In the example below, there are 8 options to choose from (A-H) and you need to choose 3.
This means that there are 5 ‘distractors’ (either there is NO mention, or it is not the same as the text).
Strategy
- Read the statements first
- Underline key words
- Find the relevant information in the text.
- Analyse the information to see if it matches the statement
- Develop an awareness of the language of distractors or ‘red flags’ e.g. extreme word like ‘the ONLY dictionary’
- Cross off the distractors as you find them.
Tips:
- The statements are roughly in the same order as the text, so use numbers or capital letters to find your place.
- This question type is similar to ‘True, False, Not Given’ because you need to find the information and decide if it’s True or False.
- The answers are always in the synonyms (e.g. time limit = deadline, shades/subtleties of meaning), so the only way to get better at this type of question is to improve your reading comprehension and vocabulary.
- The distractors often use almost exactly the same words e.g. previous dictionary writers/previous dictionaries; ‘scholarly words’
Choosing from a list
For the century before Johnson’s Dictionary was published in 1775, there had been concern about the state of the English language. There was no standard way of speaking or writing and no agreement as to the best way of bringing some order to the chaos of English spelling. Dr Johnson provided the solution.
There had, of course, been dictionaries in the past, the first of these being a little book of some 120 pages, compiled by a certain Robert Cawdray, published in 1604 under the title ‘A Table Alphabeticall of hard usuall English wordes’. Like the various dictionaries that came after it during the seventeenth century, Cawdray’s tended to concentrate on ‘scholarly’ words; one function of the dictionary was to enable its student to convey an impression of fine learning.
Beyond the practical need to make order out of chaos, the rise of dictionaries is associated with the rise of the English middle class, who were anxious to define and circumscribe the various worlds to conquer – lexical as well as social and commercial. It is highly appropriate that Dr Samuel Johnson, the very model of an eighteenth-century literary man, as famous in his own time as in ours, should have published his Dictionary at the very beginning of the heyday of the middle class.
Johnson signed the contract for the Dictionary with the bookseller Robert Dosley at a breakfast held at the Golden Anchor Inn near Holborn Bar on 18 June 1764. He was to be paid £1,575 in instalments, and from this he took money to rent 17 Gough Square, in which he set up his ‘dictionary workshop’.
James Boswell, his biographer described the garret where Johnson worked as ‘fitted up like a counting house’ with a long desk running down the middle at which the copying clerks would work standing up.
Johnson himself was stationed on a rickety chair at an ‘old crazy deal table’ surrounded by a chaos of borrowed books. He was also helped by six assistants, two of whom died whilst the Dictionary was still in preparation.
The work was immense; filling about eighty large notebooks (and without a library to hand), Johnson wrote the definitions of over 40,000 words, and illustrated their many meanings with some 114,000 quotations drawn from English writing on every subject, from the Elizabethans to his own time. He did not expect to achieve complete originality. Working to a deadline, he had to draw on the best of all previous dictionaries, and to make his work one of heroic synthesis. In fact, it was very much more. Unlike his predecessors, Johnson treated English very practically, as a living language, with many different shades of meaning. He adopted his definitions on the principle of English common law – according to precedent. After its publication, his Dictionary was not seriously rivalled for over a century.
Choose THREE letters A-H. Your answers may be given in any order.
Which THREE of the following statements are true of Johnson’s Dictionary?
A It avoided all scholarly words.
B It was the only English dictionary in general use for 200 years.
C It was famous because of the large number of people involved.
D It focused mainly on language from contemporary texts.
E There was a time limit for its completion.
F It ignored work done by previous dictionary writers.
G It took into account subtleties of meaning.
H Its definitions were famous for their originality.
Answers: D, E, G
A It avoided all scholarly words.
Wrong answer (distractor) – Cawdray’s dictionary concentrated on ‘scholarly words’
B It was the only English dictionary in general use for 200 years.
Wrong answer – his Dictionary was not seriously rivalled for over a century.
C It was famous because of the large number of people involved.
Wrong answer – He was helped by 6 assistants (but it was not famous because of this)
D It focused mainly on language from contemporary texts.
This is the correct answer. It says ‘unlike his predecessors he treated English very practically as a living language. He used quotations ‘from the Elizabethans to his own time’.
E There was a time limit for its completion.
Working to a deadline….
F It ignored work done by previous dictionary writers.
Wrong answer … he had to draw on the best of all previous dictionaries.
G It took into account subtleties of meaning.
… with many different shades of meaning.
H Its definitions were famous for their originality.
Wrong answer – He did not expect to achieve complete originality.
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