RC Question 13 Explanation
DISCUSSION: This is a detail heavy question. To answer this quickly, you need to take the time and review what the author said about successful programs in paragraph 4. The discussion of effective programming starts at line 52 (“by contrast”):
- Recordings of elders
- speeches by fluent speakers
- word games with a mix of English and native language
- traditional songs
You should also consider the first part of the paragraph. It talked about how programs fail. They fail when they merely have language lessons (lines 48-49).
So anything from the bulleted list above is probably fine, and anything that only uses lessons is probably a failure.
___________
- Fluent speakers: sounds great! They were on our list.
- Songs! Elders! They were both on our list. Great.
- Elders! Fluent speakers making a speech. Those were on the list.
- CORRECT. This answer describes language lessons. Boooooring. This is the kind of thing the author said didn’t work. These lessons aren’t engaging, and aren’t close to the cultural context.
- This is the trickiest wrong answer. Remember, we need something clearly inconsistent with the advice in paragraph 4. If you picked this, you probably imagined white anthropologists with bad language skills recording themselves reciting native folk tales. That’s….possible. But it isn’t usually what anthropologists do.
Probably, these anthropologists were making recordings of natives speaking their folk tales in their own language. Possibly even native elders. After all the recordings were made decades ago, so the speakers are probably quite elder now. Lines 52-54 specifically said that recordings of elders in their native language make for effective programming. So this answer is plausibly consistent with good advice, and not obviously inconsistent with it. Even if the anthropologists recorded themselves, they might have been fluent in the languages. This also would be good programming according to the author: they didn’t say fluent speakers of the language of indigenous ethnicity.
To pick an answer, it needs to clearly be bad advice. The right answer, D, clearly contradicts the author’s guidelines. Whereas this answer might fulfill the author’s guidelines, and doesn’t clearly contradict them.
This answer could only be correct if you assume anthropologists are dumb. The LSAT tends to assume relevant authorities are not dumb.
I crossed out (D) because the last sentence of the second paragraph says “as older people have taken an interest in rekindling the use of their languages and in helping younger generations understand idiomatic usage.”
Hi Esther,
Great point, I can see how you came to that conclusion based on the end of the second paragraph. Remember that this question asks about the types of programming the author advocates for based on the fourth paragraph. While the end of the second paragraph does say that older people have taken an interest in helping younger generations understand idiomatic usage, the fourth paragraph tells us programs that take the form of a lesson can be unengaging. The program described in D is a lesson, which means the author would not advocate for it.