Here we're going to go through this passage together. This is the first passage from the test.

And this is going to be kind of difficult because I know you haven't had the Reading Comp Lessons that we offer in our course.

So there's going to be a lot of stuff that I just cannot presume that you know because we haven't taught it to you yet.

But I'll just mention them offhand so you get a sense of what these ideas or what the techniques at the lessons,

at the Reading R-Full Reading Comp Lessons, what those ideas and lessons are and how you apply them.

So what we're going to do is we're going to read the passage first and then we're going to answer the questions.

So it's very important, just like in logical reasoning, it's very important to spend a lot of time on the stimulus.

Make sure you understand the stimulus. For reading comprehension, the analog here is to spend a lot of time on the passage

and make sure you understand the passage. The better you understand the passage, the faster and more accurate you'll be when you do the questions.

And the worse you understand the passage, the slower and less accurate you'll be on the questions.

So it really is a great investment to spend a lot of time up front with the passage.

So we're going to read this together. I'm going to tell you what I'm thinking and ask some questions.

And this is really to illustrate the internal thought process that you're supposed to be having in your own head.

So we read,

For decades there has been a deep rift between poetry and fiction.

And they're telling us there's a deep rift. So I understand that we're talking now in the subject matter is the humanities.

And LSAT reading passages draw from four large subject matters. Humanities is one of them.

Especially in academic settings, especially at the university, the rift between poetry and fiction is deep.

So graduate programs in universities, for example, they're going to tell you that this is a support structure here.

Why should you believe this statement? Well, here's an example.

Graduate writing programs train students as poets or as writers of fiction, but not both. Never as both.

Both poets and writers of fiction have tended to support the separation.

So poets and writers of fiction are OK with this.

And why? Because the current conventional wisdom holds that poetry should be.

See, now they start to tell us about a lot of stuff. So we know that poets and writers are OK with it.

Why are they OK with this deep separation? Well, because there's a conventional wisdom.

And what's the conventional wisdom? It is that poetry is elliptical and lyrical, reflecting interstates and processes of thoughts or feeling,

whereas character and narrative are the events that are the stock and trade of fiction.

So here I would make just an annotation about sort of what poems and what and how poems and fiction, how they differ.

I would draw a line here for poems and I would draw a line here for fiction.

So that way I sort of remind myself poetry is elliptical and lyrical, fiction is character and narrative.

So once we are finished reading this first paragraph, you want to stop and take stock of what you know.

Summarize this if you can as succinctly as possible.

So I would just say something like poetry and fiction, very different. Deep rift.

The idea is if you ever need to come back to the passage, you have to know where to come back to.

Reading comp really in many ways is to test a short short term memory and we have a memory method.

We offer that to everyone for free. So you can just search that on our website and find it.

And, you know, in the memory method, we stress very much so that you have to have good short term memory.

One way to get it is to just after reading every single paragraph, stop and think about what the summary is.

So, again, here will be deep rift between poetry and fiction.

Once we do that, then if we encounter a question that talks about something, at least at the very least,

if we don't remember details, we know which paragraph to look. We don't have to go through the whole paragraph.

All right. So we did that. Next thing you want is you want to try to anticipate where this argument is going to go,

or rather where this passage is going to go. Every passage has an argument it's making.

Just this is no different from logical reasoning. It's just argument in the long form.

So I know there's something about poetry and fiction being having a deep rift.

So is that a good thing? Is that a bad thing? I'm guessing maybe the author will comment on it in some way.

So this way, this is a good technique to make sure you're still interested,

because probably a lot of you guys aren't interested in poetry and fiction.

So the worst thing that happens for you to lose interest in a reading passage.

So try to guess what's going to happen next.

I'm guessing that probably the author is going to comment a little bit about whether or not it's a good or bad thing.

So let's read on. He says, certainly it is true that poetry and fiction are distinct genres.

This is how authors launch attacks. They say, OK, I can see this one. I'm not going to argue this one.

But, and here we go, he argues. This is where he's now actually speaking to you about something that he cares about.

It just kind of just renders all the rest of this stuff so far just context.

Just like in logical reasoning, we have contextual information.

Here we have contextual information and then our arguments about it start over here.

So he asks us a question. Why have specialized education and literary territoriality?

