|
| |
 |
| |
ANSWERS TO
QUESTIONS 1 - 4:
The passages are the first two paragraphs from the
first page of the novel "To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf
1)
The correct answer is D. The word "it" belongs to its nearest noun, which
is "refrigerator". The grammatical construction is supported by the fact that
"joy" is connected to "heavenly bliss". This is simple and reasonably obvious,
or it would be if it were not, on the face of it, a rather bizarre association
which the reader might understandably be reluctant to accept, and also because,
in the previous one hundred word sentence, so many other items are referred to
that there is room for uncertainty. This is really a test of well focused
reading skills. The moral for the candidate is to have the courage of his or
her powers of logical deduction.
Answer A seems entirely reasonable,
because it is this, after all, that is the source of the little boy's
happiness, but the whole paragraph has been about the transference of this
emotion to something else, because he "cannot keep this feeling separate from
that". Answers B and C are also plausible, but there is no grammatical
connection to the word "it".
2) The correct answer is C. The
subject of the first paragraph is James Ramsay's awareness and how it works,
and the items are only of interest because they are part of his awareness at
the particular moment being described. In focusing on them the author is simply
moving from what James Ramsay sees to what (by and large) he hears .
Answer A is perfectly true, but the fact that the items all belong to
the same environment is not why they are listed together. The environment is
not the author's subject. Answer B is similar (with the additional objection
that not all the items (e.g."leaves whitening before rain") are sounds. Answer
D is entirely spurious; linking together the items in no way connects the
opening of the paragraph to its conclusion.
3) The correct
answer is A. The author's central concern here is with how the mood of the
moment colours the perceptions of the character. James Ramsay happens to be
looking at a picture of a refrigerator at a moment when he has reason to feel
ecstatically happy. Had he been looking at something else then that, whatever
it was, would have been subjected to the same transformation as the
refrigerator, as the character's emotion was literally projected onto it.
Answers B, C, and D, while correct to a degree, deal not with this
specific psychological phenomena but with something comparatively tangential to
it. James Ramsay may or may not be obsessive, distorted or irrational, but
these things are contingent and debatable. The fact that he is projecting his
emotions is not. This fact should alert us to something that is a common factor
in difficult multiple choice question papers. In order to sufficiently
challenge the reader options are inevitably offered which, due to the necessity
to conceal the fact that they are not the "correct" answer, are often right up
to a point. Sometimes it is even debatable as to which answer is the "correct"
one. In this situation, when confronted with several options which could all be
said, from some point of view, to be true, the candidate is advised to pick the
answer which has the most truth. In the case of this question, notice the
wording, which is " The passage is most concerned with depicting…" Most
concerned, not only concerned or exclusively concerned. Always read the exact
wording of the question very carefully.
4) This question is
another example of the same sort of thing. If the question had read "why does
James Ramsay's mother…" then the correct answer would have been B, because
this corresponds to her use of the image, for which she has her own reasons.
However, the character is not the author, whose concerns, throughout the two
passages in question, is with the way the mind works, and with the relation of
one mind to another. One of the striking things here in fact is how none of the
three characters are seen as they see themselves. James Ramsay feels ecstatic,
and not at all like a judge on a bench, which means that the correct, (the most
correct) answer, is C. Answer A points to a connection which is purely
fortuitous, and we have insufficient evidence to support the assertion made in
D. (Two instances of perception do not constitute a global way of looking. D
might be true, but we don't have enough reason to say that it definitely is.
There should always be sufficient evidence in the passage to support the
correct answer).
NEXT SECTION
|
|
|
