1 | MCQ (Reading Questions) | Practice Sessions | AP English Language and Composition

Summary

John Zia, an AP English Language teacher, leads a practice session on tackling reading multiple-choice questions. He emphasizes understanding the main ideas, relationships between paragraphs, and key rhetorical elements. He stresses the importance of validating or disqualifying answers based on keywords and eliminating partially correct options. The session includes analyzing a passage about tornadoes, highlighting scientific versus anecdotal styles, and choosing correct answer strategies. The video concludes by encouraging students to prepare for the upcoming writing section.

Highlights

• Zia advises students to summarize each paragraph's main idea in a few words. 📝
• He explains the importance of understanding paragraph relationships and shifts. 🔄
• Pay attention to rhetorical elements like tone, purpose, and claims. 📢
• When answering, eliminate options with partially correct insights. 🗑️
• Use examples from the tornado passage to illustrate reading strategies. 🌪️
• Prepares students to tackle the writing section of the test next. ✏️

Key Takeaways

• Master the art of summarizing paragraphs to grasp main ideas in passages. ✍️
• Understand the relationship between paragraphs to see the big picture. 🤔
• Identify passage tone, purpose, and claims to anticipate questions. 🔍
• Narrow down answer choices by validating keywords. ✔️
• Be cautious: a half-right answer is a completely wrong answer! ❌
• Transition from reading to writing sections: next session awaits! 📚

Overview

Welcome to an engaging AP English Language session with John Zia! Here, you'll learn how to conquer the reading section of the exam, focusing squarely on multiple-choice questions. This session is packed with tips and tricks, helping you summarize paragraphs effectively and understand their relationships—making sense of the passage's flow. Remember, the main idea is your guiding light, so be sure to jot it down in the margins.

Dive deep into the world of tornadoes with a practice passage that contrasts technical scientific jargon with anecdotal narrative styles. Spotting details and understanding the author's purpose is crucial here. Zia brilliantly walks you through deciphering complex readings by validating or disqualifying potential answers. His playful approach ensures that you're ready to leave no stone unturned when it comes to those tricky exam questions.

Finally, gear up for the exam's writing section in the next video—you're almost there! Zia's encouragement and methodical guidance make preparing less daunting. As you master the rhetorical puzzles of the reading section, remember this key takeaway: reinforce your ability to evaluate keywords, and remember, if an answer is half-right, it's all wrong. Get ready to complete the journey with confidence.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction John Zia, an AP language teacher, introduces the AP daily practice session focused on reading multiple choice questions. He references resources such as a downloadable PDF of the passage and questions. The chapter sets the stage for reviewing and practicing the reading and writing sections of the multiple choice test, noting the differences between them.
• 01:00 - 03:00: Reading Section Overview The chapter focuses on the reading section of a test, which requires specific skills and approaches. It consists of two passages, each accompanied by 11 to 14 questions. Readers should employ certain strategies while reading and answering questions, even though the exact content of the passages is unpredictable. The chapter aims to equip readers with techniques to enhance their success before they engage with practice passages and questions.
• 03:00 - 06:00: Rhetorical Tips The chapter emphasizes the importance of summarizing the main idea of each paragraph to better understand the passage as a whole.
• 06:00 - 10:00: Practice Passage Analysis This chapter focuses on the analysis of practice passages by emphasizing the importance of understanding rhetorical elements such as the author's tone, purpose, and claim. These aspects are highlighted as common themes in the questions asked about the passage. The chapter advises students to carefully scrutinize answer choices, aiming to validate or disqualify specific keywords or phrases. It stresses that an answer must be completely correct, as partial correctness equates to being wrong. The chapter concludes with an introduction to a practice passage sourced from a nonfiction book, setting the stage for further analysis.
• 10:00 - 15:00: Question 1 Discussion In this chapter titled 'Question 1 Discussion,' the focus is on developing skills for analyzing a passage from the late 20th century. Readers are encouraged to pause the video to read and reflect on the passage, applying previously discussed analytical tips. These tips involve identifying the main idea of each paragraph, understanding the relationship between paragraphs, and discerning the key rhetorical elements at play. The chapter emphasizes engaging with the text to grasp the big picture ideas and prepare for a follow-up discussion.
• 15:00 - 18:00: Question 2 Discussion The chapter titled 'Question 2 Discussion' focuses on the powerful and formidable nature of tornado clouds. The author provides specific details about their impressive size, speed, and the extensive path of destruction they can cause. The narrative is infused with scientific information, enhancing the understanding of tornadoes' strength and impact. The reader is left with a reinforced impression of the magnitude of these natural phenomena.
• 18:00 - 21:00: Question 3 Discussion The chapter "Question 3 Discussion" focuses on the author's exploration of scientific concepts related to climatology. It includes references to terms like 'foric envelopes', 'thermal instability', and 'rotatory columns' which are specific to scientific discourse, providing a viewpoint grounded in scientific analysis. The second part of the discussion reiterates the dynamic and powerful nature of tornadoes, a theme consistently reinforced throughout the text.
• 21:00 - 22:30: Review and Closing Remarks The chapter titled 'Review and Closing Remarks' wraps up previous discussions by emphasizing anecdotal insights into tornadoes, going beyond scientific facts to include stories, myths, and folklore. It highlights unexpected color combinations in tornadoes and uses familiar comparisons to demystify their dynamic shapes. The narrative shifts from technical details to a storytelling approach, enhancing understanding and engagement with more personal and cultural perspectives on tornadoes.

