Which one of the following most accurately identifies the attitude shown by the author in the passage toward talk–story?

Andrea on March 30, 2020

Hi @DavidW,

This is a hard passage! We want to look for author’s attitude, which we can find in a number of places. One common space author’s attitude hides is in adverbs. Another is adjectives. Descriptive language in general is often an attitude give-away we want to look out for.

In lines 10-11, the author refers to talk story as highly developed.
In lines 20-21, talk story is referred to as a “fully established, sophisticated oral culture.”
In lines 21-22, the passage says talk story is “already ancient and capable of producing masterpieces.”

As we can see from those line references, the author admires the art of talk story. So answer choice A....

“Scholarly appreciation for its longstanding (already ancient) artistic (masterpieces) sophistication (highly developed) (fully established, sophisticated oral culture)”

Makes sense!

Hope this helps. Feel free to let us know if you have anymore questions!

Margarita on August 14 at 03:12PM

Hi!
I was between D and A, can you explain why D is wrong please?

Emil on August 14 at 06:54PM

The main issue with D is that the passage just doesn't quite give us enough support for it. While it's directionally correct in the sense that the author is positive towards talk story, we don't have any clear reason to think that the reason she likes it is the diversity of its sources and it's ancient roots. While we are told its roots date back to the Song dynasty, and while it's origins seem to lie on both side of the pacific, we don't have any reason to think that's the reason WHY the author likes it. This is not the case for a.