PrepTest 150, Section 1, Question 13
Passage A In a 1978 lecture titled "The(449 more words not shown)
Passage A(186 more words not shown)
Passage B(271 more words not shown)
Both passages are concerned with(7 more words not shown)
- ACan works of(10 more words not shown)
- BWho created the(4 more words not shown)
- CWhat determines whether(12 more words not shown)
- DWhat is an(15 more words not shown)
- EWhat does science(7 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
Both accounts make the reader's approach important. A uses the suspicious detective-fiction reader to show that readers help create the literary experience. B calls ways of reading protocols and explains how they distinguish genres. We should look for a question about that shared relationship between reading and genre.
What we’re looking for
Notice that the stem says both are concerned with answering the question. It doesn't require an answer that captures every part of both main points.
Working the answers
- A
Neither account asks whether popular fiction has literary value. Discussing detective stories or science fiction doesn't by itself raise a debate about their worth.
- B
A mentions Poe in Borges's account of the detective story's creation. B doesn't investigate who created that genre, so this is not a shared question.
- CCorrect
What puts a work in one genre rather than another? A's final sentence answers in terms of how works are read. B likewise favors reading protocols over classification by shared themes. The two accounts therefore address the question directly, even though A also makes a broader point about the reader's role in literature.
- D
B discusses works written to exploit a protocol, so authors' choices do matter there. But A develops the reader's role; it doesn't investigate the author's role in assigning a story to a genre. This is not the shared focus.
- E
A discusses detective fiction, while B uses science fiction as an example. Neither sets up a comparison between those two genres.
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