PrepTest 110, Section 4, Question 27
While historians once propagated the myth that Africans(458 more words not shown)
The author's primary purpose in(4 more words not shown)
- Adescribe the efforts(10 more words not shown)
- Billustrate the historical(5 more words not shown)
- Cpresent a historian's(5 more words not shown)
- Dcriticize the work(7 more words not shown)
- Eanalyze the effects(8 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
The writer is presenting Vernon's explanations of African American rice cultivation. I might initially hesitate over “puzzling”: isn't growing food easy enough to explain?
What we’re looking for
But after slavery, people preferred corn, couldn't sell their small rice crops, and couldn't pay rent with them. The effort seemed out of proportion to the return. That's what makes the practice puzzling, and Vernon's theories respond to it.
Working the answers
- A
The document and interviews do supply evidence, but describing the search for evidence isn't the overall purpose. We spend much of the account learning Vernon's explanations of the cultivators' motives.
- B
The opening gives historical background. The account then goes beyond that background to explain why cultivation continued under different conditions.
- CCorrect
Vernon offers theories about a practice whose reasons aren't immediately clear, particularly after slavery. Her explanations shift our attention from the rice's practical value to the value of nurturing and symbolically claiming the land.
- D
The opening does challenge an old view held by historians. But that introduces Vernon's contribution; the whole account isn't an assessment of those historians' work.
- E
The cotton economy helps create the puzzle. We aren't examining how rice cultivation changed the economic system; we're explaining why people pursued it despite its limited economic rewards.
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