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Question

Difficulty: MediumMeeting Specific Rhetorical Goals

Passage Excerpt:

In 1938, Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer, a South African museum curator, was inspecting the catch of a local fishing trawler when she noticed an unusual blue fin. Under a heavy pile of sharks, she found a five-foot-long fish with shimmering blue scales and limb-like fins. [Underlined Portion] then contacted J.L.B. Smith, a local chemistry professor and amateur ichthyologist, to help identify it.

Which choice most effectively emphasizes the immediate, hands-on efforts Courtenay-Latimer made to save the specimen from deteriorating before it could be identified?

  1. She quickly wheeled the fish to the museum in a taxi and treated it with formalin, sheAnswer
  2. B
    Because the museum had no cold storage, she became worried and
  3. C
    She hurried to transport the fish, she hoped it would not rot, she
  4. D
    Hoping to find a scientist who could tell her what the creature was, she

Answer

The correct option is the one that states: 'She quickly wheeled the fish to the museum in a taxi and treated it with formalin, she'. This choice directly addresses the rhetorical goal of emphasizing immediate hands-on effort to preserve the specimen.
The correct choice successfully details immediate physical actions ('quickly wheeled the fish... in a taxi') and direct efforts to prevent decay ('treated it with formalin') while maintaining perfect grammar in the sentence.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the prompt to identify the specific rhetorical goal.
The prompt requires a choice that emphasizes immediate, hands-on efforts to preserve the fish from decaying.
Understanding the precise criteria of the goal is essential to filtering out irrelevant details.
2
Evaluate each option against the rhetorical goal, ensuring it describes active physical preservation efforts.
The option beginning with 'She quickly wheeled' describes direct actions (wheeling the fish, taking a taxi) and preservation methods (formalin), whereas the other choices focus on her worries, her motives, or contain grammatical errors.
This filters the options to find the one that meets both the rhetorical objective and grammatical constraints.
3
Verify that the selected option is grammatically correct and fits seamlessly into the surrounding sentence context.
Inserting the correct choice forms a grammatically correct compound structure ending with 'she then contacted J.L.B. Smith.'
ACT English questions require that the correct rhetorical choice must also be grammatically correct.

Key Concept

Meeting Specific Rhetorical Goals
Estimated Time:1m 0s
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Topics

Meeting Specific Rhetorical Goals

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