About this video
This reading-question walkthrough shows a useful test strategy: predict the answer before reading the choices. The passages are about how humans appreciate music and the emotional effect of music, so choice C is the best match. The speaker eliminates A, B, D, and E because each is off-topic.
You'll be able to
- predict an answer from the question before reading the choices.
- eliminate answer choices that do not match the passage's focus.
- justify the best answer by pointing to the passage's main idea.
Key words
- Prediction
- Forming an answer in your own words before looking at the choices.
- Elimination
- Ruling out choices that clearly do not match the passage.
- Target audience
- The group a passage seems written for, based on its focus.
- Distractor
- A plausible but wrong answer choice, often using words from the passage.
- Main idea
- The central point that ties all the details of a passage together.
Transcript
- [Instructor] The passages about the music most strongly suggest that both are targeting an audience that has an interest in which one of the following: Okay, so it's strongly suggest that the target audience for the passage is who exactly? It makes sense to have some sort of prediction here.
I'd say that these are passages that are focused on analyzing how music affects human emotions, and what is the mechanism by which music makes us feel. So we're looking for an answer like that. Let's try to predict it before we look at the choices at all. Okay, A, the theoretical underpinnings of how music is composed.
How it is composed? No, that's not what we're looking for. B, the nature of the conceptual difference between music and discontinuous sound. Okay, so that's not what these are about. It's not comparing music to discontinuous sound. It's talking about different kinds of music.
That's not right. C, the impact music can have on human emotional states. Looks pretty good. Matches what we are predicting. Let's look at the other choices. D, the most effective techniques for teaching novices to appreciate complex music. Is this about teaching techniques?
Definitely not. It's not the answer. E, the influence music has had on the development of spoken language. It's not what we're looking for. It's not the answer. The passages were not about how music has influenced spoken language. It's about the way that humans appreciate music of different kinds.
Our answer is C. (Sharpie scrapes whiteboard)
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