welcome to AP daily practice sessions my name is John Zia I teach AP language at Chelsea High School in Chelsea Michigan and today we're going to be discussing the reading multiple choice questions if you want to work through the passage and questions that we're using today click on the link provided and you can download a PDF of the passage and questions you'll see in the video as we prepare to start our review and practice let's first remember that there are two different sections of the multiple choice test the reading and the writing sections these sections are quite different from each other and they each require their own different sets of skills and approaches so for today we're going to focus on just the reading section the reading section if you remember contains two passages each with 11 to 14 questions and while we never know what specific passages we'll see we do know that there are a few things we can do while reading our texts and answering our questions that can help put us in a position for Success so let's review a few of those quickly before we get into a practice passage and set of questions for starters as we read the reading section we want to make sure that we work to summarize the main idea of each paragraph in the passages provided even if it's just a handful of words in the margin the more we can see the big ideas of the passage the better we also want to consider the relationship between paragraphs and or ideas are different paragraphs complimenting one another suggesting a similar idea are they contrasting one another refuting one another is there a shift we want to pay attention to the way the different paragraphs help to develop the passage we also want to look and listen for key pieces of the rhetorical puzzle things like the author's tone purpose and claim those tend to come up in the questions that were asked and then when it comes time to answer the questions we want to narrow our options by trying to validate or disqualifying keywords or phrases in the answers as I like to tell my students if an answer is only partly or half right it is all wrong so with that is our setup let's take a look at a practice passage here I have the passage on screen that AP classroom tells us is excerted from a nonfic book published in the late 20th century I want to invite you to pause the video now for a few moments to read the passage I strongly encourage you to practice applying those tips we just reviewed trying to think about the main idea of each paragraph how these two paragraphs relate to one another and what the key pieces of the rhetorical puzzle are and when you're finished reading you can press play for the vi video and I'll talk you through what I might pay attention to or notice in a passage like this okay so as I take a look at this passage I always like to start thinking about big picture ideas what are the paragraphs telling me and in terms of that first paragraph I walked away thinking that tornado clouds are big and powerful forces um this author gave me a number of specific details describing how tall they are how quickly they move things like how wide the path of their destruction can be that left me again impressed in a way I hadn't really understood by how powerful these things are I also noticed that throughout the paragraph the authors seem to rely fairly heavily on scientific information in detail the author cites climatologists and then talks about things like foric envelopes thermal instability rotatory columns and several other scientific terms that we would only see in that specific context so the jargon gave me a little bit of a voice here that this is looking through a scientific point of view when I got to the second body paragraph I actually noticed a very similar main idea or takeaway that tornadoes are Dynamic they're big they're powerful and again the author helped establish that through the details provided I noticed the author go into depth about the different colors we would see in a tornado a handful of them that you might not expect to go together the author described the shape of a tornado sometimes comparing it to animals or other forms that we're familiar with so again we understand how Dynamic and changing these things are but as opposed to the scientific detail we received earlier I noticed that this paragraph was more anecdotal it was more like we were being told stories or myths or folklore surrounding tornadoes we were hearing scientific studies this came through in places where the author pulls in details from other people's eyewitness accounts a grandfather um other people survivors another person and a witness this gives this paragraph a much more anecdotal feel and in addition to that I also felt like as I was hearing some of these anecdotes they seemed to me interesting and sometimes even a little bit amusing when the author tells us that um the grandfather is a man as bald as if a cyclonic wind had taken his scalp that sounds to me kind of like a light-hearted description there that I don't think it literally happened to him it seems a little bit tongue and cheek he has a nickname for tornadoes called them old Nell makes it sound again somewhat familiar or light-hearted or when we hear him threaten to set children outside the back door probably not meant to be taken literally probably something to maybe bring a smile to our face some of these other details again so outrageous or extreme that they're almost funny the mother who is cured of her headache or the woman who is blown out out of her window but then was set down unharmed these all give this paragraph a somewhat light-hearted feel with that as our reading of the passage let's practice then applying this to a few questions