A Reading Comprehension Question

[cubezero3]

The grammar school boy from Stratford-upon-Avon has landed a scholarly punch after groundbreaking research showed that Shakespeare does benefit children's literacy and emotional development. But only if you act him out.
A study found that a 'rehearsal room' approach to teaching Shakespeare broadened children's vocabulary and the complexity of their writing as well as their emotional literacy. 'The research shows that the way actors work makes a big difference to the way children use language and also how they think about themselves,' Jacqui O'Hanlon of the Royal Shakespeare Company(RSC), which commissioned the study, said.
The randomised control trial involved hundreds of year 5 pupils - aged nine and ten - at 45 state primary schools that had not been 'previously exposed to RSC pedagogy.' They were split into target and control groups and asked to write, for example, a message in a bottle as Ferdinand following the shipwreck in The Tempest. The target group were given a 30-minute drama-based activity to accompany the passage.
The peer-reviewed results showed that the target group of pupils drew on a wider vocabulary, used words 'classed as more sophisticated or rarer', and wrote at greater length. They also 'appear to be more comfortable writing in role ... while [control] pupils imagine how they themselves would react to being shipwrecked, [target] children put themselves in the shoes of a literary character and express that character's emotion'. The Time to Act study, which is published by the RSC this week, also found that while control pupils relied on 'desert island cliches' such as palm trees, target pupils were 'more expansive [giving] a broader picture of the sky, the sea and the atmospheric conditions'.

23 Control pupil's reliance on 'desert island cliches' shows their

A weakness in description
B omission of small details
C casual style of writing
D preference for big words

This question was from last year's Postgraduate Entrance Test paper in China.

As far as I know, the organiser of the test doesn't publish the past papers and the answer keys. There are no official answers that is. The answer to this question, as suggested by the version of past paper that I've got, is A.

I have a different opinion.

It's easy to see why C and D are incorrect. Cliches are words and therefore the author is not talking about the style of the writing. And Cliches are not big words.

It's not so easy to rule out B and I'd argue B is the better answer.

I'm not saying A is wrong. Compared with students who can give 'a broader picture of the sky, the sea and the atmospheric conditions', those who can only come up with 'cliches' are definitely weak in their description of the scenario.

However, the whole article is about the study commissioned by the RSC and its conclusion that students can have a wider vocabulary and write at greater length when studying Shakespeare's works, if they act the work out, rather than simply reading it.

The author doesn't explicitly say some students are only allowed to read the Shakespeare's work, instead of acting it out. But this can be inferred using the information given in the text.

The researchers used a 'randomised control trial' to try and find out the effectiveness of the 'rehearsal room' approach, as they called it.

In a randomized controlled trial, all other factors than may have an impact on the result, other than the one in question, which in this case was the rehearsal room approach, are controlled for. So people can point to the result of the trial and say whether the rehearsal room approach works or not.

Also, the purpose of the study was to see whether the 'RSC pedagogy' was better than the traditional way of teaching, which, as we all know, involved giving children a text and having them read it.

The author says 'the target group' had a 'drama-based activity to accompany the passage'. It can be inferred that the control group was not allowed the 'drama-based activity', but they still had to study the same passage. If the students involved in the study had had different levels of familiarity with the passage, the research would have been pointless, as that alone, if not controlled for, could have had a bearing on the result of the research. And it would have been much easier to use a text that no students had previously encountered, rather than having to come up with a method to define their levels of familiarity.

So here we have a study, in which students were divided into the target group and the control group. They were given the same material written by Shakespeare. The control group were asked to read the passage. The target group were asked, not only to read the passage, but to also act it out. The target group benefited more from the passage and were better able to perform in terms of their vocabulary and writing, when asked to write 'a message in a bottle as Ferdinand'.

I'd say this makes absolute sense. The researchers proved in a scientific way what we all know in daily life: the more active we are when studying, the more we can learn from it. That is, we would pay attention to and be able to remember more details. The whole point of this study was to show that ‘omission of small details’ could be reduced using the ‘RSC pedagogy’.

I'd like to hear your opinions.

 

[jutfrank]

My opinion is that you've made a decent attempt at justifying B as the answer but still, you've missed the point, which is that the target group wrote more authentically. The inclusion of small details doesn't necessarily mean better writing.

 

[cubezero3]

I would like to make one more attempt.
Let's say we have a student called Tom. Tom is not a big fan of reading. In the good old days, he would be asked to read an excerpt from Shakespeare. He would read it, as required. He didn't care too much about how much information he would get from the excerpt, because, well, he had no joy reading it.
Now there was this expert trying a new teaching method on his class. He'd have to act it out in front of everybody. It would be very embarrassing, if he simply stood there with nothing to say. He was just a secondary student. He couldn't come up with something that was even close with this master piece from Shakespeare. The best option he had was to pay attention to how Shakespeare wrote it. He had to go through the small details - the words, the sentences, the style, the storyline, etc.
The method worked. Afterwards, Tom was able to, at least in this case, use a wider vocabulary and complicated sentences to finish the assignment given to him, which was designed precisely for the purpose of helping him to take notice of the small details.
This is how I interpret the meaning of 'small details'.

 

[emsr2d2]

I would accept that paying attention to how individual words, and possibly whole sentences, are used constitutes looking at the "small details". The style and storyline don't fit into that category.

 

[jutfrank]

This is how I interpret the meaning of 'small details'.

The phrase 'small details' is in reference to the students' writing and what kind of things they described when imagining being shipwrecked. It has nothing to do with the Shakespeare texts.

The statement in answer B is not true because the point is that it was not the inclusion of small descriptive details (of things like palm trees, etc.) that made the target group's writing better. In short, it was their attempt to put themselves not just physically but emotionally in the shoes of Ferdinand, and really understand what the situation means to him, rather than just passively imagining being on a desert island, which the control group did, and which their use of cliches made evident.