows you to quickly refer back to the passage in order to eliminate certain answer choices.

What makes these kinds of questions tough is that they can draw material from the entire passage; it's not like the questions where you know exactly where in the passage to look for the correct answer. That's why you need to have a good internal map of the passage.

[blhblahblah]

Look for hints as to the authors personal position. It is difficult because the author in most passages will not use extreme language, but rather subtle hints at how they feel towards either the subject matter, or the critics viewpoints, or what have you. you can usually find the hints in sentences that follow a certain statement of fact, such as what the critic believes or what the scientist has inferred, etc..

This.

Put an "T" down whenever you detect the author taking off her veil of neutrality and asserting something about a viewpoint/group mentioned in the passage. When these sorts of questions come up, refer back to all the T's, create a big, "tone picture", and answer said question.