Q3

[tw4jp]

I was looking for answer choice says " exemplify the ways why Chinatown Chinese English is different from any other dialect used in China." I couldn't find it. So I chose D instead because I thought the second paragraph is a detailed explanation of the first claim --line 7 to 12. And the main purpose of "line 7 to 12" is to show why Chinatown Chinese should be considered a distinct new dialect, which is answer choice D. Now while can see why D might be too broad. I just couldn't find the exact line reference to support answer choice E.

[ohthatpatrick]

Your prephrase seems great.

Questions that are phrased, “The author brought up _____ in order to ...”
are almost always testing us on the framing idea that preceded “____”.

As you surmised, lines 21-25 are fleshing out the framing idea of line 17-21. So we should expect the correct answer to reinforce that language.

I had the same experience the first time I did this problem: all of the answer choices seemed lame, when I knew we were just looking for “examples of how language in Chinatown is different from traditional Chinese”.

(A) “dominate” is too strong
(B) these examples are about Chinese Americans communicating with traditional Chinese, not Chinese Americans communicating with each other.
(C) these examples serve the opposite function. They are examples words that native Chinese would NOT find easy to understand.
(D) the author’s entire purpose in this passage is to argue AGAINST treating Chinatown Chinese as its own dialect, so this can’t be the author’s purpose. If the answer choice had been phrased “show why Chinatown Chinese has been considered, by some, a distinct dialect”, then sure. But this is worded as though the author was trying to show that Chinatown Chinese SHOULD be considered a new dialect, which is the opposite of the author’s purpose in writing the passage.

That leaves us with (E). The verb ‘exemplify’ is great, since we were prephrasing “these are examples of ____ “.

And what it says seems accurate, since we’re talking about American English terms like “downtown” and “Labor Day”, and they HAVE become part of Chinatown Chinese.

[MeshalA226]

Hi, now i am looking at this purpose question, is it a correct line of thinking to say the purpose of the specific reference is to give example in the ways Chinese American vocabs are different at a surface level, not at core, i was solely focused on the idea of why, the exemplify notion only answers the what, but I see the why missing. thanks.