PrepTest 157, Section 1, Question 1
The late 1950s and early 1960s were a(442 more words not shown)
The primary purpose of the(3 more words not shown)
- Adescribe how the(25 more words not shown)
- Bchronicle the activities(25 more words not shown)
- Ccontrast various techniques(25 more words not shown)
- Dargue that confrontational(25 more words not shown)
- Eprovide information on(26 more words not shown)
Reading the passage
We've already predicted the central idea: student sit-ins helped transform the civil rights movement, especially through the Freedom Rides. The question asks what the author is doing with that history. We want a description of how an effective new tactic expanded the movement.
What we’re looking for
Don't reduce the purpose to a list of dates. The dates and organizations show the tactic's growth and consequences.
Working the answers
- ACorrect
The new tactic is the sit-in. Its successful use encouraged wider participation, produced student leadership, and developed into Freedom Rides that drew government protection. Those effects explain the transformation this answer describes.
- B
This makes the events leading up to the first sit-ins the focus. We get that background briefly, but most of the account follows what the sit-ins led to. B points the explanation in the wrong chronological direction.
- C
We aren't comparing several competing tactics. The committee and Freedom Rides show developments from the sit-ins; the rides are expressly called a second form of them.
- D
The author shows that sit-ins were effective, not that progress would have been impossible without them. Necessary makes that stronger claim. Showing that this tactic worked doesn't establish that no other tactic could have worked.
- E
The school ruling supplies an earlier success and a hopeful climate. That is introductory context, not the main subject developed through the account of student activism.
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