SAT Text Structure and Purpose Question

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Question 1 · Medium · Reading and WritingMarch 2025 Batch 2 · Q6Text Structure and Purpose · 0 solved

The following text is adapted from Matthew Arnold's 1869 nonfiction book Culture and Anarchy. The Times [a British newspaper], replying to some foreign structures on the dress, looks, and behaviour of the English abroad, urges that the English ideal is that every one should be free to do and to look just as he likes. But culture indefatigably tries, not to make what each raw person may like, the rule by which he fashions himself; but to draw ever nearer to a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, and becoming, and to get the raw person to like that. Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

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Strategy

Identify the author’s main move: does the text define, compare, argue, or explain a function? Then summarize what the passage says the thing does, not the side issue it mentions first. For purpose questions, look for the central relationship the author sets up and develops.

Hints (open one at a time)

Hint 1

Focus on the sentence after the contrast with the newspaper’s view; that is where the passage’s point is developed.

Hint 2

Ask yourself what culture is doing in the passage: is it being defined, defended, or described by its effect on people?

Hint 3

The passage says culture tries to change people’s tastes and habits toward certain qualities; pick the choice that matches that function.

Step-by-step Explanation

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