Reading Comprehension — Longer Passage
Sample Questions
Questions 1 to 5 are based on this passage.
It is possible for students to obtain advanced degrees in
English while knowing little or nothing about traditional scholarly
methods. The consequences of this neglect of traditional scholarship
are particularly unfortunate for the study of women writers.If the
canon — the list of authors whose works are most widely taught
— is ever to include more women, scholars must be well trained
in historical scholarship and textual editing.Scholars who do not know
how to read early manuscripts, locate rare books, establish a sequence
of editions, and so on are bereft of crucial tools for revising the
canon.
To address such concerns, an experimental version of the
traditional scholarly methods course was designed to raise student's
consciousness about the usefulness of traditional learning for any
modern critic or theorist.To minimize the artificial aspects of the
conventional course, the usual procedure of assigning a large number
of small problems drawn from the entire range of historical periods
was abandoned, though this procedure has the obvious advantage of at
least superficially familiarizing students with a wide range of
reference sources.Instead, students were engaged in a collective
effort to do original work on a neglected eighteenth-century writer,
Elizabeth Griffith, to give them an authentic experience of literary
scholarship and to inspire them to take responsibility for the quality
of their own work.
Griffith's work presented a number of advantages for this
particular pedagogical purpose. First, the body of extant scholarship
on Griffith was so tiny that it could all be read in a day; thus
students spent little time and effort mastering the literature and had
a clear field for their own discoveries. Griffith's play The
Platonic Wife exists in three versions, enough to provide
illustrations of editorial issues but not too many for beginning
students to manage. In addition, because Griffith was successful in
the eighteenth century, as her continued productivity and favorable
reviews demonstrate, her exclusion from the canon and virtual
disappearance from literary history also helped raise issues
concerning the current canon.
The range of Griffith's work meant that each student could
become the world's leading authority on a particular Griffith text.
For example, a student studying Griffith's Wife in the Right
obtained a first edition of the play and studied it for some weeks.
This student was suitably shocked and outraged to find its title
transformed into A Wife in the Night in Watt's Bibliotheca
Britannica.Such experiences, inevitable and common in working on a
writer to whom so little attention has been paid, serve to vaccinate
the student—I hope for a lifetime—against credulous use of
reference sources.
Multiple-choice Questions — Select One Answer Choice
1. It can be inferred that which of the following is most
likely to be among the highlighted "issues"?
- (A) Why has the work of Griffith, a woman writer who was popular in her own century, been excluded from the canon?
- (B) In what ways did Griffith's work reflect the political climate of the eighteenth century?
- (C) How was Griffith's work received by literary critics during the eighteenth century?
- (D) How did the error in the title of Griffith's play come to be made?
- (E) How did critical reception of Griffith's work affect
the quantity and quality of that work?
The correct answer is choice
A (Why has the work of Griffith,a woman writer who was popular in
her own century, been excluded from the canon?).
2. It can be inferred that the author of the passage considers
traditional scholarly methods courses to be
- (A) irrelevant to the work of most students
- (B) inconsequential because of their narrow focus
- (C) unconcerned about the accuracy of reference sources
- (D) too superficial to establish important facts about authors
- (E) Too wide-ranging to approximate genuine scholarly activity
The correct answer is choice
E (too wide-ranging to approximate genuine scholarly activity).
3. Which of the following best describes the function of the
last paragraph in relation to the passage as a whole?
- (A) It summarizes the benefits that students can derive
from the experimental scholarly methods course.
- (B) It provides additional reasons why Griffith's work
raises issues having to do with the canon of authors.
- (C) It provides an illustration of the immediate nature of
the experiences students can derive from the experimental scholarly
methods course.
- (D) It contrasts the experience of a student in the
experimental scholarly methods course with the experience of a
student in the traditional course.
- (E) It provides information that emphasizes the suitability
of Griffith's work for inclusion in the canon of authors.
The correct answer is choice
C (It provides an illustration of the immediate nature of the
experiences students can derive from the experimental scholarly
methods course).
Multiple-choice question —Select One or More Answer Choices
Consider the answer choices separately and select all that apply.
4. According to the passage, the size of the body of extant
scholarship on Elizabeth Griffith was pedagogically significant
because it
- (A) permitted students to survey that scholarship in a
relatively short amount of time
- (B) enabled students to raise novel issues of scholarship
- (C) allowed each student to focus on a single work within
that body of scholarship
The correct answer is choice
A (permitted students to survey that scholarship in a relatively
short amount of time), and choice B (enabled students to raise novel
issues of scholarship).
Select-in-Passage Question
5. Select the sentence in the first two paragraphs that
identifies an aspect of traditional scholarly methods courses that
is sacrificed in the experimental version.
The correct answer choice is
the second sentence of the second paragraph (To minimize...
reference sources).