Reading Comprehension · Humanities
PrepTest 136 · Section 1 · Passage 3
Questions 15–22
Before you start
Open PrepTest 136, Section 1 in your official copy from LSAC and read the passage for Questions 15–22, using the structure guide below. The passage is not reprinted here.
Structure guide
- P1: opens with a broad comment on two kinds of art borrowing from each other, narrows it to one tradition, then claims a single work was the first to try a certain move
- P2: explains how that work's technique operates and offers an analogy for it
- P3: brings in a pioneer from the other art form and ties the work's technique to his method
- P4: concludes with the author's praise of what the work achieves
Step 2 · The kid passage
The Field Day Mural
Sports and art have always borrowed from each other at Maple Hill Elementary. Ever since the first chalk drawings on the blacktop, painters keep trying to make pictures that move the way a game moves. This is truest of all in the fifth grade art club, whose posters are often called the best thing the school makes. Plenty of club members have painted athletes and balls. But nobody had tried to build a whole mural on the shape of a game until Nadia painted "Field Day" last spring.
In "Field Day," the game shows up not only in what is painted but, even more, in how the wall is laid out. Nadia painted one big background sky in her own calm style, belonging to no one in particular. Then she let six classmates each paint one panel in their own bold way. Still, every panel sits inside a white chalk box, a reminder that Nadia invited them in. The wall works like a relay team: one shared race, with each runner's own leg inside it.
Coach Okafor was the first coach to plan relays around each runner's own style. Yet however fast or wild a runner's leg, it always fit inside his plan, as if drawn inside a chalk box. Nadia did the same thing with paint.
So Nadia found a clever way, oddly enough, to let many painters feel free inside one tight design. Mixing a coach's trick with her own brushwork, "Field Day" changes what a class mural can be.
Step 4 · The courtroom tale
The First Ever Sandcastle
At the Beach Town Building Contest hearing, the lawyer for builder Gina Moss stood tall. "Your Honor, my client built the first sandcastle ever shaped like a checkerboard. No one tried it before her!" Mr. Whitfield snapped his suspenders and held up a faded photo. "This is from twelve summers ago. A small group of builders laid out a castle on a checkerboard plan." The judge squinted. "So the word 'first' is in trouble." "Exactly," said Mr. Whitfield. "One earlier attempt is enough. A 'nobody before' claim does not need a crowd to break it. It needs just one." The judge nodded. "Ms. Moss may still have built a great castle. She just cannot call it the first."