When hunching myself answering a reading comprehension task, I was particularly unsettled with one question, which I will show you right now:
This is an excerpt from Susan Orlean’s “Life is Swell” – 1998 in Women Outside
… On our way to the video store, the girls told me they admired my rental car and said that they thought rental cars totally ripped and that they each wanted to get one. My car, which until then I had sort of hated, suddenly took on a glow…
Question:
In the highlighted portion of the passage, the phrase “they thought rental cars totally ripped” suggests the girls:
A. Assumed rental cars broke easily
B. Considered rental cars were appealing
C. Were surprised that rental cars were new
D. Determined rental cars were ugly
Now, it is obvious that D is easily eliminated, and that left us with A,B,C. The official answer is B. Nevertheless, I thought that A and C were also very sound too. This is because we can infer that the girls’ presumption or prejudice of rental cars was that they would be all ripped, in the other word, in bad condition. As a result, I want to have someone clarify this situation for me. Am I wrong because it is a literal question instead of an inference question? Thanks for any help!
Best regards
Answer
You don’t need to understand what “ripped” means to answer the question correctly, and you were probably not expected to know in the reading comprehension task.
By process of elimination:
they admired my rental car and said that they thought rental cars broke easily and that they each wanted to get one
NO: if this was the case it would be had thought – until they saw my rental car.
they admired my rental car and said that they thought rental cars were
appealing
OK – it makes sense, what they said demonstrates their admiration.
they admired my rental car and said that they were surprised that
rental cars were new
NO: to “totally” rip = to be unexpectedly new? Highly unlikely because of the strong adverb.
they admired my rental car and said that they determined rental cars
were ugly
NO: “We like your rental car and we have reached the conclusion that rental cars are ugly” – this would only make sense if they especially admire ugly things – unlikely.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : nthntn , Answer Author : grateful
