LSAT 82, Reading Comprehension, Q9, LSATHacks

RC Question 9 Explanation, by LSATHacks

DISCUSSION: This can be tricky, because the whole passage talks about radio; it’s hard to know where to look. You should think back to the two places difficulties were discussed: the end of paragraph 3, and the mid to end of paragraph 4. Then be prepared to skim those areas if they seem relevant to an answer.

• Lines 39-43 at the end of paragraph 3 are about how radio can beat the internet. It says radio must “resonate with the living oral traditions of….”. Basically this means radio should match oral culture.
• Lines 47-52 at the start of paragraph 4 say that in some communities, native language programming is just dull lessons, disconnected from the cultural context of the languages.

Both of these suggest that radio must connect to cultures to succeed.

___________

1. Careful. You might have interpreted this as meaning the stations were too disconnected from the daily lives of listeners. That isn’t what it says. Instead, it means stuff like local news, talking about the weather, traffic patterns, other stuff in your daily life. The passage didn’t really talk about doing that (line 26 talks about radio discussing important issues, but that’s different)
2. CORRECT. See the discussion above. In two places the passage talked about what radio should do to overcome difficulties. And in both places the answer was similar: be relevant to the local culture.
3. This is modern popular talk, that all things must take into account economic circumstances, privilege etc. It wasn’t in the article, and it wasn’t a common theme in 1996. Be wary of letting your outside conceptions flow into how you interpret the passage. The passage didn’t mention economics or poverty at all.
4. The passage didn’t mention this. And in any case the author suggests the opposite. The best radio stations are those that are in the cultural context of the community and are engaging (e.g. with songs). Advocacy tends to be dreary. If you have to advocate for the use of a language, it usually means people aren’t doing it for fun.
5. Actually, the author suggests that radio stations fail because they use lessons rather than fluent native speech. See paragraph 4, lines 48-50.

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