So here we go. These two things, you have to know what they're talking about. Don't get lost here.

What do you think it's talking about? Specialized education is this stuff before.

Poets being trained exclusively to poets, writers being trained exclusively to writers.

What's literary territoriality? Well, literature, the world literature, fiction and poetry.

They're carving out their own territories.

So he's saying while it's true that poetry and fiction are distinct, why have these two phenomenon resulted from the distinction?

Why is there such a deep rift? He's asking now. He's identified the phenomenon in the context.

The phenomenon is that there's a deep rift. Now he's asking for an explanation.

He says, here's my hypothesis. The answer lies perhaps in the widespread attitude in U.S. culture.

Now, this might be the wrong hypothesis. This might be the wrong explanation.

There might be some other explanation for why there is a deep rift between poetry and fiction.

But at the very least, he's offering, the author is offering this to you as his explanation.

He says it's because of cultural attitudes in the U.S.

Okay, you know, expand. What are the details?

The cultural attitudes in the U.S. often cast a suspicious eye on the generalist.

Okay, so if you do both poetry and fiction, then you're considered a quote-unquote generalist.

And those with knowledge, expertise in multiple areas risk charges of dilettantism.

So, you know, dabbling in this, dabbling in that, you're a dilettante.

You sort of not really specialize in anything.

See, that's kind of taboo almost.

So as if the ability in one field is diluted or compromised by accomplishment in another.

That's the presumption. If you're, you know, how good are you as a poet?

Well, if you're a pure poet, I'm guessing you're better than if you're a poet and you're a fiction writer.

Which, see, that's not, I mean, I don't know. I could easily see that going the other way.

But whatever the case may be, this is the author's hypothesis that's supposed to be explaining this phenomenon.

So for the summary of this paragraph, I would just say something like, oh, US cultural attitudes,

being suspicious of generalists, is what explains this specialized education and this deep rift, essentially.

So where is it going to go now?

I mean, usually after a phenomenon has been established and a hypothesis proposed to explain this phenomenon,

this is, of course, a social phenomenon, then usually what the author tries to do is,

he tries to go into depth, go into more detail about the hypothesis,

or try to play it out, or maybe offer commentary on the hypothesis.

So maybe that's where this is going to go. Let's read on and find out.

Ah, okay. So what are the biases against writers who cross generic boundaries? What does that mean?

So who are writers who cross generic boundaries? What generic boundaries?

You have to make sure you push back the idea to stuff you've already read before,

where here the generic boundary obviously is poetry and fiction.

So they're saying for writers who do both poetry and fiction, the bias against them, what bias?

Well, this right here, cast a suspicious eye. This bias that he just proposed.

He says, here is my proposed explanation for why this thing happens,

but I think this is going to be less and less the case.

As we move forward in time, this explanation is going to be less and less correct

because I see people already not casting a suspicious eye.

Fortunately, there are signs that the bias is diminishing.

So this hypothesis is getting weaker and weaker as time goes on, is what he's saying.

All right. So that's the connection between the third paragraph and the second one.

So several recent writers are known and respected for their work in both genres. Great.

So now we're going to talk about premises, examples that make us believe this conclusion.

Why should I believe that the bias is diminishing?

Well, here are several writers who are known and respected for work in both genres.

And, you know, this is how we're going to support this.

How are we going to support this conclusion that this bias is diminishing?

All right. So one important example of this trend is Rita Dove and Dove,

an African-American writer who is highly acclaimed for both her poetry and her fiction. Great.

So this is one example of the, you know, Rita is an example of the several recent writers who are known and respected.

So what about Rita? Let's find out more about Rita.

A few years ago, speaking at a conference entitled Poets Who Write Fiction, see, perfect, right?

The title is Poets Who Write Fiction, blurring that distinction that was presented to us in the very first paragraph.

So what did Rita say at Poets Who Write Fiction?

She said she expressed gentle incredulity about the habit of segregating genres.

So she was gentle about it, but she was incredulous.

She just didn't like, you know, what is it, an attitude of being incredulous?

Can't believe it or think it shouldn't be the case that we segregate the genres.

Poetry is segregated from fiction. Right. She doesn't like that.

