LSAT PrepTest 43 Section 1 Question 14 Explanation | Reading Comprehension

I didn't write the following blog post. It was already on the blog when I took over the URL. The following blog post may contain mistakes. -Steve

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Here's a Reading Comprehension (RC) question from the June 2004 LSAT.

Let's start by making some paragraph summaries:

P. 1 : 2 theories, formalism and reader-response, latter is better

P. 2: Formalism objective; need to see reader/text interaction

P. 3: Reader-response (RR) opens new interpretations

The summaries demonstrate the author has a positive view of RR; the last sentence of the first paragraph and the final paragraph indicate this. Keeping this in mind, let's go into the choices:

A) The opposite of what we want since the passage contradicts it. The first paragraph's final sentence says formalism is "unnecessarily narrow." The author critiques it and isn't neutral about which theory is better.

B) The opposite of what we want. The author doesn't respect the theory. In fact, the author criticizes it and says it's wrong.

C) Clearly the opposite of what we want. The author doesn't disregard it. The author presents a detailed argument against it.

D) Again, obviously the opposite of what we want. The author's not ambivalent about formalism and openly criticizes it.

E) Correct. The author dismisses formalism as wrong but does so with several reasoned arguments.

Remember:

Make summaries and eliminate choices that are the opposite of what you're looking for (in this case, contradicted by the passage).