A words in context question tests whether you can work out a missing word’s meaning from the passage. Read the whole text and find the clue and its signal: a contrast turns against an earlier idea, while a conclusion sums up what the text shows. If the blank is in a conclusion, look back at what the text says after the contrast. Then predict in plain words and test each choice’s meaning; a word that sounds reasonable can still say something the text doesn’t.
Hints
- Hint 1
In the second sentence, look for the turn after the first impression. What do the characters’ memories do to the meaning of the events?
- Hint 2
Predict what happens to narrative intricacy. Use what the text says about the characters’ memories, then check your prediction against the final clause about shifting that intricacy.
Step-by-step
Follow the contrast to the conclusion
Step 1Separate the first impression from the evidence
The latest release unfolds over a single afternoon, unlike the earlier films’ decades and many subplots. Does that make the story less complex? The text says it might appear to simplify the storytelling, so simplicity is only a first impression. The signal but introduces the evidence for the conclusion with the blank.
- Step 2
Predict what happens to the complexity
What do the characters’ accounts show? Their incompatible memories repeatedly alter the meaning of the same events, so viewers must sort through conflicting versions. The phrase narrative intricacy means the story’s complexity, and the ending says the film shifts that intricacy from plot structure to point of view. The source of complexity changes from the plot to the characters’ memories, so predict keeps the complexity.
- Step 3
Test the other meanings
Reduces means makes less, which conflicts with a story kept complex by different memories. Resolves means settles or clears up, but incompatible memories keep the events’ meanings unsettled. Celebrates means praises or honors, and the text gives no sign of praise for complexity. It explains how the story is told, not whether the film values complexity.
- Step 4
Check the word in the sentence
Preserves means keeps or maintains. Reading it with even as it shifts that intricacy gives continued complexity with a new source, which fits a story made intricate by different memories rather than many subplots. Choice D.