She had grown up reading and loving both fiction and poetry, she said,

and she was unaware of any purported danger lurking in the attempt to mix it to put it that way.

It's almost sort of comical. It's silly that this attitude,

you see how this attitude right here is in contrast to this attitude here in US culture,

suspicious eye on the generalist. She's like, what? There's danger.

There's lurking danger in trying to mix danger and trying to mix the two genres.

She's crazy. So she so she continues.

She says she also studied for some time in Germany where she observed poets write plays,

novelists write libretti, playwrights write novels. They would not understand our restrictiveness.

Ah, OK. So she studied for a while in Germany and in Germany there is none of that,

which is, you know, that totally fits with what the author was saying here,

because it is a US cultural thing. Now that we've reached the end of this paragraph,

this is the third paragraph. Let's try to sum that up.

So the idea is that the bias against being both a poet and a fiction writer is diminishing,

as exemplified by this lady, Rita.

And she sort of is now the author's mouthpiece for sort of explaining why this bias,

the other way to look at it. Up above, we have one way to look at it,

why it makes sense to sort of divide the two genres up.

Here we have a different way of looking at it, why maybe it shouldn't be divided up.

OK, so what's going to happen now? Actually, I have no idea what the next,

what they're going to go with now, but let's just keep reading here.

Because the author could have done a couple of things.

The author could have decided to talk about a different writer or interject his own views,

but he chose not to. He chose to talk about Dove and let Dove be his mouthpiece for expressing views.

These are her views, as reported through the author, of course.

But then he continues to do that. He continues to let Dove report her views.

So let's see. It makes little sense, Dove believes, to persist in a restrictive approach.

Yes, OK, so we already got that. Dove doesn't, right?

I mean, from the previous paragraph, we already got the sense that she doesn't think poetry and fiction should be restricted,

prevalent in the US, because each genre shares in the nature of the other.

So because she thinks there are sort of a lot of overlapping things between poetry and fiction.

OK, and indeed her poetry. So she does. So she does write.

You know, we already knew that she writes both. Right.

She's a writer, poetry and fiction.

Her poetry offers examples, example after example of what can only be properly regarded as lyric narrative.

Now, let's think about this idea. I remember encountering something about poetry here.

Do you see like you see what's going on? Lyric narrative poetry is elliptical and lyrical.

Fiction is character and narrative. They're saying lyrical narrative.

So you see, it's got elements of both. OK, let's let's see how what do they mean by that?

What is lyric narrative? This is this is where you don't you just have to push through.

If you don't if you've never taken an English lit class, you probably have no idea what lyricism or narrative is.

But just use your imagination. Try to imagine what it could mean.

I mean, we know what song lyrics are. They sound nice. They have pleasant sounds.

Narrative. We know a narrative is is a story beginning, middle, end.

Right. So. So sort of putting those two ideas together. I'm not exactly sure what this phrase means,

but that's the best you can do for reading. If you don't have expertise in this field,

this will be English lit. Then that's all you got. What's what's on the page is all you have.

So you just make the most of it. All right. So her poetry being exemplified as lyrical is something we totally expect.

Of course, poetry be little lyrical. That's what you know, elliptical, lyrical.

That's in the first paragraph. But narrative. See, that's where it emerges with fiction.

All right. So her use of language in these poems is undeniably narrative.

Great. That is evokes emotions and interstates without requiring the reader to organize ideas or events in particular.

Your structure is a sort of repetition of what we already got from the first paragraph.

So it's lyrical. Yet this lyrical expression simultaneously presents the elements of a plot of a plot.

That's the narrative part. In such a way, the readers led repeatedly to take account of clusters of narrative detail within the lyrical flow.

So there you go. So that's that's more explanation. That's more detail of how her poetry is exemplifies this sort of nice blending of both.

Thus, while language is lyrical, it comes it often comes to constitute cumulatively a work of narrative fiction.

Great. So that's her poetry exemplifying some elements of fiction. That's what this part is.

So we're being shown now how not only how a person can both write poetry and fiction, not only that, because we know she does that,

but sort of the benefits of incorporating elements of one genre into the other genre.

So here we have elements of fiction into poetry here. And we say similarly, the rest of this many passages are fictions.

And now I'm guessing, well, if you talked about elements of fiction in your poetry, I guess now you're going to talk about how she has elements of poetry in her fiction.

