Dun understand some questions from Powerprep2

[erencie]

Not sure how to enlarge the pictures.... Please help me on the following 3 questions. I know the highlighted portions are correct answers but I don't understand why.

Anyway it is PowerPrep ii Verbal Section 2 Question 5 and 6, as well as the question 16 in compre.
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-k8Bgb3pqOY...lc/s1600/1.png
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MyY0VEVECx...R8/s1600/4.png
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ge3Af2x24V...4U/s1600/3.png

[thepillow]

Hi erencie,

I'll try to explain my reasoning for why I think those are the right answer choices:

For the first question:

Blank 1: "Construe" means to interpret something in a certain way. The vanquished people interpret their defeat in a certain way (in this case they want to claim that they are still superior in the most meaningful ways despite having lost). "Anoint" is a positive word, so that doesn't work because the topic is their defeat. And "acknowledge" would be ok if the vanquished were the ones accepting someone else's interpretation of the events, but the vanquished people are the ones who are doing the interpreting. So "construe" is the better choice.

Blank 2: The fact that the winners give credence to the loser's story suggests that in some way they are ok with the interpretation made by the vanquished people (even if they don't truly believe it). They benefit from this interpretation because it relieves them of some of the burden of the moral/cultural "costs". It's almost like they've come to a hidden agreement about the interpretation, which is why "collude in" is the correct choice.


For the second question:

The last sentence is the correct answer because the sentence right before it provides the answer to the question (which comes in the third to last sentence). The question asks for the sentence that provides support for an answer. The answer is in the second to last sentence, but it's the last sentence that provides a further insight that helps back up the answer suggested in the second to last sentence.


For the third question:

Blank 1: At the end they mention the "new created 'vintage' prints". These must be fakes because they are new but vintage, which is a contradiction. These fakes are intended to make people think they are vintage so that the creator can take advantage of the profitability of the prints. A "forgery" is a fake version of something (often a work of art), so that works perfectly for this blank.

Blank 2: If one of these prints could fetch a hundred times more than the others than that means their value must have gone up quite a lot. "Ballooned" can have this meaning (just think of a balloon inflating, getting bigger and bigger). "Varied" just means that it changed a lot, and "weakened" is the opposite of what we want.

Blank 3: The people who are faking these prints want to take advantage of the fact that the price has "ballooned". If the price is so high now compared to what it was before it "ballooned" then their is a big "discrepancy", which means difference.


Hopefully these clarifications helped. Let me know if I didn't explain something clearly or if you disagree!