PT 49 S3 Passage 4 Cultivation of Maize

[aidanmenzul]

I have trouble with passages like this because there isn't much of an argument that can be broken down and you're stuck with trying to comprehend a passage about corn and photosynthesis.

Is it recommended to approach a passage like this by thinking about side 1 or 2? If not what's a better way to break this down?

[aileenann]

Hi Aidan!

So it's a great idea to be comfortable with and have a strategy for these really tough or seemingly really detail filled passages that can easily bog you down.

We have a whole lesson on this in the Atlas syllabus, so if you're an Atlas student that's the first thing I recommend you watch to review in this area (it's session 10, and you can watch the class recording).

The gist of the lesson is this. Even if you don't understand everything perfectly, it's super important to understand what the two sides are (assuming there are two sides, as there almost always are). Even if you can't quite articulate everything that's going on, you want to know what the disagreement/difference is and who is on what side.

So if you are starting to get confused in a text, the best thing to do is permit yourself to skip over the very detailed sentences you may not fully understand while keeping an eye out for the parts that tell you what the two sides are and who agrees with them. From there, you can at least outline a broad scale which will help you answer the broader questions, such as main point questions, primary purpose questions, and tone of the author questions.

Once you have the broad scale, it should also make it easier to answer some detailed questions even if you don't fully understand the information you're working with. For example, there will be certain answer choices that are too extreme or that go against the author's primary purpose. These sorts of answers will be wrong, and can be eliminated with confidence even if you did not fully wrap your head around the passage

[aidanmenzul]

I think that may have been my problem on this passage... spent too much time trying to visualize/comprehend details rather than looking at the big picture and how those details relate to it