English Reasoning Questions

Question

Please advise me if it's offensive to quote comments like this, but a comment under my OP says that 'This question, in its current form, is more about politics than English.' While this may be, I know almost nothing about politics or philosophy or some other subject. I've asked these questions because my English is primitive and because these questions involve only English:

Don’t ever rely on what you know from other sources in answering the multiple-choice questions. They are always questions about the passage itself. If it contains falsehoods, never mind – treat them as true for the purpose of the test. (Source)

Thus, what questions can be asked here? Where on Stack Exchange would welcome them?

None of the passages are written by Mark Shepherd; they're quotes from various sources, like the BBC.

Answer 1

I think many of your recent "Mark Shepherd" questions border on unreasonableness. In almost all these cases, to even address your fundamental question, one must negotiate the test question from the prep book first. Therefore, you are asking someone to spend time trying to figure out what the test question is asking, and then even more time figuring out what you are asking. To compose a reply would take even more time than that. You are asking the community to do an inordinate amount of work for something that is unlikely to be of benefit to anyone but you.

I think the main lesson here is to avoid regarding ELL as a mother lode for assistance when one is working through a voluminous work. It gets tiresome. I won't say a Mark Shepherd test prep question is off-topic, because it's not. But 10 questions relating to any single work can get monotonous, and 30 questions will almost assuredly grow irksome to many.

Part of being successful in any community is being able to gauge when you dominating the discourse too much. I get the feeling you've decided to come to ELL for help any time you were foiled by a Mark Shepherd question, irrespective of whether or not the root of your question was related to your level of English, or something else, and that's where you ran into your disfavor. Even now, you're essentially asking:

Where on SE can I get tutoring for my Mark Shepherd questions?

As for this remark:

None of the passages are written by Mark Shepherd; they're quotes from various sources, like the BBC.

That's irrelevant. You have asked nearly thirty question from Shepherd's book in a mere two weeks. It doesn't matter if the questions themselves quote outside news articles or not, the issue is the same: you are expecting people to invest their valuable time and energy into explaining these questions one by one, and we are not a free tutoring service.

Answer 2

The community is against this series of questions:

This question is off-topic because it is not about understanding English, it's about understanding and applying the logical difference between inference and statement. – Codeswitcher

I don't see this kind of question as being pertinent to this site. You are asking about the content of a particular English-language excerpt. AFAICT there is no question here about the language used in that excerpt (or elsewhere). IOW, this is about logic, not language. — Drew

This question appears to be off-topic because there is no clear question about English. — 200_success

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about Comprehension of a specific text, not learning the English Language as stated in the FAQ. — user3169

Again, you seem to have no trouble understanding the English of the cited text. Your question seems to be about how what is said relates to the question posed in the test: it is about the content behind the text and not about understanding what the text says. Should be off-topic, IMO. This is like asking about the content of a piece of physics text, where you understand the text but do not understand the ideas conveyed by it. — Drew

This question appears to be off-topic because it is about reading comprehension, not specifically an issue with language. — ColleenV

I don't believe any of those questions are about English: they're about reading, in any language. — StoneyB

I'll admit I'm mentally filtering out every question with "Mark Shepherd" in the title — snailboat

Are legal texts fitting for "English Language Learners"? :-/ — HostileFork

This question appears to be off-topic because ELL is not Law School Prep. Please stop. – 200_success

It's not just a matter of rephrasing, it's also a matter of pace. Your first question from this book was a little interesting; the next, maybe a little bit, too. After a while, though, any time I saw Mark Shepherd's name on the question list, I simply rolled my eyes and sighed. If we got one or two of these a week they might garner more interest than if we saw one or two a day. We're up to 29 questions in the past 10 days; the reaction seems to be lukewarm at best – I see very few upvotes in those 29 questions. – J.R.

Should be off-topic, IMO. This is like asking about the content of a piece of physics text, where you understand the text but do not understand the ideas conveyed by it. – Drew

I don't think these questions would be welcomed on any Stack Exchange site, but I'm afraid that's not a valid reason to ask them on ELL.

Answer 3

I think that ELL has something of a bias against questions that appear to have been taken from an exercise book; whether this is just or not isn't the point of this question.

However, if you're continually asking for help on a series of questions, and they're all in the same style, it's likely to grate on some nerves, especially when you don't appear to put effort into understanding some of them:

I answered (d), but why's it wrong? Doesn't the quoted part prove (d)? Did I misread something? - Which's suggested in the article? - Test 3, Q22, by Mark Shepherd

I think one of the issues is that, fundamentally, these questions amount to logical proofreading. That is, I could probably summarise your questions as "I thought this, but it's apparently wrong. Why?" Sometimes, you provide reasons as to why you thought what you thought; sometimes you don't.

As much as I would like to help you, these questions definitely require more attention than those that are concerned with language learning, which are at times already very time-consuming.

Like snailboat, I think that any Stack Exchange site would very quickly catch on to a pattern of question-asking like this, and personally, I doubt the reception would be warm. This comes down to the fact that, in general, SE sites aren't free homework-help sites, whether you're doing this for study or out of personal interest.

Answer 4

After giving it some thought, I came up with a few things you can do that I think will improve how the community perceives your questions.

• Narrow the focus of your question to a specific sentence or phrase that is confusing to you. If your question requires reading the full passage to answer it, it is likely off-topic here. If there is one particular sentence that you don't understand and it only needs another sentence to put it in context, it may be something we can help you with.
• Give the people who take the time to respond to your questions some feedback on whether they've helped you. You've asked a lot of questions, and seem to have abandoned many of them. If you don't feel like an answer can be accepted, at least comment on it and mention why.
• Include some insight on what you are thinking or the steps you've taken to try to answer the question for yourself. This can help us identify what may be the source of your confusion.
• Wait for a question about a particular passage to be answered before asking another about the same passage. Often having your first question answered may cause your subsequent questions to be unnecessary.