About this video
A reading comprehension walkthrough on the Cecilia Payne passage. The instructor eliminates answer choices by checking each against what the passage actually says, using a memory-first approach. The question asks which statement the passage supports, and the correct answer is found in the first paragraph, where Payne is described as a professor of astronomy at Harvard after her 1920s graduate study.
You'll be able to
- eliminate answer choices by checking each against the passage.
- locate specific details, such as dates or appointments, by scanning for key words.
- explain why an answer that uses 'any' or 'ever' is risky unless the passage supports it.
Key words
- Elimination
- A method of removing answer choices that the passage does not support.
- Passage-supported answer
- A choice that the text directly backs up, not one that merely seems plausible.
- Absolute word
- Words like 'any' or 'ever' that make a claim very strong and hard to support.
Transcript
- [Instructor] The passage provides enough information to answer which one of the following questions? Okay, so this is another question in which we need to have a good memory to try to have an idea of what we just read so that the answers will kind of rule themselves out because we think to ourselves, I didn't see anything about that, or we see something that we remember and we say, oh, yes, of course, I recall that they mentioned that.
So let's just see what we have here. A, did Payne at any time believe that the Sun was mainly composed of iron? It doesn't ring a bell. I don't think that we know whether she ever believed that. Doesn't really look good. So let's move on. B, when Payne first proposed her theory about the sun's composition, did any other astronomers fully accept it?
Well we hear that many astronomers, most astronomers, all of her colleagues, didn't really give her the time of day, but did any? I'm not sure we know. Any is pretty extreme, so I'm gonna avoid that question. I'm gonna avoid B for the time being before I start looking around and start exploring throughout the passage to try to find evidence to support these things.
Let's look at C. In what year did Payne first receive definitive recognition from her work for other scientists? In what year? We heard about the 1920s. I don't really remember seeing any specific years mentioned throughout the whole passage. But I could be wrong about that.
We can check it out. I'm gonna keep on looking, scanning the choices, trying to find something that jumps out at me. D, was Payne ever offered an academic appointment? Well, in the first paragraph, we were introduced to Payne, it said something about how she's kind of an important person now, but she wasn't back then.
We're gonna have a look at that. I kind of am liking D. E, did Payne play a significant role in showing the mechanism by which nuclear fusion occurs? The mechanism by which nuclear fusion occurs? She didn't really understand how those things worked, so I'm not liking E, really, at all, but let's scroll up and see what we can find.
So we're looking for years, and we're looking for any positions that Cecilia Payne was offered. There are no specific years I'm seeing as I scan here. But look here. Let's see. As a graduate student of 1900s, 1920s, no specific year that refers to one of those choices, but as a graduate student at Harvard University in the 1920s, Ceclia Payne, later a professor of astronomy there.
Ding, ding. There's our answer. We have proof in that first paragraph that our answer is D. We were looking for C, we didn't find any specific years besides general, you know, 1920s. And the any ruled out D. And we don't know that she ever believed that the sun was composed of iron.
That isn't really mentioned. So we have our answer.
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