here question one says the author develops the passage primarily through a accumulation of detail B pro- and con argument C thesis followed by qualification D assertion supported by evidence and E an analysis of the ideas of others what I would encourage you to do is you work through questions like this is to try and either validate or verify certain parts of answers as correct or eliminate or disqualify parts of answers that you know don't really work with what we saw so working through option A I might say something like the accumulation of detail there were certainly both of those in the passage we noticed seven or eight different examples of details that all helped relay the main idea option A seems then like an attractive choice to me but let's look at the other options to see if we can disqualify any parts of them for option b i eliminated pro and con arguments those two paragraphs didn't seem to be working against one another they seem to be in conjunction with one another for option C I didn't think we ever received a thesis we had to infer some of the messages of that passage by reading those details and piecing them together so we never had a thesis nor did the author go on to qualify that thesis if anything the passage Works toward a similar idea for option D I liked half of this answer I do think we get uh abundant amount of evidence here but I'm not sure that that evidence is a supporting an assertion remember there was no thesis we had to work together to get the main idea so we can eliminate D and for option e while there were ideas of other people featured there was no analysis in the passage it was recounting those ideas not trying to break them down for those reasons option A is our best choice let's take a look at a second question compared with that of the rest of the passage the diction of paragraph one from climatologist to survived is a informal and straightforward B Technical and specialized C subjective and impressionistic D speculative and uncertain and E understated and euphemistic again uh if I had a paper copy of the passage I might go back through and reread this paragraph to look at the diction I'm relying on my memory right now to recall that paragraph one was the one we noticed a lot of scientific jargon in so as I work through my options for a I don't think that was very informal it was formal and it was really specific to that sort of more scholarly realm option D it was very technical it was specialized this is matching that scientific sort of style we saw so I like option b as a choice here let's look at our other three remaining choices for option C I'm not sure this was a subjective passage it was objective offering science scientific detail option D not speculative or uncertain the author was asserting with confidence that these were the case and backing it up with those scientific terms and for option e not really understated or euphemistic remember we walked away from that paragraph thinking how powerful those storms were so the author was not trying to downplay those ideas that leaves us with option b as our best choice the diction was Technical and specialized lastly let's take a look at question three the phrase as bald as if a cyclonic wind had taken his scalp in paragraph 2 does all of the following accept a describe the grandfather with an image related to the Cyclone B suggest a lighter tone for the paragraph C particularize the first of several sources of information mentioned in the paragraph D suggest the power of the tornado or E Express concern about the condition of the grandfather it's worth noting that this question asks us or ask us to think about which of these does not explain the function of that passage all of the following except so essentially we are going to eliminate options here that do explain how or why that passage was used so for option A that did provide description of the grandfather it used an image related to the Cyclone um the cyclonic wind so we can eliminate as a choice here because that one really does not speak to why or how that phrase is used for option b again we had sensed lighter tone in that paragraph we knew this was a tongue and cheek reference here so we can eliminate that because again it explains one of the ways it does function option C particularize the first of several sources we know that we're hearing from the grandfather there that um we can eliminate as a choice as well because it is narrowing down which source of information we're working with for option D that does suggest the power of the tornado if it blows his hair right away we can eliminate that as a choice too so we're left with e and what we might notice is that option e that passage was not meant to express concern about the condition of the grandfather this comes back to the idea that this was figurative it was not meant to be literal so the author is doing something tongue and cheek there it doesn't make us concerned about the grandfather so we can choose option e as our best choice as a quick review then in this video we've encouraged you to summarize the main idea of each paragraph As you work through the reading think about the relationship between paragraphs and ideas so we can trace the method of development at work we want to look and listen for key pieces of the rhetorical puzzle so we can better sense the voice and approach and style of the author and we want to work to narrow our options by validating or disqualifying keywords or phrases thanks for watching this video in our next video we'll take a look at the writing multiple choice section I know that it's a lot of work getting ready for this test but you're almost to the Finish Line hang in there you guys are going to do great