Similarly, passages in her fiction, though undeniably prose, it is prose.

So it's not prose versus, I guess, what, poetry? Undeniably prose achieve the status of lyric, lyric narrative again.

Right. So this for fiction narrative is what's to be expected. The lyricism is what not to be expected.

So to contrast it here through the use of poetic rhythms and elliptical, see this elliptical, that's stuff we talked about in the first paragraph expression.

And in short, dove. So there we go. Stop. So in short, dove bridges the gap between poetry and fiction, not only by writing in both genres,

but also by fusing the two genres within individual works. Great. That's something we already we sort of already talked about.

Because the third paragraph tells us she bridges the gap between poetry and fiction by writing both poetry and fiction.

That's this paragraph, right, by writing in both poetry and fiction.

And then this paragraph tells us this other part also by fusing the two genres together. So that's that's wonderful.

So now to sum up this paragraph, we can just say something like dove's poetry has elements of fiction or fiction has elements of poetry.

OK, good. So now at the end of the passage, it's always good practice to sort of just scan through the rest passage and run a thread through all of it.

Just very quickly describe what that first paragraph is about, how it links the second paragraph, what the second paragraph is about, how it links the third paragraph, so on and so forth.

So let's do that. Again, this is to aid in your memory. You have to have very good short term memory.

Because when you have to go back, you're just you're burning a lot of time and you don't have that much time.

All right. So first paragraph, we get the idea that poetry and fiction are very distinct and they're different from each other.

And there's a deep rift between poetry and fiction. Second paragraph, we have a hypothesis about why there is such a deep rift.

And it's probably the author says is because of our cultural attitudes towards the biases against the generalist.

We want people to be specialists, to believe them. The third paragraph says, however, this cultural bias might be diminishing.

And and why should we believe it? Because of Rita Dove, who writes both poetry and fiction.

And in the last paragraph, we show not only does she write both poetry and fiction, her poetry has elements of fiction, her fiction has elements of poetry.

So really, it is being well blended. OK, so that's that's a really, really solid understanding of this passage.

And with this understanding, you should feel very comfortable going to the question. So let's do that now.

Question 7 says, it can be inferred from the passage that the author will most likely believe which one of the following.

So we're being asked to get into the author's head and from the information in the passage,

what can we say about what the author would believe?

This is a potentially very difficult question because the information here,

the support for the right answer choice, could really come from anywhere in the passage.

This is where having a really good short-term memory is very, very helpful.

even though it may contain elements of both.

This is great.

This just feels like exactly what this is talking about, what this paragraph is talking about.

Her poetry has elements of fiction and her fiction has elements of poetry.

So yes, primarily classified as poetry or fiction but has elements of both.

Perfect.

I have no idea what gives it aesthetic value.

I don't even want to read on anymore because it's just a bunch of stuff I don't understand.

The representation of sequence of events rather than its ability to invoke.

I don't know.

See, this is sort of getting you to mess around with both.

What do we know about lyric?

The lyric part is where you invoke interstates.

What about the narrative?

The narrative is where you represent sequence of events.

So lyric narrative supposedly has both.

But then they're saying the aesthetic value is attributable in the narrative part as opposed to the lyric part.

So all that useless analysis only leads me to think that this is just –

I'm even more confident that this is wrong.

But they do stuff like this all the time with wrong answer choices,

just like take information from here, just mash it up in random orders

and force you to try to understand what this is saying.

So having a nose, being able to smell a wrong answer choice is very important

because you won't have time on the actual test to go through the analysis that we just did.

On the test, you just like – you read it.

You're just like, it just feels wrong, and then you have to move on.

That seems – I mean, as laudatory as this passage is of Rita's achievements,

I think it's a little far to say that she has no precedent in this.

We don't know if she has precedent in this.

In fact, if anything, we know that she is part of a group of people who are doing this.

No. That what? To pure lyric poetry? We have no idea.

There's no comparison of like what's superior aesthetically to what.

they often try their hands at drama as well.

What? Drama? Really? I don't know.

I mean, is this true? Does Rita write drama?

And even if she does, do other people who cross the line between poetry and fiction, do they write drama?

So we just – it's not answered in our passage.