1 | MCQ (Reading Questions) | Practice Sessions | AP English Language and Composition Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 welcome to AP daily practice sessions my name is John Zia I teach AP language at Chelsea High School in Chelsea Michigan and today we're going to be discussing the reading multiple choice questions if you want to work through the passage and questions that we're using today click on the link provided and you can download a PDF of the passage and questions you'll see in the video as we prepare to start our review and practice let's first remember that there are two different sections of the multiple choice test the reading and the writing sections these sections are quite different from each other and they each
• 00:30 - 01:00 require their own different sets of skills and approaches so for today we're going to focus on just the reading section the reading section if you remember contains two passages each with 11 to 14 questions and while we never know what specific passages we'll see we do know that there are a few things we can do while reading our texts and answering our questions that can help put us in a position for Success so let's review a few of those quickly before we get into a practice passage and set of questions for starters as we read the reading section
• 01:00 - 01:30 we want to make sure that we work to summarize the main idea of each paragraph in the passages provided even if it's just a handful of words in the margin the more we can see the big ideas of the passage the better we also want to consider the relationship between paragraphs and or ideas are different paragraphs complimenting one another suggesting a similar idea are they contrasting one another refuting one another is there a shift we want to pay attention to the way the different paragraphs help to develop the passage we also want to look and listen for key
• 01:30 - 02:00 pieces of the rhetorical puzzle things like the author's tone purpose and claim those tend to come up in the questions that were asked and then when it comes time to answer the questions we want to narrow our options by trying to validate or disqualifying keywords or phrases in the answers as I like to tell my students if an answer is only partly or half right it is all wrong so with that is our setup let's take a look at a practice passage here I have the passage on screen that AP classroom tells us is excerted from a nonfic book published in
• 02:00 - 02:30 the late 20th century I want to invite you to pause the video now for a few moments to read the passage I strongly encourage you to practice applying those tips we just reviewed trying to think about the main idea of each paragraph how these two paragraphs relate to one another and what the key pieces of the rhetorical puzzle are and when you're finished reading you can press play for the vi video and I'll talk you through what I might pay attention to or notice in a passage like this okay so as I take a look at this passage I always like to start thinking about big picture ideas what are the
• 02:30 - 03:00 paragraphs telling me and in terms of that first paragraph I walked away thinking that tornado clouds are big and powerful forces um this author gave me a number of specific details describing how tall they are how quickly they move things like how wide the path of their destruction can be that left me again impressed in a way I hadn't really understood by how powerful these things are I also noticed that throughout the paragraph the authors seem to rely fairly heavily on scientific information
• 03:00 - 03:30 in detail the author cites climatologists and then talks about things like foric envelopes thermal instability rotatory columns and several other scientific terms that we would only see in that specific context so the jargon gave me a little bit of a voice here that this is looking through a scientific point of view when I got to the second body paragraph I actually noticed a very similar main idea or takeaway that tornadoes are Dynamic they're big they're powerful and again the author helped establish that through
• 03:30 - 04:00 the details provided I noticed the author go into depth about the different colors we would see in a tornado a handful of them that you might not expect to go together the author described the shape of a tornado sometimes comparing it to animals or other forms that we're familiar with so again we understand how Dynamic and changing these things are but as opposed to the scientific detail we received earlier I noticed that this paragraph was more anecdotal it was more like we were being told stories or myths or folklore surrounding tornadoes we were
• 04:00 - 04:30 hearing scientific studies this came through in places where the author pulls in details from other people's eyewitness accounts a grandfather um other people survivors another person and a witness this gives this paragraph a much more anecdotal feel and in addition to that I also felt like as I was hearing some of these anecdotes they seemed to me interesting and sometimes even a little bit amusing when the author tells us that um the grandfather is a man as bald as if a cyclonic wind
• 04:30 - 05:00 had taken his scalp that sounds to me kind of like a light-hearted description there that I don't think it literally happened to him it seems a little bit tongue and cheek he has a nickname for tornadoes called them old Nell makes it sound again somewhat familiar or light-hearted or when we hear him threaten to set children outside the back door probably not meant to be taken literally probably something to maybe bring a smile to our face some of these other details again so outrageous or extreme that they're almost funny the mother who is cured of her headache or the woman who is blown out out of her
