Q16

[romanmuffin]

I was debating between A and E, and I went with A because I quickly read translated and recorded and linked that to artifacts.

My question is can we equate the "oral traditions" in answer A to the "oral communication" in answer E? And does the passage necessarily exclude "artifacts" as the source from which bicultural composite authorship draws from?

If anyone can help explain this, it would be awesome!

Thanks

[bbirdwell]

Good question! It's a tough choice because it seems like artifacts were mentioned all over the place in the passage: shields, teepees, etc. However, in this example you've got to play the LSAT game. The question asks about a specific line reference, very early in the passage. Thus, you should limit the scope of the information you consider to that information very near the line in question. In fact, the correct answer often comes from the lines above the line referenced.

Here, then, we are asked "what is bicultural composite authorship?" The answer is directly above: "as-told-to life histories."

This is (E) rather than (A).

[porsupuesto3798]

Could anybody explain to me why D isn't correct?
I know that E is better than D but I still don't see where in the passage says that the autobiographies of Native Americans are orally-presented

[trekstar]

I also have a question about Q16. I narrowed it down to D and E, then ultimately chose D because of lines 5-6: "...Limiting their studies to such written documents, these scholars have overlooked traditional, preliterate modes of communicating personal history..."

From these lines, I took it to mean that the Native Americans wrote down the autobiographies, which were then edited by non-Native Americans.

Can someone explain why D is definitely wrong?

[maryadkins]

Read what you wrote again carefully...

The scholars are the ones studying the written documents. The documents were WRITTEN by the collaborators to whom the life histories were "TOLD" (line 2). (D) misrepresents this to suggest that the member of the one culture wrote it and it was edited and revised by someone else. Rather, "told" indicates oral transmission.

As for the others that have not yet been discussed in this chain:

(B) and (C) are both like (D). It wasn't written by two people but one.