Reading Comprehension

Hi all,

I am preparing for the GMAT for my D-day in June. I think to improve RC it would be nice idea to solve atleast 2 passages per day and discuss on the same. Whoever interested can participate in this mission of killing RC, as it would need regular practice. I will try and be regular in posting 2 passages on the forum. The sources would be 1000RC, LSAT, Kaplan, GMAT paper tests, GMAT prep questions. Any suggestions or changes are welcome. I am putting my para of the day.

RC Passage -1

Passage 85 (22/22)
It is an unfortunate fact that most North Americans know little about American Indian culture and history. Scholars have studied such matters, but they have not succeeded in broadcasting their conclusions widely. Thus, it is still not widely known that American Indians have epics, that they performed plays long before Europeans arrived, and that they practiced politics and carried on trade.
One way to gain a fuller appreciation of this rich culture is to examine American Indian poetry, for poetry is in all cultures the most central and articulate of the arts. It is especially important that we study American Indian poetry as this poetry can create a context that gives cohesive expression to the crafts, the artifacts, and the isolated facts that many Americans have managed to notice willy-nilly. Even a survey of American Indian poetry reveals a range of poetic thought and technique that defies easy generalization. Jarold Ramsey hazards a summary, however, which serves at least to give the uninitiated reader some sense of what American Indian poetry is like. Overall, he writes, it represents "an oral, formulaic, traditional, and anonymous art form," whose approach is to emphasize the "mythic and sacred" components of reality. It "flourished through public performances... by skilled recitalists whose audiences already knew the individual stories" and valued the performers for their "ability to exploit their material dramatically and to combine them ï¼»their storiesï¼½ in longer cycles" rather than for their "plot invention." Because this poetry belongs to highly ethnocentric tribal peoples, whose cultures "we still do not know much about," it "is likely to seem all the more terse, even cryptic."
American Indian poetry has another feature that Ramsey ignores: it is always functional. Whether sung, chanted, or recited; whether performed ceremonially, as entertainment, or as part of a task such as curing a patient or grinding corn; or whether recited individually or by a group, it is always fully woven into the fabric of ordinary life.
For complicated reasons, American Indian poetry has basically been ignored by non-Indian cultures. Kenneth Lincoln writes that failure to hear American Indian voices results "partly...from the tragedies of tribal dislocation, partly from mistranslation, partly from misconceptions about literature, partly from cultural indifference." Brian Swann suggests an additional explanation: tribal poetry is oral, whereas Europeans arrived in the New World with a deeply ingrained belief in the primacy of the written word. As a result, European settles found it hard to imagine that poetry could exist without written texts and thus that the American Indians had achieved something parallel to what Europeans called literature long before Europeans arrived. As a consequence, Europeans did not fully respond to the rich vitality of American Indian poetry.
1. According to the passage, American Indian cultures have produced all of the following forms of artistic expression EXCEPT
(A) crafts
(B) dramas
(C) songs
(D) written poems
(E) oral epics
2. According to Jarold Ramsey, American Indian poetry is an art form characterized by its
(A) unusual depictions of landscapes
(B) integration with everyday affairs
(C) universal accessibility
(D) highly original plots
(E) adaptability to public performance
3. According to Kenneth Lincoln, one of the reasons that non-Indians have had little knowledge of American Indian poetry is that American Indian poems
(A) have been poorly translated
(B) have not yet attracted the scholarly attention they deserve
(C) can be appreciated only when presented orally
(D) are difficult to understand without a background in comparative mythology
(E) are too stylistically complex
4. According to the passage, it would be unusual for American Indian poetry to be
(A) attributed to specific authors
(B) sung by a group of performers
(C) chanted while working
(D) sung during a sacred ceremony
(E) performed in a dramatic manner
5. It can be inferred from the passage that Brian Swann believes which of the following about the European settlers of America?
(A) They probably were more literate, on the average, than the general European population they left behind.
(B) They probably thought it necessary to understand American Indian politics before studying American Indian literature.
(C) They probably did not recognize evidence of an oral poetic tradition in the American Indian cultures they encountered.
(D) They probably could not appreciate American Indian poetry because it was composed in long narrative cycles.
(E) They probably did not study American Indian poetry because its subject matter was too practically oriented.
6. The tone of lines 12-16 suggests that the author believes that most Americans' knowledge of American Indian culture can best be characterized as
(A) spotty and contradictory
(B) stereotyped and limited
(C) confused and inaccurate
(D) unsystematic and superficial
(E) vague and biased
7. Which of the following best describes the organization of the last paragraph of the passage?
(A) An observation is made and qualifications of it are provided.
(B) A phenomenon is noted and explanations for it are presented.
(C) A hypothesis is presented and arguments against it are cited.
(D) A prognosis is made and evidence supporting it is discussed.
(E) A criticism is presented and information expanding it is provided.



OA is DEAACDB.

My take is DEAACBD

Can somebody please explain 6 and 7 questions.

Thanks

@vaivish ,


Thanks for the offer and I am all game for it . I will do my bit and will try to post passages every day . Also I think it would be nice if we can mention time taken to solve the passage . Ex I took 14:26 min to solve this one . Keeping in mind 7 questions and approximately 2 min for 1 question optimum time should be round about 14:00 mins .

One correction tough please do mention line numbers in passages as it is difficult to answer questions like Q6 .

My take on answers DEAACBA .

[spoiler]I am not sure to my answer to Q6 is correct or not but for q7 it certainly is .

A phenomenon = occurrence of an event .

Observation = finding .

since there was no discovery or any historical event , I will rule out option B .
[/spoiler]


Let me know your views .

Thanks for your reply.

I have posted the topic as it is. It did not had any nos. Next time, i will try and find the passages with numbers. Otherwise, we will have to continue like this, as the passages are from good source i.e. LSAT and GMAT.

vaivish wrote:Thanks for your reply.

I have posted the topic as it is. It did not had any nos. Next time, i will try and find the passages with numbers. Otherwise, we will have to continue like this, as the passages are from good source i.e. LSAT and GMAT.

Well then what is the explanation for Q7 ?

Not sure why

2) is E. I chose B) because of the mention in the passage ( integration into everyday life )
Can some one please explain.

6) is D. I chose B) Again, the author mentions at some point, the knowledge of teh Americans is limited.
But then I looked into the meaning of the phrase "willynilly" which says unplanned.Is that why


For 7) the last paragraph mentions - Another explanation . Look for those kinds of words in the answer choices and B) fits