• 05:00 - 05:30 window but then was set down unharmed these all give this paragraph a somewhat light-hearted feel with that as our reading of the passage let's practice then applying this to a few questions here question one says the author develops the passage primarily through a accumulation of detail B pro- and con argument C thesis followed by qualification D assertion supported by evidence and E an analysis
• 05:30 - 06:00 of the ideas of others what I would encourage you to do is you work through questions like this is to try and either validate or verify certain parts of answers as correct or eliminate or disqualify parts of answers that you know don't really work with what we saw so working through option A I might say something like the accumulation of detail there were certainly both of those in the passage we noticed seven or eight different examples of details that all helped relay the main idea option A seems then like an attractive choice to me but let's look at the other options
• 06:00 - 06:30 to see if we can disqualify any parts of them for option b i eliminated pro and con arguments those two paragraphs didn't seem to be working against one another they seem to be in conjunction with one another for option C I didn't think we ever received a thesis we had to infer some of the messages of that passage by reading those details and piecing them together so we never had a thesis nor did the author go on to qualify that thesis if anything the passage Works toward a similar idea for
• 06:30 - 07:00 option D I liked half of this answer I do think we get uh abundant amount of evidence here but I'm not sure that that evidence is a supporting an assertion remember there was no thesis we had to work together to get the main idea so we can eliminate D and for option e while there were ideas of other people featured there was no analysis in the passage it was recounting those ideas not trying to break them down for those reasons option A is our best choice let's take a look at a second question
• 07:00 - 07:30 compared with that of the rest of the passage the diction of paragraph one from climatologist to survived is a informal and straightforward B Technical and specialized C subjective and impressionistic D speculative and uncertain and E understated and euphemistic again uh if I had a paper copy of the passage I might go back through and reread this paragraph to look at the diction I'm relying on my memory right now to recall that
• 07:30 - 08:00 paragraph one was the one we noticed a lot of scientific jargon in so as I work through my options for a I don't think that was very informal it was formal and it was really specific to that sort of more scholarly realm option D it was very technical it was specialized this is matching that scientific sort of style we saw so I like option b as a choice here let's look at our other three remaining choices for option C I'm not sure this was a subjective passage it was objective offering science scientific detail option D not
• 08:00 - 08:30 speculative or uncertain the author was asserting with confidence that these were the case and backing it up with those scientific terms and for option e not really understated or euphemistic remember we walked away from that paragraph thinking how powerful those storms were so the author was not trying to downplay those ideas that leaves us with option b as our best choice the diction was Technical and specialized lastly let's take a look at question three the phrase as bald as if
• 08:30 - 09:00 a cyclonic wind had taken his scalp in paragraph 2 does all of the following accept a describe the grandfather with an image related to the Cyclone B suggest a lighter tone for the paragraph C particularize the first of several sources of information mentioned in the paragraph D suggest the power of the tornado or E Express concern about the condition of the grandfather it's worth noting that this question asks us or ask us to think about which of these does
• 09:00 - 09:30 not explain the function of that passage all of the following except so essentially we are going to eliminate options here that do explain how or why that passage was used so for option A that did provide description of the grandfather it used an image related to the Cyclone um the cyclonic wind so we can eliminate as a choice here because that one really does not speak to why or how that phrase is used for option b again we had sensed lighter tone in that
• 09:30 - 10:00 paragraph we knew this was a tongue and cheek reference here so we can eliminate that because again it explains one of the ways it does function option C particularize the first of several sources we know that we're hearing from the grandfather there that um we can eliminate as a choice as well because it is narrowing down which source of information we're working with for option D that does suggest the power of the tornado if it blows his hair right away we can eliminate that as a choice too so we're left with e and what we
• 10:00 - 10:30 might notice is that option e that passage was not meant to express concern about the condition of the grandfather this comes back to the idea that this was figurative it was not meant to be literal so the author is doing something tongue and cheek there it doesn't make us concerned about the grandfather so we can choose option e as our best choice as a quick review then in this video we've encouraged you to summarize the main idea of each paragraph As you work through the reading think about the relationship between paragraphs and ideas so we can trace the method of
• 10:30 - 11:00 development at work we want to look and listen for key pieces of the rhetorical puzzle so we can better sense the voice and approach and style of the author and we want to work to narrow our options by validating or disqualifying keywords or phrases thanks for watching this video in our next video we'll take a look at the writing multiple choice section I know that it's a lot of work getting ready for this test but you're almost to the Finish Line hang in there you guys are going to do great