Answers

1. At the end of the passage, the author suggested that it would be ideal if the: (B) concerns and opinions of the Lees family and the American doctors could be merged.

   What is this passage about?

   This passage was extracted from the preface to a book written by an American journalist in 1997. It comprised of detailed information on the disagreement which existed between doctors and family members (Lees family) about a child’s medical treatment at a hospital located in California.

   At the end of this passage, the author opined that he imagined what the tape would sound like if he could splice the voices of the aggrieved Lees family and those of the American doctors on a single tape, and hear them speak a common language.

   What is an inference?

   An inference can be defined as a process through which a reader can deduce the meaning or message (information) that is associated with an author’s literary work, especially through induction.

   Based on the information at the end of this passage, we can infer and logically deduce that the author suggested that it would be ideal if the concerns and opinions of the Lees family and the American doctors could be heard and as such resolved quickly.

   Read more on inference here: https://brainly.com/question/26413347

   #SPJ1

   Complete Passage:

   Under my desk I keep a large carton of cassette tapes. Though they have all been transcribed, I still like to listen to them from time to time. Some are quiet and easily understood. They are filled with the voices of American doctors, interrupted occasion- 5 ally by the clink of a coffee cup or beep of a pager. The  rest — more than half of them — are very noisy. They are filled with the voices of the Lees family, Hmong refugees from Laos who came to the United States in 1980. Against a background of babies crying, children playing, doors 10 slamming, dishes clattering, a television yammering, and an air conditioner wheezing, I can hear the mother’s voice, by turns breathy, nasal, gargly, or humlike as it slides up and down the Hmong language’s eight tones; the father’s voice, louder, slower, more vehement; and my interpreter’s voice, 15 mediating in Hmong and English, low and deferential in each. The hubbub summons sense-memories:  the coolness of the red metal folding chair, reserved for guests, that was always set up when I arrived in the apartment; the shadows cast by the amulet that hung from the ceiling and swung in 20 the breeze on its length of grocer’s twine; the tastes of Hmong food. I sat on the Lees’ red chair for the first time on  May 19, 1988. Earlier that spring I had come to Merced, California, because I had heard that there were some 25 misunderstandings at the county hospital between its Hmong patients and medical staff. One doctor called them “collisions,” which made it sound as if two different kinds of people had rammed into each other, head on, to the accompaniment of squealing brakes and breaking glass.30 As it turned out, the encounters were messy but rarely frontal. Both sides were wounded, but neither side seemed to know what had hit it or how to avoid another crash. I have always felt that the action most worth watching occurs not at the center of things but where edges meet.35 I like shorelines, weather fronts, international borders. These places have interesting frictions and incongruities, and often, if you stand at the point of tangency, you can  see both sides better than if you were in the middle of either one. This is especially true when the apposition is cultural.40 When I first came to Merced, I hoped that the culture of American medicine, about which I knew a little, and the culture of the Hmong, about which I knew nothing, would somehow illuminate each other if I could position myself between the two and manage not to get caught in the cross- 45 fire. But after getting to know the Lees family and their daughter’s doctors and realizing how hard it was to blame anyone, I stopped analyzing the situation in such linear  terms. Now, when I play the tapes late at night, I imagine what they would sound like if I could splice them together, 50 so the voices of the Hmong and those of the American doctors could be heard on a single tape, speaking a common language.

   Reply