I answered some questions below while practicing the ETS official guide :
Like Béla Bartók, Ruth Crawford not only brought a composer’s acumen to the
notation of folk music, she also had a marked (i)_____ the task. This was clear
in her agonizing over how far to try to represent the minute details of a performance in
a written text, and this (ii)______ makes her work a landmark in
ethnomusicology.
Here I got 1st blank wrong, 2nd blank was correct
Blank (i)
A) reverence for
B) detachment from
C) curiosity about
I selected option C, but answer is A as per answer key. I’m not sure how. Using Math strategy, the blank should be something similar to acumen (which means the ability to make good judgements and take quick decisions). While curiosity isn’t the same as acumen, it seems closest to acumen. Reverence means “deep respect for someone or something” which is not at all similar to acumen.
Richard M. Russell said 52 percent of the nation’s growth since the Second World War had (i)______ invention. He said, (ii)___________ research, the government’s greatest role in assuring continuing innovation is promoting a strong, modern patent office. “Unless we can (iii)____________ original ideas, we will not have invention,” Mr. Russell said. Speculating on the state of innovation over the next century, several inventors agreed that the future lay in giving children the tools to think creatively and the motivation to invent
For Q No 1,
The first blank is support.
Ruth has something positive to say about the task (which rules out B) as the second sentence suggests that she was very particular about representing even the smallest details of the notation in her performance. If she is so particular about it, it means that she respects the task (Option A). The second blank is previously referenced to the idea of this ‘fastidiousness’, if I may say so.
The line is like this : not only brought a composer’s acumen → So, she did bring something else along with acumen thus, the blank cannot be the idea related to acumen.
This is the way I would eliminate C,
The second sentence suggests that she ‘agonising over’ the details. She can’t just be curious about something if she feels so extremely about getting its details right.
Let’s put it this way, if she knows the minute details of a performance, she already knows it very well.
curiosity will be fitting if we are talking about someone who is new or is in a process of learning but here in the question we got none of those. Also, this person is agonizing over the detail - Another clue why curiosity can’t fit the blank.
I got it now. Curiosity doesn’t fit well with agonizing, and “not only” is a clue that it is something other than acumen. I actually got confused in the “not only” part because I remember that Greg provided an example in which “not only” was the support to an extreme of the completed sentence