ShmoopTube

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Sorry And here's your shmoop du jour brought to you

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by mark twain We'd insert something witty here but well

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he kind of already said it all All right check

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the following passage biography About the block between clement street

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family were toilet system politicians and poets How many women

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Twenty five years there Are we done skimming reading whatever

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we're doing read the following sentence from the passage After

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two years as an apprentice he joined his older brother

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on a newspaper staff and discovered that he had an

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innate talent for writing What is the word innate mean

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And here the potential answers Well even if we have

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no idea what the word in nate means we instill

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root out the right answer here All we have to

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do is pay attention in context clues and this one's

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a no brainer choice d is simple to eliminate We

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don't have to be literary experts to know that Mark

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twain is 1 of the most famous american authors of

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all time So it's pretty unlikely that his early attempts

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at writing were outright pathetic The context tells us that

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twin was good at writing from the get go So

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we know we can nix any answer that tries to

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stain his reputation When would thank us He was famous

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for wearing white suits so he lived under constant threat

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of stains were going to say no to option b

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is well though twin was already really into riverboats There's

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nothing in the passage that says he was reluctant to

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write in any way Describing a talent is reluctant Just

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sounds weird We can see how option a mite lou

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in the unsuspecting test taker weren't uncanny Described something that's

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unnatural or strange It can also be used to describe

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when somebody's unusually good at something we might say that

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old singer lady gaga sze singing skills used to be

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uncanny although uncanny is just a fitting work for her

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altogether Since Mark klein is 1 of america's top writers

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it's not hard to believe that he was mind blowingly

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amazing from the very first time he put pen to

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paper we're still suspicious Answer a though there's nothing else

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in the passages that specifically says that twenty was totally

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blowing minds from the get go option See looks like

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the better choice The passage tells the story that twin

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showed up at a newspaper office and busted out some

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writing skills even though he didn't have a ton of

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formal training While he wasn't winning any awards right off

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the bat it did seem like writing came naturally to

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him And so the magic of context clues reminds us

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that the word innate describe something that's natural or instinctual

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Little known fact Mark twain was also in neatly skilled

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that jello wrestling Lucky for america he chose another path

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