Passage Discussion

[WaltGrace1983]

This passage essentially lacks a scale as we don't really have two sides to an argument. The author is simply arguing for something with no indication of an argument against it. The author is arguing that the consequences of letting these single women go abroad as missionaries had significant ramifications, namely in the establishment of women's status/strength and opportunity for them.

One thing that I thought was really significant in this passage was the phrases denoting sufficient conditions (sorry to get all LR on you!). We see phrases like "led to," "made possible by," or "enabled them" quite frequently and I think this is something that I should try to pick up on more. These cause and effect relationships were the basis of several questions (#10, 11, and 12).

I actually broke up paragraph 1 into two paragraphs, cutting it up at line 17 beginning with "Before the formation..." I thought it made sense to do so as it created two smaller and clearer chunks of information with clear topic sentences. Here was my passage map...

Paragraph 1: Need for women physicians led to increased opportunity (especially in Canton, China)

Paragraph 1.5: There were obstacles to these opportunities, namely overcome by the $$$ raised by foreign mission societies

Paragraph 2: Benefits of women (in China especially) working as missionaries

Paragraph 3: Further ramifications - more female physicians, independent incomes, private practice opening

Paragraph 4: The "payoff" - the most important result of all of this = the increase opportunity and role for women

Main Point/Author's Opinion: the consequences of letting these single women go abroad as missionaries had significant ramifications, namely in the establishment of women's status/strength and opportunity for them

How does that look?

[ohthatpatrick]

Very well done! I totally agree that there is no scale. I don't know that I've ever found that "reading for sufficient conditions" is useful in RC, but what you really meant by that was "read for the meaningful causal factors".

That is SUPREMELY important, particularly in descriptive passages such as this.

When an author isn't arguing against any oppositional opinion, when he's just Reporting the Facts, the passage normally focuses on some Change or some momentous Event.

If the author is retelling an Event, the important ideas I look for are sentences in which the author discusses what is particularly noteworthy or interesting about the Event as well as any ongoing legacy or aftermath.

If the author is describing some Change, the ideas I look for are the Before, the catalyst(s) for the Change, and the After.

So my version of a Passage Map here would be almost the same but biased a little more towards this kind of language.

If I were cutting up the 1st paragraph, I would do so at line 7. The first two sentences are the giant overarching summary of the whole passage.

From there we get:
P1 (intro) - Description of the Change

P1 (the Before) - More women in missionary movement ... initial reluctance to use SINGLE women but (the Catalyst) impressive fundraising of women's groups changed that

P2 - Why Chinese hospitals were totally cool with female physicians

P3 - How having western women physicians created medical employment opportunities for Chinese women

P4 - The ramifications / aftermath of this Change