At
the end of the nineteenth centum a rising interest in Native American customs
and an increasing desire to understand Native American culture prompted
ethnologists to begin recording the life stories of Native Americans. Ethnologists
had a distinct reason for wanting to hear the stories：they were after linguistic or anthropological data
that would supplement their own field observations, and they believed that the
personal stories, even of a single individual, could increase their
understanding of the cultures that they had been observing from without. In
addition many ethnologists at the turn of the century believed that Native
American manners and customs were rapidly disappearing, and that it was
important to preserve for posterity as much information as could be adequately
recorded before the cultures disappeared forever.
There
were, however, arguments against this method as a way of acquiring accurate and
complete information. Franz Boas, for example, described autobiographies as
being of limited value, and useful chiefly for the study of the perversion of
truth by memory, ¨ while Paul Radin contended that investigators rarely spent
enough time with the tribes they were observing, and inevitably derived results
too tinged by the investigator's own emotional tone to be reliable.
Even
more importantly, as these life stories moved from the traditional oral mode to
recorded written form, much was inevitably lost. Editors often decided what
elements were significant to the field research on a given tribe. Native
Americans recognized that the essence of their lives could not be communicated
in English and that events that they thought significant were often deemed
unimportant by their interviewers. Indeed, the very act of telling their
stories could force Native American narrators to distort their cultures, as
taboos had to be broken to speak the names of dead relatives crucial to their
family stories.
Despite
all of this, autobiography remains a useful tool for ethnological research：such personal reminiscences
and impressions, incomplete as they may be, are likely to throw more light on
the working of the mind and emotions than any amount of speculation from an
ethnologist or ethnological theorist from another culture.
Questions 29-34 refer
to the passage above.
29. Which of the following best
describe the organization of the passage?
(A) The historical backgrounds
of two currently used research methods are chronicled.
(B) The validity of
the date collected by using two different research methods is compared.
(C) The usefulness
of a research method is questioned and then a new method is proposed.
(D) The use of a
research method is described and the limitations of the results obtained are
discussed.
(E) A research
method is evaluated and the changes necessary for its adaptation to other
subject areas are discussed.
30. Which of the
following is most similar to the actions of nineteenth-century ethnologists in
their editing of the life stories of Native Americans?
(A) A witness in a jury trial invokes
the Fifth Amendment in order to avoid relating personally incriminating
evidence.
(B) A stockbroker
refuses to divulge the source of her information on the possible future increase
in a stock’s value.
(C) A sports
announcer describes the action in a team sport with which he is unfamiliar.
(D) A chef
purposely excludes the special ingredient from the recipe of his prizewinning
dessert.
(E) A politician
fails to mention in a campaign speech the similarities in the positions held by
her opponent for political office and by herself.
31. According to the passage, collecting life stories can be
a useful methodology because
(A) life stories
provide deeper insights into a culture than the hypothesizing of academics who
are not members of that culture
(B) life stories can
be collected easily and they are not subject to invalid interpretations
(C) ethnologists have
a limited number of research methods from which to choose
(D) life stories make
it easy to distinguish between the important and unimportant features of a
culture
(E) the collection of
life stories does not require a culturally knowledgeable investigator
32. Information in the passage suggests that which of the following may be a
possible way to eliminate bias in the editing of life stories?
(A) Basing all
inferences made about the culture on an ethnological theory
(B) Eliminating all or
the emotion laden information reported by the informant
(C) Translating the
informant’s words into the researcher's language
(D) Reducing the
number of questions and carefully specifying the content of the questions that
the investigator can ask the informant
(E) Reporting all of
the information that the informant provides regardless of the investigator's
personal opinion about its intrinsic value
33. The primary purpose of the passage as a whole is to
(A) question an
explanation
(B) correct a
misconception
(C) critique a methodology
(D) discredit an idea
(E) clarify an
ambiguity
34. It can be inferred from the passage
that a characteristic of the ethnological research on Native Americans
conducted during the nineteenth century was the use of which of the following?
(A) Investigators
familiar with the culture under study
(B) A language other
than the informant’s for recording life stories
(C) Life stories as
the ethnologist's primary source of information
(D) Complete
transcriptions of informant’s descriptions of tribal beliefs
(E) Stringent
guidelines for the preservation of cultural data
看了很多NN的post, 他們都說做題總結多了之後會發現ETS的出題思路.
可是我看了這個passage幾次都看不出為什麼ETS會出#34...是我太笨沒看出ETS的出題的規律還是第34題是不按ETS的出題的規律?
OG如果就选答案的话可以用排除法...我认为"A language other than the informant’s for recording life stories"里面的"a language"在文中指的就是english..挺合理，所以选B没问题.
这个应该算是细节题了.至于出题思路我的理解是，结合细节与主旨。
首先讲的是19世纪末才开始出现的记录life story的方式，违背原文，排除C；其次D与原文的incomplete意思相反，排除D；再者Investigator是否熟悉the culture也可以根据原文主旨推出来，第三段讲的第二点坏处就是因为Investigators不熟悉该culture而造成种种麻烦(总之就是对investigator持反面态度)，A却从正面讲，排除A；E在原文没有提到guideline问题,排除
momo...我也看过某NN有说过：“现在的RC已经在任何一句话都可能出题了，所以每一句话都很重要”，所以我想看完文章就知道哪里会出题对现在的RC来讲可能已经不是那么适用...最重要的还是"总体结构框架+主旨"吧。就像mumu的逻辑简图说到的跳读问题...可我后来发现完全不能跳读..虽然那篇简图的范文让我看了很澎湃，觉得RC如此简单.
绝对有理！不敢说成是真理，文章肯定是有结构的，读完文章一定要懂主旨，也许不考主旨，读完文章还不懂主旨，GMAT不是为这种能力来设的吧？
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