About this video
An LSAT-style reading exercise on a question that asks which concept appears in both passages about positive musical experiences. The instructor models a method: scan each candidate term against both passages, rule out any term found in only one, and move on once a confident answer is found. Complexity is shown to be the shared concept, linked to pleasure and to trained listeners' preferences.
You'll be able to
- apply a systematic check of answer terms against both passages
- identify a concept shared across two passages
- explain why confident answers should not be oververified under time pressure
Key words
- Complexity
- The degree of intricacy in sounds, which the passages link to positive experiences.
- Trained listener
- A listener with musical training who, according to passage B, prefers more complex melodies.
- Continuous sound
- A term that appears in only one passage and is therefore a distractor here.
- Distractor
- A wrong answer choice that appears in only one passage or not at all.
Transcript
- [Teacher] Which one of the following concepts is linked to positive musical experiences in both passages? So, okay, we're looking for positive musical experiences in both passages, so questions like this require you to have a good recollection of what you read.
You're gonna need to go find those things if you don't remember it enough. So, let's see what we can remember and see whether we can connect any of these choices to being in both passages or maybe just being in one passage 'cause wrong answers will either not be there at all or maybe just featured in one passage.
So, continuous sound, I think only one passage mentioned, you know, continuousness versus discontinuous sounds, but we can confirm that when we go up. Tension, one passage was very specific about tension, I don't remember the tension being mentioned in the first passage.
Language, one of the passages talked about music and language, I don't remember the second passage mentioning that, but we can check. D, improvisation, did not appear, that's definitely not the answer. Complexity, complexity is looking good, I think I do remember that word showing up in both passages, but let's go up and see and have a look for continuousness, tension, language and complexity and uh, see if we can find our answer.
Passage A, certain complexity, here's complexity. Positive effect, so what we could do is we could then just look for complexity in the second passage. Not in this paragraph. Not in this paragraph. Third paragraph, here's complexity. We take into account that complexity is it positive?
Depending on how much complexity there is, it could be pleasurable and then we have complexity down here. Who can, trained listeners prefer more complex melodies, we have our answer. On questions like these, it's important to move on to questions that might take you longer.
So if you find your answer and you're confident of it, circle it and move on. There's no need to go back and make sure that the other choices are incorrect. We'll see that language, tension and continuous sound are all just in one passage. Here's human language, doesn't show up in the second passage.
Here's the continuous discussion in the first passage, it does not show up again. And here's the focus on tension that we discovered in the second passage. So we have a lot of of confidence in E.
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