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Question

Difficulty: MediumMeeting Specific Rhetorical Goals

Passage Excerpt:
In 1885, Wilson Bentley, a farmer from Vermont, became the first person to photograph a single snowflake. Bentley accomplished this by attaching a microscope to his bellows camera. [X] Over his lifetime, he captured more than five thousand images of snowflakes, proving that no two are identical.

At this point in the passage, the writer wants to add a sentence that emphasizes the painstaking care and physical discomfort Bentley endured to capture his images. Which choice best accomplishes this goal?

  1. He stood for hours in unheated woodsheds during Vermont's freezing winters, carefully transferring each fragile crystal with a feather so it would not melt.Answer
  2. B
    His photographs were eventually published in scientific journals and purchased by several major universities.
  3. C
    He believed that capturing the beauty of nature was his true calling, despite the lack of initial financial reward.
  4. D
    Bentley's neighbors initially mocked his hobby as a waste of time, he persisted anyway because of his passion for nature.

Answer

He stood for hours in unheated woodsheds during Vermont's freezing winters, carefully transferring each fragile crystal with a feather so it would not melt.
The correct option directly addresses both aspects of the writer's goal. It highlights physical discomfort by describing Bentley standing for hours in unheated woodsheds during freezing winters, and it illustrates painstaking care by noting how he carefully transferred each fragile crystal using a feather to prevent melting.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the prompt to identify the specific rhetorical goals requested.
The goal is to find a sentence that emphasizes two specific elements: the painstaking care Bentley took and the physical discomfort he endured.
Understanding the precise criteria of the rhetorical goal is necessary to evaluate the options.
2
Evaluate each choice against the identified criteria to see which one contains details of both care and physical discomfort.
The statement describing standing in unheated woodsheds in freezing winters (discomfort) and transferring crystals with a feather (care) is the only option that fulfills both criteria.
Analyzing each option's semantic content ensures that the selected answer meets the specific prompt requirements.
3
Check the grammatically correct options that fail the goal and eliminate any choices containing grammatical errors.
The options about journal publications and natural calling are grammatically correct but miss the rhetorical goal. The choice about neighbors mocking him is a comma splice, making it both grammatically incorrect and rhetorically off-target.
Eliminating distractors based on both content mismatches and grammatical errors confirms the correct choice.

Key Concept

Meeting Specific Rhetorical Goals
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Topics

Meeting Specific Rhetorical Goals

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