Author: Mark
Reading Level: B2
Last time, we discussed some words used in this text that help us to eliminate (B) and (D). Now, let’s see what the correct answer is!
Question
Studying late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century artifacts from an agricultural and domestic site in Texas, archaeologist Ayana O. Flewellen found that Black women employed as farm workers utilized hook-and-eye closures to fasten their clothes at the waist, giving themselves a silhouette similar to the one that was popular in contemporary fashion and typically achieved through more restrictive garments such as corsets. Flewellen argues that this sartorial practice shows that these women balanced hegemonic ideals of femininity with the requirements of their physically demanding occupation.
Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?
A) To evaluate a scholarly work that offers explanations for the impact of urban fashion ideals on Black female farmworkers in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Texas
B) To describe an unexpected discovery that altered a researcher’s view of how rapidly fashions among Black female farmworkers in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Texas changed during the period
C) To summarize the findings of a study that explored factors influencing a fashion practice among Black female farmworkers in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Texas
D) To discuss research that investigated the ways in which Black female farmworkers in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Texas used fashion practices to resist traditional gender ideals
Advice (part 3)
Finding the correct answer!
Sometimes it can be difficult to choose between two answers in an SAT Reading question. They can seem very similar to each other and you can get stuck, and spend far too much time trying to understand which one is more accurate. This is a big problem because you really do not have much time in the exam!
To get the correct answer quickly here, let’s look at some key words:
“evaluate” and “summarise“!
Evaluate means to “decide if something is true or not, or to decide if some work is good or not”. To do this a writer must show their opinions about someone else’s work!
Summarise is different. It means to “say the same information in a shorter and easier to understand way”. A writer does not have to show their opinions when they write a summary of someone else’s work.
In the text, there are no words that show any disagreement with the things that Flewellen said. There are no words that show agreement either. The writing is very neutral – it just tells us what Flewellen thought, but it does not give the writer’s opinion about what Flewellen thought! Therefore, the text is NOT evaluating Flewellen’s “scholarly work”.
Research papers are usually many pages long, so this text, which is only around 8 lines long, is much shorter. As I said before, summarising (making a summary) means just making the same information shorter and easier to understand. Even though we cannot see Flewellen’s original research paper on this topic, it is very likely to be longer and more detailed than this text.
Therefore, because none of the other answers fit, and because the text does seem to just be a neutral summary, the correct answer to this question must be (A)!
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