It is Possible for Students to Obtain Advanced Degrees in English While Knowing Little or Nothing About Traditional Scholarly Methods.

Reading passage question

Question: It is possible for students to obtain advanced degrees in English while knowing little or nothing about traditional scholarly methods. The consequences of this neglect of traditional scholarship are particularly unfortunate for the study of women writers. If the canon—the list of authors whose works are most widely taught—is ever to include more women, scholars must be well trained in historical scholarship and textual editing. Scholars who do not know how to read early manuscripts, locate rare books, establish a sequence of editions, and so on are bereft of crucial tools for revising the canon.

To address such concerns, an experimental version of the traditional scholarly methods course was designed to raise students’ consciousness about the usefulness of traditional learning for any modern critic or theorist. To minimize the artificial aspects of the conventional course, the usual procedure of assigning a large number of small problems drawn from the entire range of historical periods was abandoned, though this procedure has the obvious advantage of at least superficially familiarizing students with a wide range of reference sources. Instead students were engaged in a collective effort to do original work on a neglected eighteenth-century writer, Elizabeth Griffith, to give them an authentic experience of literary scholarship and to inspire them to take responsibility for the quality of their own work.

Griffith’s work presented a number of advantages for this particular pedagogical purpose. First, the body of extant scholarship on Griffith was so tiny that it could all be read in a day; thus students spent little time and effort mastering the literature and had a clear field for their own discoveries. Griffith’s play The Platonic Wife exists in three versions, enough to provide illustrations of editorial issues but not too many for beginning students to manage. In addition, because Griffith was successful in the eighteenth century, as her continued productivity and favorable reviews demonstrate, her exclusion from the canon and virtual disappearance from literary history also helped raise issues concerning the current canon.

The range of Griffith’s work meant that each student could become the world’s leading authority on a particular Griffith text. For example, a student studying Griffith’s Wife in the Right obtained a first edition of the play and studied it for some weeks. This student was suitably shocked and outraged to find its title transformed into A Wife in the Night in Watt’s Bibliotheca Britannica. Such experiences, inevitable and common in working on a writer to whom so little attention has been paid, serve to vaccinate the student—I hope for a lifetime—against credulous use of reference sources.

“It is possible for students to obtain advanced degrees in English while knowing little or nothing about traditional scholarly methods.”- this is a GMAT reading comprehension passage with answers. Candidates need a strong knowledge of English GMAT reading comprehension.

This GMAT Reading Comprehension consists of 7 comprehension questions. The GMAT Reading Comprehension questions are designed for the purpose of testing candidates’ abilities in understanding, analysing, and applying information or concepts. Candidates can actively prepare with the help of GMAT Reading Comprehension Practice Questions.

Solution and Explanation

Question 1
The author of the passage is primarily concerned with

(A) revealing a commonly ignored deficiency
(B) proposing a return to traditional terminology
(C) describing an attempt to correct a shortcoming
(D) assessing the success of a new pedagogical approach
(E) predicting a change in a traditional teaching strategy

Question 2
It can be inferred that the author of the passage expects that the experience of the student mentioned as having studied Wife in the Right would have which of the following effects?

(A) It would lead the student to disregard information found in the Bibliotheca Britannica.
(B) It would teach the student to question the accuracy of certain kinds of information sources when studying neglected authors.
(C) It would teach the student to avoid the use of reference sources in studying neglected authors.
(D) It would help the student to understand the importance of first editions in establishing the authorship of plays
(E) It would enhance the student’s appreciation of the works of authors not included in the canon.

Question 3
The author of the passage suggests that which of the following is a disadvantage of the strategy employed in the experimental scholarly methods course?

(A) Students were not given an opportunity to study women writers outside the canon.
(B) Students’ original work would not be appreciated by recognized scholars.
(C) Little scholarly work has been done on the work of Elizabeth Griffith.
(D) Most of the students in the course had had little opportunity to study eighteenth-century literature.
(E) Students were not given an opportunity to encounter certain sources of information that could prove useful in their future studies.

Question 4
Which of the following best states the “particular pedagogical purpose” mentioned in line (Highlighted)?

(A) To assist scholars in revising the canon of authors
(B) To minimise the trivial aspects of the traditional scholarly methods course
(C) To provide students with information about Griffith’s work
(D) To encourage scholarly rigour in students’ own research
(E) To reestablish Griffith’s reputation as an author

Question 5
Which of the following best describes the function of the last paragraph in relation to the passage as a whole?

(A) It summarises the benefits that students can derive from the experimental scholarly methods course.
(B) It provides additional reasons why Griffith’s work raises issues having to do with the canon of authors.
(C) It provides an illustration of the immediate nature of the experiences students can derive from the experimental scholarly methods course.
(D) It contrasts the experience of a student in the experimental scholarly methods course with the experience of a student in the traditional course.
(E) It provides information that emphasises the suitability of Griffith’s work for inclusion in the canon of authors.

Question 6
It can be inferred that which of the following is most likely to be among the “issues” mentioned in line (Highlighted)?

(A) Why has the work of Griffith, a woman writer who was popular in her own century, been excluded from the canon?
(B) In what ways did Griffith’s work reflect the political climate of the eighteenth century?
(C) How was Griffith’s work received by literary critics during the eighteenth century?
(D) How did the error in the title of Griffith’s play come to be made?
(E) How did critical reception of Griffith’s work affect the quantity and quality of that work?

Question 7
It can be inferred that the author of the passage considers traditional scholarly methods courses to be

(A) irrelevant to the work of most students
(B) inconsequential because of their narrow focus
(C) unconcerned about the accuracy of reference sources
(D) too superficial to establish important facts about authors
(E) too wide-ranging to approximate genuine scholarly activity

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